Penn State spent this week trying to clean up the mess from Northwestern the hard way: by making practice more physical and putting tackling front and center.
After the Wildcats rolled up 413 rushing yards in Penn State’s loss, the conversation inside the program turned quickly to missed tackles, sloppy technique and a practice plan that, by the players’ own account, hadn’t been physical enough. Wide receiver Chase Sowell and tight end Benjamin Brahmer had already pointed to that after the game, and the defense responded by changing the tone of the week before the White Out against USC.
Safety Jeremiah Cooper said the reaction after reviewing the film was as harsh as you’d expect.
He said the defense was “disgusted” and “sick” after seeing the tape, and called the performance “embarrassing."
“Everything is just ramped up right now,” Cooper said Wednesday. “We had to change everything. The intensity stepped up this week in practice, and we all felt it.”
Defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn said Tuesday that the staff didn’t get in as many tackling drills as he wanted because of the shortened week, but that’s exactly the kind of thing he wants corrected now.
“We have to figure out different drills to put these guys in better positions,” Lynn said Tuesday. “However it gets done, it's our job to make sure it gets done.”
Lynn broke down the tackling problems Penn State had against Northwestern in specific terms: in space, in the hole and when the ball gets outside of the cornerbacks. Those situations, he said, have been built into practice this week and will keep being a point of emphasis.
He also pushed back on the idea that tackling is some fixed trait a defense either has or doesn’t. In his view, it changes from week to week depending on how a team practices and how it prepares for the opponent in front of it.
“I always say just because you tackle good in games doesn't mean you're a good tackling team,” Lynn said. “Because you have a game like this, all of a sudden you're a bad tackling team. Then we could tackle good next week, and we're a good tackling team again.”
That focus has carried over to special teams as well, with Lynn using different drills tailored to different players. Linebacker Cael Brezina said Tuesday’s workout was “the most physical practice we’ve had in a long time.”
Even with that increased intensity, most of Penn State’s practice periods are still “thud,” meaning defenders make contact but don’t take the play all the way to the ground. Cooper said the point isn’t to go full-bore every rep, but to sharpen the basics.
“It’s one-on-one drills, open field tackling,” Cooper said. “When we get in the team setting, instead of just tagging off the scout team, running backs, or whoever we're going against, we're hitting them, wrapping them up, driving our feet, emphasizing the little things.”
Brezina said the work has gone beyond just the final collision. For Penn State, it’s been about the entire tackle, from start to finish, after a two-game skid.
“Tackling is as much on the point of attack as it is everything leading up to a tackle,” Brezina said. “Getting better reps throughout the whole process of tackling is something that was really emphasized (Tuesday) and has to be emphasized going forward.”
Now the question is whether all of that actually sticks when the Trojans show up and running backs King Miller and Waymond Jordan try to establish the ground game.
For Cooper, the message is simple: keep grinding, shut out the chatter and let practice do the fixing.
“We’ve got to keep working, ignore the outside noise,” Cooper said. “We all know what we messed up on and what we gotta work on. That just started at practice.”
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