A look back at the College Football Hall of Fame-worthy career of Paul Posluszny at Penn State.
[autotag]Paul Posluszny[/autotag] is one of the best linebackers in Penn State history and now he may be remembered as one of the best in college football history as he is on the College Football Hall of Fame ballot this year.
Posluszny is one of two players to ever be a multi-time winner of the Chuck Bednarik Award, putting him in rare company, and he is also a two-time All-Big Ten and All-American member. Dash in a Dick Butkus Award and an Orange Bowl victory to cap off his college career and you have one of the best careers a college linebacker could have without a doubt.
All in all, he accumulated 232 total tackles and forced seven turnovers for a Penn State defense that was loaded with talent. Now he hopes to be inducted in the College Football Hall of Fame after his football career has ended.
Former Penn State greats Ki-Jana Carter and Paul Posluszny among the candidates for the College Football Hall of Fame Class of 2023.
The ballots for the next College Football Hall of Fame class for 2023 are out, and a trio of former Penn State greats are up for consideration by the voters. Former Penn State linebacker [autotag]Paul Posluszny[/autotag] and former running backs [autotag]Ki-Jana Carter[/autotag] and [autotag]D.J. Dozier[/autotag] are each a candidate for the College Football Hall of Fame.
In addition to the three former players, current Penn State wide receivers coach [autotag]Taylor Stubblefield[/autotag] appears on the ballot for his standout career as a player for Purdue. Another former Penn State player, [autotag]Glenn Killinger[/autotag], also is on the College Football Hall of fame ballot, but he is included as a candidate for a divisional coach.
This is Carter’s first appearance on the College Football Hall of Fame ballot, and he has a chance to join former teammate [autotag]Kerry Collins[/autotag], who was inducted into the hall of fame in 2018. Carter was a first-team All-American during Penn State’s undefeated 1994 season and ended his Penn State career as one of the best backs to ever come through the program. Carter was a runner-up to 1994 Heisman Trophy winner Rashaan Salaam of Colorado and a finalist for the Maxwell Award, which was won by Collins. Carter ended his career earning co-MVP honors in the 1995 Rose Bowl victory over Oregon with 156 rushing yards, highlighted by a memorable 83-yard touchdown on Penn State’s first offensive play of the game.
Carter went on to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 1995 NFL draft of the Cincinnati Bengals. He spent a total of 10 years in the NFL.
Dozier was also a first-team All-American for Penn State in 1986. He is the only player in school history to lead the Nittany Lions in rushing for four consecutive seasons and he was a key offensive piece of Penn State’s 1986 national championship run. It was Dozier who scored the game-winning touchdown for Penn State in its upset victory over No. 1 Miami in the 1987 Fiesta Bowl.
Posluszny was a two-time First Team All-American, including as a consensus pick in 2005, and he is one of two players to win the Chuck Bednarik Award twice (Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald is the other, doing so in 1995 and 1996). Posluzny also owns a Butkus Award and was a two-time First Team All-Big Ten player. Posluszny was also a National Football Foundation scholar-athlete in 2006.
Penn State currently has 20 inductees in the College Football Hall of Fame. The most recent inductee is former linebacker [autotag]LaVar Arrington[/autotag], who will officially be enshrined later this year after being voted in last year.
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Micah Parsons finally joins some notable former Penn State linebackers in the Butkus Award club
Micah Parsons has only played one season in the NFL, but he may already be in need of getting a new shelf for some awards. On Tuesday, Parsons was named the NFL’s Butkus Award winner as the league’s best linebacker for the 2021 season.
Parsons is the second player from Penn State to win the NFL version of the Butkus Award. He joins NaVorro Bowman, who took home the award in 2013 with the San Francisco 49ers. Other past professional Butkus Award winners have included TJ Watt of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Von Miller, and DeMarcus Ware. Parsons is the second Cowboys player to win the Butkus Award, with Ware doing so twice in 2008 and again in 2011.
Penn State has a good history with the Butkus Award, of course. Although Parsons never won the award while in college, Paul Posluszny (2005) and LaVar Arrington (1999) each won the award in college.
This year’s college Butkus Award winner was Georgia’s Nakobe Dean, who also won the high school Butkus Award in 2018.
Blessed 🦁🙏🏽 thank you! Mr.Butkus , I’m glad I can represent the brand and embody what it means to have dedication and work ethic! Thank you for the selection of becoming Butkus award winner which allows me to join elite company!! https://t.co/1UoOQbTKEZ
Shaq Quarterman said that Jack has been his go-to player for advice since the Jags drafted him.
Linebacker Shaquill Quarterman has been one of the Jacksonville Jaguars’ standouts during the preseason. As a rookie in 2020, he appeared in 12 games but he didn’t make much of an impact, totaling just six tackles.
But the new coaching staff has clearly been pleased with his progress this offseason. His play during camp was one of the primary reasons the team felt comfortable trading linebacker Joe Schobert, and now Quarterman is likely to see a much bigger role than he did in 2020.
Quarterman said that one of the guys he’ll be playing behind, star linebacker Myles Jack, has been helpful during his development. He said that Jack has been like a mentor to him since he joined his hometown team. Quarterman is an Orange Park native and graduate of Oakleaf High School.
“Myles [Jack] has been a very big help in my process and becoming a Jaguar,” Quarterman said. “He’s the first person I go to for any type of advice since I got the call that I was coming back home. He is really showing me how things are done as a pro, and I really appreciate that. I’ve gotten a chance to hang out with Myles, get to know him outside of just the building, and I really do appreciate him as a savvy vet taking me underneath his wing.”
For his part, Jack is just following the blueprint that was set for him. According to Quarterman, longtime Jacksonville linebacker Paul Posluszny played the same role with Jack when he was coming into the league.
“He’s definitely mentioned how Poz used to run things and the things that he’s been able to learn from him,” Quarterman said. “The big brother program, he’s really seeing how it’s affected him and his transition into the league and him just becoming who he’s been and being a great linebacker. So, him seeing that in me and trying to teach me the same things, it means a lot.”
Quarterman totaled 14 tackles in the preseason, and he will likely be the first linebacker off the bench to spell starters Jack and Damien Wilson. The former fifth-round pick out of Miami is expected to do big things in an increased role in 2021.
Paul Posluszny, who played for Penn State from 2003 through 2006 was ranked 30th overall in the ESPN list of the top 80 college football defenders of the 2000s, as ranked by the venerable Bill Connelly.
It should come as no surprise Posluszny not only made this list, but appeared in the top half of it as well. Posluszny was a keystone of Penn State’s defense at a time when the program appeared to drag itself out of a down spell early in the century. Posluszny was a consensus All-American in 2005 and 2006, anchoring a defense that played its way to a Big Ten championship in 2005.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7u6Y4EuigI
Posluszny also was named the recipient of the Chuck Bednarik Award, presented by the Maxwell Football Club to college football’s top defensive player. He remains one of only two players to ever win the award twice (also in doing so in back-to-back seasons). Northwestern head coach and former Wildcats linebacker Pat Fitzgerald won the first two Bednarik Awards presented by the Maxwell Football Club in 1995 and 1996. Penn State remains the only school to have a Bednarik Award winner in three consecutive seasons, thanks to Dan Connor winning the award in 2007 after Poisluszny’s back-to-back award-winning seasons.
Posluszny also won the Dick Butkus Award in 2005 as the nation’s top linebacker, and he earned second-team All-Big Ten in 2004 on his rise to national prominence.
Posluszny was a second-round draft pick of the Buffalo Bills in 2007, and he eventually went on to be named a Pro Bowl player with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2013. Posluszny retired from the NFL in 2018 after 11 seasons in the league.
The Jags’ 2017 defense wasn’t only one of the best in team history but it was also one of the best of the last decade.
The defense the Jacksonville Jaguar built in 2017 will always be remembered as arguably the best in team history. When looking at NFL history, they’ve also received favorable rankings as the unit nearly propelled them to the Super Bowl.
Pro Football Focus recently added to that praise by declaring the Jags’ 2017 defense the third-best (by Wins Above Replacement metrics) when looking at the 2010s. In a nutshell, the WAR metric uses PFF ratings to dictate the value of a group (or sometimes a player) in comparison to replacement-level victories.
The only teams that ranked higher were the 2015 Denver Broncos and 2018 Chicago Bears, who were ranked first and second, respectively. The 2013 Seattle Seahawks’ defense also made the list, coming in at the No. 4 spot.
(Note: For a full explanation of PFF’s war metric, click here.)
The Jags’ 2017 defense had it all and each level of the field consisted of stars from the defensive line (Calais Campbell and Yannick Ngakoue), to the linebacking corps (Myles Jack and Paul Posluszny), to the secondary (A.J. Bouye and Jalen Ramsey).
The unit led the league in several key categories, as their passing defense allowed the fewest yards through the air (2,718) and the lowest passing yard average (169.9). They were also second in sacks that year and propelled the Jags to a +10 turnover margin.
Unfortunately, things fell apart after that season and the group had to be dismantled to reallocate money. However, for the time that the group was together it was an awesome thing to watch as offenses had an extremely difficult time scoring.
The Cincinnati Bengals like what they have with Round 3 pick Logan Wilson.
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The Cincinnati Bengals hit a need at the top of Round 3 with Logan Wilson, a linebacker out of Wyoming who checks in with good speed at 240ish pounds.
Or as we should probably start calling him — a Ravens counter.
The Bengals hope they have some juice with Wilson that helps them right the wrongs last year’s defense displayed in the AFC North. And to that end, defensive assistant Mark Duffner sees a former pro in Wilson’s game.
“When Duffner coached the Jaguars linebackers, he always said Paul Posluszny should have his picture in the dictionary next to the term “middle linebacker.” Duffner coached the 6-2, 232-pound Posluszny, a second-rounder, to the 2013 Pro Bowl and he thinks Wilson has the potential to join Posluszny in the dictionary and he “may be faster.”
Paul Posluszny, a second-round pick in 2007, had his injury woes but was a solid linebacker for 10 years between stints in Buffalo and Jacksonville.
Posluszny drummed up more than 1,200 tackles over the course of his career and made a Pro Bowl. The game has continued to evolve since he hung up the cleats, yet he was big and fast enough to make it work during his era.
Interestingly, Wilson checks in heavier by a few pounds and is faster. He was a three-year captain and his coaches have boasted about not having to hide him in coverage.
Not bad for a third-round pick that fits a need. If a Posluszny-type is the outcome next to Germaine Pratt, it’s hard to complain.
