Week 5 Snaps and brief grade comments for the defense. I’m focusing mostly on snaps on both sides this week for reasons previously stated, and also because grades have a broad trend that mostly holds true. I’ll comment on grades where they defy this trend, but it’s pretty consistent. Snaps are definitely a little interesting this week, particularly on the defensive side.
On grades, remember the basis of PFF grades: it doesn’t adjust for competition or conditions in any way. In other words, PFF doesn’t care the game was played in a hurricane, and as such, generally views NU’s offense as having played very badly and NU’s defense as quite well. As a result, NU’s defensive players have nearly uniformly improved a little bit across the board from last week. The changes are a little less uniform than on offense, however, with some guys increasing more significantly, some not improving, and also inconsistency in the sub grades (ie, parts of the secondary had HUGE improvements in run defense but mixed reviews in coverage). We can also see some interesting changes in alignment (ie, it seems pretty obvious NU took advantage of the rain by lining more secondary guys up close to the line and having them play really aggressively downhill, which likely contributed to the big plays). As such, it’s always up to the reader to apply your version of context to the grade figures.
Penn State had 78 snaps with 58 rush plays and 20 pass plays.
Breaking up D line based on PFF’s semi-arbitrary edge/interior designations. The D line actually mostly saw slight declines or flat grades in this game. Pretty healthy/deep overall line rotation now, so can’t really complain about lack of bodies as a production excuse.
EDGE
Tomi – 68 snaps. His grades actually declined very slightly, but he’s still at a very high level, highest on the defense by a lot in the upper 70’s.
Johnson – 41 snaps. We know he plays both inside and outside for NU (as even Tomi does some), defying an interior/edge label, but PFF still has him at edge. Anyway, he continues to rise up the usage chart and has now entered the top 4 in terms of usage on the D line. Was viewed as having a relatively meh game.
McLaughlin – 39 snaps. Declined a little in pass rush, which was consistent across the D line, but popped up a good bit in rush defense and now is sporting a good overall 70.1 grade on the year.
Hubbard – 13 snaps. His usage continues to decline a lot, though again, he’s mostly a pass rush down guy and NU’s last two opponents haven’t done a lot of that, so there haven’t been much in the way of opportunities for him. He ought to have the Maryland game in two weeks circled as a huge and important opportunity for him.
Pate – 12 snaps.
INTERIOR
O’Rourke – 52 snaps.
Holmes – 49 snaps.
Butler – 19 snaps. Butler! He doesn’t grade well, though, so far (only 32 snaps this season).
Story – 14 snaps. Losing snap share to Butler in particular. Also graded really low vs PSU.
Gold – 5 snaps. Wasn’t actually out there much.
Bastone DNP
Linebackers
Gallagher – All 78 snaps, hasn’t missed a snap this year. Overall grade and run D grade continues to improve (overall up to 69.7 and already good run D up to a very strong 78.5 from 72.8) but another bad grade in pass coverage, dropping two points to 54.1. PFF’s take on Gallagher continues to be he’s quite good vs the run but struggles mightily vs the pass. By that logic, this week needs to be a big game for him vs Braelon Allen.
Mueller – 75 snaps, missed his first 3 snaps all year. His grades also all improved, especially vs the run, but they’re still all very bad overall, in the 40’s and 50’s as one of the worst LBs nationally.
Metz – 69 snaps – His heaviest usage game of the season by far, playing essentially a full game. With all the injuries at safety and Heard having to be back deep, not a lot of other option in the rain vs the run. Anyway, his grades actually decline a lot, but they’ve been a little screwy and elevated really high based on a couple big plays vs Nebraska, and he’s still actually graded overall as our best LB at 71.4. Of course, he’s also been matched up only in advantageous spots, so YMMV. Wisconsin will be a big test.
Davis – 3 snaps. Another guy we were semi excited to start seeing like Gold but didn’t actually play much. He graded pretty badly so I wonder if he was on the field for a big play.
Safeties and Nickels – here we start to see the aggressive box usage Fitz commented on postgame come into play. It’s very, very clear that NU used the rain to set up extremely aggressive alignments and have their guys run downhill very aggressively. Credit the players for turning this schematic choice into some big hits, but I don’t think we’ll see a lot of opportunities for this playstyle again. These guys also had all 52 of NU’s slot snaps, so NU never played a nickel CB, instead having safeties walk out to that position and leaving the deep field uncovered. These guys, like the CBs, are clearly benefitting big time from some of the fumbles they forced, helped by rain.
Lewis – All 78 snaps. He’s only missed one snap all season, second behind only Gallagher. He was in the box 36 times, at the slot 30 times, and at free safety only 12 times, so the guy who entered the year expecting to be more of the free safety alongside Coco has increasingly been playing an aggressive box role the last two weeks. Of course, the last two games were against teams nearly incapable of passing downfield between a horrible Freshman QB and a Hurricane, so that likely allowed some of this freedom. Lewis got boosts at his numbers everywhere (he’s now fully recovered from what PFF viewed as a horrible Nebraska game) but got particularly large jumps in his rush defense grade and is now graded as a fantastic 83.3 there (up from 76.8). There is a very strong argument for him being the highest impact offseason transfer on the team.
Heard – All 78 snaps. In the box a whopping 46 times, in the slot 20 times, and free only 12 times. The wildcats only had a combined 29 FS snaps vs PSU, so they clearly weren’t concerned about the deep ball. While Heard’s coverage grade actually declined slightly, he also got a huge bump vs the run, up to 71.9 from 61, pushing his overall score slightly above 60 for the first time this year.
Wallace – 7 snaps.
Devin Turner got his first 2 snaps of the year
Cornerbacks
Mitchell – 60 snaps, 19 in the box. 19 box snaps for an otherwise very traditional wide CB is massive, and Fitz commented on this usage after the game. Mitchell got the majority of his box snaps this season last week. Run D had previously been a PFF weakness for Mitchell with a 42.7 grade in minimal usage, and he jumped all the way up to 65.6 on the season with his PSU performance.
Hollis – 67 snaps. Actually led Mitchell in snaps for the first time. Much more traditional usage with 58 wide CB snaps. Also got a massive bump in run defense, up to 77.1 on the season from 61.5, but suffered a slight decline in coverage to 59.4 from 62.3.
Johnson – 29 snaps. Also pretty traditional at 24 wide snaps. He was graded as flat, but he actually already had very strong run D grades entering the game in limited time, so he would have had to grade strongly there again. He stayed flat with poor grades in coverage, though.
On grades, remember the basis of PFF grades: it doesn’t adjust for competition or conditions in any way. In other words, PFF doesn’t care the game was played in a hurricane, and as such, generally views NU’s offense as having played very badly and NU’s defense as quite well. As a result, NU’s defensive players have nearly uniformly improved a little bit across the board from last week. The changes are a little less uniform than on offense, however, with some guys increasing more significantly, some not improving, and also inconsistency in the sub grades (ie, parts of the secondary had HUGE improvements in run defense but mixed reviews in coverage). We can also see some interesting changes in alignment (ie, it seems pretty obvious NU took advantage of the rain by lining more secondary guys up close to the line and having them play really aggressively downhill, which likely contributed to the big plays). As such, it’s always up to the reader to apply your version of context to the grade figures.
Penn State had 78 snaps with 58 rush plays and 20 pass plays.
Breaking up D line based on PFF’s semi-arbitrary edge/interior designations. The D line actually mostly saw slight declines or flat grades in this game. Pretty healthy/deep overall line rotation now, so can’t really complain about lack of bodies as a production excuse.
EDGE
Tomi – 68 snaps. His grades actually declined very slightly, but he’s still at a very high level, highest on the defense by a lot in the upper 70’s.
Johnson – 41 snaps. We know he plays both inside and outside for NU (as even Tomi does some), defying an interior/edge label, but PFF still has him at edge. Anyway, he continues to rise up the usage chart and has now entered the top 4 in terms of usage on the D line. Was viewed as having a relatively meh game.
McLaughlin – 39 snaps. Declined a little in pass rush, which was consistent across the D line, but popped up a good bit in rush defense and now is sporting a good overall 70.1 grade on the year.
Hubbard – 13 snaps. His usage continues to decline a lot, though again, he’s mostly a pass rush down guy and NU’s last two opponents haven’t done a lot of that, so there haven’t been much in the way of opportunities for him. He ought to have the Maryland game in two weeks circled as a huge and important opportunity for him.
Pate – 12 snaps.
INTERIOR
O’Rourke – 52 snaps.
Holmes – 49 snaps.
Butler – 19 snaps. Butler! He doesn’t grade well, though, so far (only 32 snaps this season).
Story – 14 snaps. Losing snap share to Butler in particular. Also graded really low vs PSU.
Gold – 5 snaps. Wasn’t actually out there much.
Bastone DNP
Linebackers
Gallagher – All 78 snaps, hasn’t missed a snap this year. Overall grade and run D grade continues to improve (overall up to 69.7 and already good run D up to a very strong 78.5 from 72.8) but another bad grade in pass coverage, dropping two points to 54.1. PFF’s take on Gallagher continues to be he’s quite good vs the run but struggles mightily vs the pass. By that logic, this week needs to be a big game for him vs Braelon Allen.
Mueller – 75 snaps, missed his first 3 snaps all year. His grades also all improved, especially vs the run, but they’re still all very bad overall, in the 40’s and 50’s as one of the worst LBs nationally.
Metz – 69 snaps – His heaviest usage game of the season by far, playing essentially a full game. With all the injuries at safety and Heard having to be back deep, not a lot of other option in the rain vs the run. Anyway, his grades actually decline a lot, but they’ve been a little screwy and elevated really high based on a couple big plays vs Nebraska, and he’s still actually graded overall as our best LB at 71.4. Of course, he’s also been matched up only in advantageous spots, so YMMV. Wisconsin will be a big test.
Davis – 3 snaps. Another guy we were semi excited to start seeing like Gold but didn’t actually play much. He graded pretty badly so I wonder if he was on the field for a big play.
Safeties and Nickels – here we start to see the aggressive box usage Fitz commented on postgame come into play. It’s very, very clear that NU used the rain to set up extremely aggressive alignments and have their guys run downhill very aggressively. Credit the players for turning this schematic choice into some big hits, but I don’t think we’ll see a lot of opportunities for this playstyle again. These guys also had all 52 of NU’s slot snaps, so NU never played a nickel CB, instead having safeties walk out to that position and leaving the deep field uncovered. These guys, like the CBs, are clearly benefitting big time from some of the fumbles they forced, helped by rain.
Lewis – All 78 snaps. He’s only missed one snap all season, second behind only Gallagher. He was in the box 36 times, at the slot 30 times, and at free safety only 12 times, so the guy who entered the year expecting to be more of the free safety alongside Coco has increasingly been playing an aggressive box role the last two weeks. Of course, the last two games were against teams nearly incapable of passing downfield between a horrible Freshman QB and a Hurricane, so that likely allowed some of this freedom. Lewis got boosts at his numbers everywhere (he’s now fully recovered from what PFF viewed as a horrible Nebraska game) but got particularly large jumps in his rush defense grade and is now graded as a fantastic 83.3 there (up from 76.8). There is a very strong argument for him being the highest impact offseason transfer on the team.
Heard – All 78 snaps. In the box a whopping 46 times, in the slot 20 times, and free only 12 times. The wildcats only had a combined 29 FS snaps vs PSU, so they clearly weren’t concerned about the deep ball. While Heard’s coverage grade actually declined slightly, he also got a huge bump vs the run, up to 71.9 from 61, pushing his overall score slightly above 60 for the first time this year.
Wallace – 7 snaps.
Devin Turner got his first 2 snaps of the year
Cornerbacks
Mitchell – 60 snaps, 19 in the box. 19 box snaps for an otherwise very traditional wide CB is massive, and Fitz commented on this usage after the game. Mitchell got the majority of his box snaps this season last week. Run D had previously been a PFF weakness for Mitchell with a 42.7 grade in minimal usage, and he jumped all the way up to 65.6 on the season with his PSU performance.
Hollis – 67 snaps. Actually led Mitchell in snaps for the first time. Much more traditional usage with 58 wide CB snaps. Also got a massive bump in run defense, up to 77.1 on the season from 61.5, but suffered a slight decline in coverage to 59.4 from 62.3.
Johnson – 29 snaps. Also pretty traditional at 24 wide snaps. He was graded as flat, but he actually already had very strong run D grades entering the game in limited time, so he would have had to grade strongly there again. He stayed flat with poor grades in coverage, though.
