Translating the Okay, the Bad, and the Ugly of Last Year’s Michigan Game: Defense Edition

Coming off of its bye week last season, then-ranked No. 10 Penn State hit the road for a top-10 matchup against then-ranked No. 5 Michigan. The Wolverines dominated the Nittany Lions in a 41-17 victory to drop James Franklin to 3-7 off the bye during his tenure at Penn State and 3-6 versus Michigan.

Manny Diaz’s defense was left out on the field for 41:56 of the 60-minute affair as the offense struggled to string drives together. With 79 plays against them, the Nittany Lions struggled to stop an offense that led the maize and blue to 13 wins and the College Football Playoffs, where they put up 45 points against TCU.

Here’s a look at the good, the bad and the ugly from last year’s contest and what it might mean for this year’s matchup.

The Good: Pass Coverage

It was clear that Michigan’s game plan was centered around their two-headed monster of Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards, as the team registered 55 rush attempts to just 24 pass attempts, but at the same time, credit, in part, has to be given to the Penn State secondary.

The Nittany Lion defensive backs, which included the likes of two day-two NFL Draft Picks in Ji’Ayir Brown and Joey Porter Jr. alongside those who returned to the team like Kalen King and Johnny Dixon, minimized the Wolverine’s biggest threats.

Cornelius Johnson led the way with three receptions and 43 yards, while Ronnie Bell contributed five receptions for 39 yards and Roman Wilson caught four passes for 29 yards.

Although that receiving trio accounted for 12 of J.J. McCarthy’s 17 receptions, the limited yardage was the difference maker in pass coverage. Two weeks after the Michigan game, the same Penn State secondary allowed an Ohio State trio of Marvin Harrison Jr., Cade Stover and Emeka Egbuka to not only rack up the receptions, 22, but also the yardage, 316.

McCarthy finished the day 17-of-24 through the air for 145 yards, zero touchdowns and one interception. Those 145 passing yards were the fewest he recorded as the full-time starter last season and nearly 50 yards below his season average of 194.2, as his 8.5 yards per completion were well below his average of 13.1.

The then-sophomore signal-caller’s lone interception gave the Nittany Lions one of their two leads in the game as Curtis Jacob’s returned it for a pick-6. Penn State lost the lead on another Moody field goal one drive later, but it gave a struggling Penn State team life before halftime.

What it Means for This Year

Although Michigan’s passing offense ranks 44th in the country with 257.1 yards per game, McCarthy, now in his junior campaign, is putting together his most complete year that has earned him a spot among the Heisman favorites.

The Illinois native owns the nation’s third-best completion percentage, 75.73%, as he has completed 156-of-206 passes for 2134 yards and 18 touchdowns with three interceptions.

McCarthy and the Wolverines have faced two top-25 passing defenses this year, Bowling Green and Rutgers. The 2022 second-team All-Big Ten member had his worst game of the season against the Falcons with a season-low 143 passing yards on 8-of-13 passing, with two touchdowns but three interceptions. A week later against the Scarlet Knights, McCarthy went 15-of-21 with one touchdown and his third-fewest passing yards this season, 214.

Penn State ranks 13th in the country, allowing 173.9 passing yards per game, but struggled against the best offense it’s seen this year in Ohio State. Harrison Jr. and Stover combined for 15 receptions, 232 yards and a touchdown, with the speedy Harrison Jr. doing the bulk of the work.

Against Indiana two weeks ago, the Nittany Lions blew coverages on multiple occasions leading to a 90-yard passing touchdown and 69-yard passing touchdown. The defense came back alive against Maryland in its last game with two interceptions, although it did allow 283 passing yards and two touchdowns.

That defense led by King and Dixon has to be ready for anything and everything this week as McCarthy’s success this season comes from his ability to spread the wealth with Wilson, Johnson and Colston Loveland all providing over 400 yards of offense apiece and a combined 15 touchdowns this season.

The Bad: Pass Rush

Penn State’s defense had 37 total sacks throughout its first season under the direction of Diaz for an average that sat just below three sacks per game. However, the sacks came in bunches for the Nittany Lions as 26-of-37 came in four games against Auburn, Indiana, Maryland and Utah.

For the other nine games of the season, the blue and white averaged a mere 1.22 sacks per game, including four one-sack performances against Ohio, Northwestern, Minnesota, and the other team featured heavily in the featured contest on October 15, 2022: Michigan.

Atop the leaderboard in sacks for Penn State in 2022 sat Abdul Carter, Chop Robinson and the aforementioned Brown, with Adisa Isaac and the aforementioned Jacobs trailing just behind. None of those five got to McCarthy. Coziah Izzard got to the maize and blue quarterback in the fourth quarter with the Wolverines up 31-17.

It wasn’t just a lack of quarterback takedowns for the Nittany Lions but rather a lack of pressure in general, with only Dani Dennis-Sutton recording a quarterback hurry, which came in the first quarter. For most of the game, McCarthy had free reign behind his offensive line, which allowed him to be effective to an extent in his aerial attack and effective with seven rushes for 57 yards on the ground.

Karsen Barnhart, Olusegun Oluwatimi, Zak Zinter, Ryan Hayes and Trevor Keegan were the five who created a wall in front of McCarthy. Those five all earned postseason all-conference honors a season ago, and the unit received the Joe Moore Award given annually to the best offensive line in the country.

What it Means for This Year

Oluwatimi and Hayes were drafted on day three of the 2023 NFL Draft, but the Wolverines haven’t lost a step on their offensive line. Stanford transfers Drake Nugent and Myles Hinton have the Wolverines seeking a third straight Joe Moore Award as the unit was named to the 2023 midseason honor roll.

That offensive line has given up 11 sacks this season, but has been a bit shaky as of late, allowing eight sacks over its last three games against Indiana, Michigan State and Purdue.

Opposing that offensive line will be a defense that has tied its sack total from a season ago in four fewer games. The Nittany Lions’ sacks haven’t come in the same bunches as they did in 2022, with the only game in which they don’t have three or more sacks that came against Ohio State when they brought down Kyle McCord twice.

Isaac paces the team with 6.5 sacks so far, but it’s been a fairly even share outside of him. Dixon and Robinson each have three, while Zuriah Fisher, Dennis-Sutton and Izzard each have 2.5. That share of sacks was seen against Maryland as the Nittany Lions recorded five total sacks all coming from a different player.

The Ugly: Run Defense

There is no game in the nine-plus seasons of the James Franklin tenure at Penn State in which the Nittany Lions allowed more rushing yards than they did in their 2022 meeting with the Wolverines. The same defense that struggled to get to the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage failed to stop the two-headed running back monster behind or at the line of scrimmage en route to allowing 418 yards on the ground.

Corum led the way with 28 of Michigan’s 55 rush attempts, going for 166 yards and two touchdowns. With 12 fewer attempts, Edwards outrushed Corum by seven yards, going for 173 and two scores of his own.

Edwards was averaging 10.8 yards per carry, which is just about one yard shy of an explosive play each time he carried the ball. Although his average wasn’t quite at 12 yards, which is what qualifies a play as explosive on the ground, the then-sophomore running back had plenty of explosive plays, including 21-yard, 25-yard, 28-yard and 67-yard carries.

That 67-yard rush went for a touchdown to take back the lead from Penn State in the third quarter. On the very next offensive drive later for the Wolverines, Corum broke off one of his own explosive plays, a 61-yard house call that felt like the end for the Nittany Lions comeback hopes despite being down by two scores.

The Nittany Lions had a handful of tackles for loss against the running game of Michigan as six different players made the Wolverines’ running attack go backward on six separate occasions. In the end though, Corum lost only six yards the entire game, while Edwards lost just four.

What it Means for This Year

By way of statistics, Corum and Edwards haven’t been the same dynamic duo that they were a season ago, but they also have yet to play full games as the Wolverines have pummeled opponents by an average margin of 34 points, which is up to 37.67 in conference play.

Corum, who is coming off of a knee injury that he suffered a month after Michigan’s win over Penn State, has carried the ball 126 times for 649 yards and 16 touchdowns. Although he does still have the big play ability and is averaging 5.2 yards per carry, the senior halfback has yet to score a touchdown from outside of the five-yard line.

As for Edwards, his production has dropped significantly from 2022, with 74 rushing attempts, 232 yards and two touchdowns through the first nine games of the season. Likewise to Corum, Edwards has also yet to score a touchdown outside of the five-yard line, with both of his being from two yards out. The junior running back has found more success in the passing game than Corum, with 24 receptions for 225 yards.

Penn State’s defense has taken a step up in the run game this season, allowing a country-low 60.6 rushing yards per game. That mark is nearly 50 yards lower than last year when the Nittany Lions allowed 111.2 yards per game, which was highly inflated from the Michigan game, as in the other 12 contests, they allowed an average of 85.6 yards.

The blue and white are coming off one of the best performances in recent FBS history against the Terrapins, allowing -49 yards on the ground. With that total, the Nittany Lions became one of four teams to allow -49 yards or fewer since 2013 and was the second-lowest for a Penn State team since 1947.

Justin Ciavolella is a third-year student majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email jtc5751@psu.edu or justinciavolella@gmail.com.