Tony Rojas

There's no linchpin type player in this defense.

If you look at it, I mean, honestly, maybe you can point to Tony Rojas again, but they really believe in Alex Tash.

And so it doesn't feel like there's as big of a drop off there.

You theoretically could point to one of the pass rushers, but they have so much depth there.

So we will see.

But yeah, I think this is a defense that is... injury proof is not true no defense is injury proof but they've insulated themselves as best you can from injury and so if one happens you can kind of pick up the slack and everyone says next man up but it really is a situation where they can do that and maybe it's not as much of a drop off and then lynn can make adjustments to sort of make up for those things

so i was seated next to the nfl scouts today and i always like to there are a lot of them here obviously because the nfl game tomorrow and you're in a big market easy to get to um so i was i like hearing who they're interested in and who kind of catches their eye and defensively tony rojas is is that guy that had their attention and you know they felt that he was moving ground really well um the other guy who really seemed to have their attention Was your guy, John, or our guy? Should I say our guy now? Ben Bramer, I mean, I think.

Oh, my guy.

Always appreciate when you give me a little bit of a heads up.

Let's talk about, well, actually, let's just get to our defensive player of the game, because I want to talk about this pretty quickly in the game, and that's Tony Rojas.

We got a couple things to talk about with Matt here.

Matt McClanahan, by the way, is a criminal defense attorney in State College.

Bad things don't happen 9-5.

They don't just decide to happen when everyone thinks it's convenient.

So, MattMLaw.com. He's the sponsor of today's Defensive Player of the Game, which is Tony Rojas.

I don't know how many tackles he had, but he was all over the place.

You push the ball down the field, you get it in the red zone, you force a turnover.

Tony Rojas picking off former teammate Jackson Smolik and setting Penn State literally at the five-yard line of Temple.

And you don't punch it in.

This game could have easily been 45 to 10.

The offensive line was solid in pass protection and mostly in general.

I know the ground game wasn't amazing, but the offensive line was still opening up lanes for the running backs to run through.

Tony Rojas.

Tony Rojas is the guy that he's the glue that holds this defense together.

But are you effective in those dozen of snaps? Do you get three tackles? Because he might not be the leader in the box score, but...

if you play a certain amount of snaps and you make a good amount of plays in those snaps, okay, then that's a sign of things to come for either player, whether that's Burkle as a blocker in the passing game or Alex Tash as a linebacker coming back into the rotation, who Matt Campbell did in fact compare to Tony Rojas.

So high expectations there from the Penn State coaching staff, about a second year player who I would have tabbed as a breakout watch player.

My name is Zach Saco.

But there is some preference for Hanson and Peoples.

On the defensive side of the football, Alex Tash coming back, is he going to be a full go? Is he going to have a limited amount of snaps, right? Eager to see him on the defensive side because he got a comparison to Tony Rojas.

That is a big deal.

I don't think Matt Campbell's saying that, hey, we want to compare a guy who hasn't played football in a number of months to our superstar linebacker.

It's, you know, I said on your last show, if you told me one defender on the team we could at least afford to lose, I said it was Max Crandall.

I said, like, him and Tony Rojas are...

I would even lean Granville, a pass rush specialist.

There is a reason defensive ends get paid top dollar.

Jeremiah Cooper is going to play a little bit more, but I think we keep seeing them ramp up.

Tony Rojas was on one series, and I thought the linebacker rotation was very interesting last week because you had Tony and Cooper Ebel start out, and they both started out pretty well.

Cooper Ebel started out really well.

Then you flipped out and put Cam Smith in there for Tony Rojas, and then you flipped back to Rojas and put Cale Brazina in there.

And so working with different combinations is going to help you at some point.

It's what Manny Diaz did really well is – mix those mix and match those guys and sort of cultivate your own depth and i know that a lot of those guys only have one year to play but at the same time like that you've got an opportunity to keep your guys fresher but also get them with other playing with other people which is going to help at some point