In their first season in the Big Ten, the Oregon Ducks football team has faced several good defenders.
But none might be as good as the one they’re about to face in defensive end Abdul Carter, the Defensive Player of the Year for the Big Ten Conference.
Carter, a 6-foot-3, 252-pounder out of Philadelphia, led the conference with 19.5 tackles for loss and 10 sacks. He’s a defensive end that can disrupt an offense all by himself and he’ll be a huge test for the Ducks offensive line in order to protect quarterback Dillon Gabriel.
But Carter doesn’t make up the entire Penn State defense.
Safety Jaylen Reed, a 6-foot senior from Detroit, leads the Nittany Lions with 75 tackles to go with 4.5 tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks, and three interceptions. He’s a Second-Team All-Conference selection. Reed isn’t the Penn State member of the secondary to earn honors.
Cornerback AJ Harris is a Third-Team selection with his 32 tackles, three for loss and an interception.
According to Oregon coach Dan Lanning, the Penn State defense is the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
“Eleven guys playing kind of as one, and they have an aggressive nature. He’s (Carter) certainly a guy that’s, you know, showing physicality and ability to play all over the field. So he’s somebody you have to be aware of,” he said six days before the game. “And I think they have a lot of players on that defense that you have to be aware of, where they’re at, and we’ll have to do a great job of identifying them.
“Again, I haven’t been able to hop into a lot of film yet with the recruits we have on campus and where we’re at, but there’s a lot of time between now and game day where we can start to prepare on that.”
The Penn State defense has been able to hold some of the most prolific quarterbacks in the Big Ten in check. Ohio State scored 20 on them, but it took a lot of effort to do so.
Illinois and Luke Altmyer could just muster up one touchdown in the 21-7 outcome and they held Maryland to 122 yards in the air in the 44-7 win. The opposition has found the end zone only 16 times in 12 games against the Nittany Lions.
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