Abdul Carter raised his pointer fingers in the air in celebration. It had taken him three games to find his first sack of the year, but none of that mattered anymore. Carter threw Kent State’s quarterback to the ground, living up to the standard of the No. 11 on the chest of his Penn State jersey. It was a play that he and others hope will start a trend ahead of Big Ten play.
Carter wasn’t the only defensive end who struggled to find the stat sheet in the Nittany Lions’ first two games. It also took Dani Dennis-Sutton, a fellow starter, three games to find his first sack. The lack of sacks hadn’t been a cause of concern for coach James Franklin; he knew they’d eventually come from a group once expected to be among the nation’s most dominant this fall.
“Although it was probably a point of discussion, I don’t feel like it was a concern of the coaches, in terms of not feeling like we had the guys, the techniques, the fundamentals to create sacks, pressures and hits on the quarterback,” Franklin said. “Obviously, it’s good when it starts happening, and we would love more of it, but there’s a lot more that goes into it than just beating your man.”
The strength of the opponent can impact sack totals, Franklin said. So does the game plan and being able to force an opponent out of theirs early. Whatever the case may be, Penn State’s top two defensive ends hadn’t downed the quarterback in 176 combined snaps. And that should be a concern for a defensive line typically keen to big numbers.
Franklin took a nonchalant approach to the recent breakthroughs of his starting edge rushers, but it sure meant a lot to Carter and Dennis-Sutton to finally impact the stat sheet.
“I think it’s huge. We’ve been talking about it. Obviously, we haven’t had the stats as a defense, specifically as a D-Lines, TFLs and sacks and things like that. But today, we sort of started that trend,” Dennis-Sutton said postgame. “If you look back, once we start to get a couple sacks and TFLs, everything starts to roll.”
It’s not often that a defensive tackle consistently outnumbers a team’s star defensive ends in sacks and quarterback hurries. But that’s been exactly the case with Zane Durant, who has been an overlooked NFL Draft prospect compared to Carter and Dennis-Sutton, but has been as dominant a threat as any defensive player this season.
It was Durant who registered the Nittany Lions’ first sack of the year at West Virginia. And he hasn’t slowed down, leading the team with five hurries through three games.
“When we get home, it’s like a competition for D-line. So once one guy gets it, everybody else is trying to get theirs,” Durant said Tuesday.
There are certain attributes that won’t show up in the typical box score. It’s in these that the 6-foot-1, 288-pound Durant has excelled most efficiently. On the year, Durant holds an 87.3 defensive grade, per Pro Football Focus, which leads all defensive players through three games.
“Zane Durant, I think, has been as impactful on the quarterback as anybody,” Franklin said. “And if you’re just strictly looking at a stat sheet, it wouldn’t tell you that, but … real football people, they know that, NFL scouts know that, our coaching staff know it, our players know that. Our media that covers us closely knows that.”
Carter and Dennis-Sutton should be two of first names Illinois offensive coordinator Barry Lunney Jr. has circled on his game plan entering the weekend. But Durant presents another challenge on the interior, especially if Lunney is to pin double-teams on either of Penn State’s two starting defensive ends.
The Nittany Lions tallied three sacks and seven tackles for loss in their 30-13 victory over the Fighting Illini last season. It was an impressive performance against a team known for its durability in the trenches.
A year later, the standard hasn’t changed. Penn State’s defensive players want to continue their recent trend of sacking the quarterback, this time against their most challenging opponent yet.
“I think that’s going to be a key point to the game this coming week for the D-line — one of our biggest goals is getting home to the quarterback,” Durant said. “So we’ll work on that this week and get ready for the game.”
