Don’t let Marcus Neal’s smile fool you.
The Penn State defensive back brings a physical edge every time he steps on the field, and that same hard-nosed approach has made him a trusted presence in the secondary. Neal has been around long enough now to be viewed as a leader, with nearly 100 career tackles and three more in the season opener as part of what the Nittany Lions want to do on defense.
He’s also become one of the voices helping guide a younger group around him. Penn State’s secondary includes true freshman Josiah Zayas, redshirt freshman Jahmir Joseph and sophomore Daryus Dixon, and Neal has embraced the responsibility that comes with that mix.
“It’s about helping guys keep each other on the ground,” Neal said. “Like at the end of the day, we’re practicing against our teammates. If there’s a way to be aggressive and be smart, like keep guys up, keep guys healthy, that’s the biggest thing.”
That mentality fits Neal’s background. Growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, he played linebacker and running back, so contact and toughness were never foreign to him. He’s also put plenty of time into the weight room, wanting to hit harder and take on more contact himself.
His development has also been shaped by working under defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn.
“He’s just putting players in spots to succeed,” Neal said. “And the way he’s teaching the defense, he gets the whole defense together to go through stuff with us and ask us how we see things.
That’s really the biggest thing. We got a lot of great players, and he put tries best to put all of us in position to succeed.”
Neal said the defense has come a long way since the start of camp. What began with the first base defense has expanded into a much broader package as the group has kept learning.
“It’s just been amazing to see how everybody’s just kept evolving and everybody’s learning everyday, so now we’ve got a lot of stuff we can do.”
There’s more to Neal than football, too. Over the summer, he and Jamison Patton walked into a music store in State College and Neal decided to give guitar a shot. Within a few weeks, he was picking it up quickly.
“I got really decent at it, like in about two or three weeks,” Neal said. “We were on break, so like we had a little bit of downtime, and I got a chance to dive into it.”
He settled on an acoustic Yamaha, with “Riptide” by Vance Joy becoming his go-to song. During camp, he also played “Zombie” by the Cranberries for his teammates.
Patton has seen the music side of Neal up close.
“He’s my roommate, so I hear him playing it all the time, and it’s been cool to see. He’s very passionate about it too.
He likes music. Loves to sing, but he’s been grinding,” Patton said.
Patton hasn’t joined in yet, though his own background includes trumpet. Now he wants to learn saxophone, which means the musical partnership between the two could still be getting started.
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The comments also offered a glimpse at how Penn State is fine-tuning things around the edges, from personnel details to the way the staff is handling communication and game-day workflow. There were positive notes on players who helped set the tone against Marshall, and there is at least one behind-the-scenes change from Week 1 that appears likely to stick as the Nittany Lions try to make their next road stop feel a little more familiar. [Read more 🡒]