Bama-PSU: Looking at the defensive game (Mostly) purely statistically

Continuing on with the theme of looking at the Alabama game, I'm going to try to draw conclusions just from stats, on defense (Since offense has already been covered and covered and covered). So here goes nothing:

Defensively, Penn State had 7 pass deflections. 2 from Crawford, 2 from Latimore, 2 from Mauti, and 2 from Hull. One of both of Latimore's and Crawfords Pass deflections seemed to come from them batting down a pass to the flat. But all 4 were plays where they blew by the OT's and none came off of screen passes.

Mauti had 13 tackles, 2 solo and 11 assisted. Hodges had 11, 4 solo and 7 assisted along with half a TFL. Carson had 11 tackles, 2 solo and 9 assisted. This shows that the gang tackling was very effective, and when we didn't gang tackle, we got killed. Maybe something to worry about, but it shows the the LB's can swarm to the ball, a stark contrast from last year. 

Sukay and Astorino had 10 tackles, 4 solo and 6 assisted. For all the times Alabama ran, I don't think that's terrible, and assuming (Yes, here's the lone opinion analysis) some of those are the safeties making plays closer to the LOS than 10 yards back. 

Still and Hill both had a TFL, Still had 3 solo tackles and 5 assists, while Hill finishes with 2 solo's and 4 assists. Alabama had Barrett Jones and William Vlachos, some of the nations top OL, starting on the interior and there was still a good amount penetration. Overall, I think this shows that we'll be tough, very tough to run on in the middle. A lot of the Tide's runs to the outside were more successful than the ones inside, and Crawford and Latimore finishing with just 6 assisted tackles would back this up imo.

Powell finished with 4 solo tackles and 1 assist, and Lynn finished with 2 solo's and 1 assist. Tough to draw any conclusions because the cover 3 and the way Alabama attacked the cover 3 (MOstly middle of the field) makes it tough to say anything.

Overall, the defense had 26 solo tackles, and 66 assisted ones. When Eddie Lacy came in though, we couldn't stop him. 11 carries for 7.7 yards and he seemed to drag the pile. We won't face a 1-2 combo like this again this year though, but when Lacy came in the defense went down hill.

Alabama, defensively, had 10 passes defensed, with 3 coming with 3 PBU's from the DL. Demarcus Millner & Dre Kirkpatrick had a total of 4 PBU's, which in turn accounts for 4 drops by the receivers.

Overall, the Tide defense had just 1 TFL, but took down Redd in 1 on 1 matchups more often than we did (32 solo tackles, 28 assisted)