Penn State safeties ready to help stop Minnesota's run game - Associated Press

The Nittany Lions (2-2, 0-1 Big Ten) will need more of that from Allen and fellow safety Malik Golden against Minnesota (3-0, 0-0 Big Ten) and its two-headed rushing attack as Penn State grasps for momentum in a season that's soured quickly thanks to a long list of injuries.

Now without all of its starting linebackers, Penn State has allowed 326 rushing yards or more in two of its last three games, is coming off an embarrassing loss to No. 4 Michigan and faces the conference's fifth-best rushing offense on Saturday.

As youngsters in front of them have whiffed again and again, Allen and Golden have combined for 57 tackles. They'll have their eyes on Minnesota's Rodney Smith and Kobe McCrary who've helped the Gophers rush for just over 228 yards per game.

''You talk about missing tackles, well, typically your linebackers are the unit that make the majority of your tackles,'' Penn State coach James Franklin said. ''And we've lost our three starters.''

THIRD DOWN WOES: Linebackers Nyeem Wartman-White, Brandon Bell and Jason Cabinda entered the season with 57 combined starts. Wartman-White is out for the season and Bell and Cabinda are out for this game.

Their replacements - Manny Bowen, Jake Cooper and former walk-on Brandon Smith - have just seven combined. The inexperience has shown on third down where opponents are converting nearly 40 percent of the time...

https://www.yahoo.com/news/penn-state-safeties-ready-help-stop-minnesotas-run-153840748--ncaaf.html

Question for people that know a lot more about football strategy than I: What kind of plays do you run to exploit weak/inexperienced linebackers? Will we see even more zone read plays?

I suppose it depends a little on how many DBs they decide to play but I would think things like counters, jet motion, draws, utilizing pass mismatches with TE and RB are some of the ways. Anything to try and confuse or get them flowing in the wrong direction. Just running out typical attack should have better success as inexperienced guys are slow to fill gaps, get off blocks, or over-pursue. Can they cover or are they more thumper types?

This is our first real test of the year and I'm genuinely curious if well have the juice flowing on defense. Could be a barn burner with both teams trying to figure things out on defense.

I would think play action passes would work too, especially if their secondary is cheating up to stop the run.

On passing downs the screen pass can be very effective against inexperienced linebackers. Slant routes are a good option against cheating safeties.

Word said:

Question for people that know a lot more about football strategy than I: What kind of plays do you run to exploit weak/inexperienced linebackers? Will we see even more zone read plays?

Click to expand...

Zone read a lot of the time the QB is reading the Dend (not always but most the time). To exploit the young line backers I would do more screens, and play action passes to TE's over the middle. With the safeties and LBs keying on the run, the middle of the field should be wide open if they play action on a normal running down for us. I'm hoping it means big runs after the catch for our WRs.