Penn State football’s second-straight win of the season Saturday afternoon was hardly pretty, but James Franklin’s squad seemed to have control of Rutgers throughout.

While the offense had its ups and downs, the Nittany Lions’ defense never relinquished much ground to the Scarlet Knights. Other than an ugly score that was a product of a Sean Clifford interception, Rutgers never got much of anything going on offense.

Greg Schiano’s squad finished with 205 total yards of offense, 122 through the air and 83 on the ground, but got to the red zone just once and converted a less than stellar 12 first downs.

The Scarlet Knights picked up just two of those first downs in the first half, and entered the locker room with just 43 total yards of offense. Brent Pry’s defense clearly jumped all over the group early and often. Following a strong performance at the Big House in which the unit allowed just 286 total yards to Michigan, they picked up right where they left off in Piscataway.

“As a defense, we want to be physical, we want to play fast, we want to have fun,” Jesse Luketa said postgame. “So going out there, especially on that first drive, and doing what we needed to do to get after it for our offense, that was huge.”

Luketa was arguably the Nittany Lions’ defensive MVP against Rutgers, as he led the team with 10 total tackles, one for a loss, and even recovered a fumble that set up Penn State for some easy points.

Outside of their third quarter score in which Noah Vedral lobbed it up to Bo Melton for a jump ball in the end zone, the Scarlet Knights never really had any signs of life on offense. Part of Penn State’s defensive success was clearly their improved tackling.

After five weeks of missed arm tackles and plenty of big plays allowed, the Nittany Lions finally managed to consistently bring players to the ground last week against Michigan. That trend continued against Rutgers, as Penn State finished the afternoon with six tackles for loss, and the Scarlet Knights managed just seven plays worth more than 10 yards.

“[Tackling] improvement from week one to now, absolutely,” Luketa said. “Is it great? Absolutely not. We need to just keep picking up on those, myself included.”

Along with improved tackling overall, Penn State stopped Rutgers on fourth and short on multiple occasions. The Scarlet Knights converted on just one of their four fourth down attempts, including two 4th and 1 situations early in the game.

“I feel like we just got that understanding that it’s 4th and 1, and it’s either y’all getting the first or us stopping y’all,” Joey Porter Jr. said. “I feel like we count on ourselves every time. People want to keep us [on the field] on 4th and 1, we’re gonna be there to stop it every time.”

Porter Jr. also had a nice day, as he had seven total tackles, one for a loss, and again was a key part of Penn State’s ability to stifle the passing attack. Vedral completed just 17 of his 30 attempts for a low 113 yards. He and several other members of the secondary also helped come up and make big stops on clear running situations for Rutgers.

“It’s really been two weeks in a row,” James Franklin said. “Third and short stops, fourth and shorts stops, as well. I thought we did a really good job of playing the box, making sure our front seven handled the box and we get our perimeter players to handle the speed sweeps and things like that. We were able to come off and be disruptive.

“That’s two weeks in a row, in critical times our defense was able to make significant stops,” Franklin added.

As the Nittany Lions now turn their focus to Michigan State, they’ll hope this huge improvement on the defensive side of the ball only grows. For Franklin, he feels the defense has gotten back to playing a Penn State brand of football after the ugly 0-5 start.

“We’ve gotten back to playing how we’ve played for six years,” Franklin said. “Which is making sure to limit explosive plays, make people earn it, run to the ball, gang tackle, the basic fundamentals of defense. We’ve done a pretty good job of that here for a long time, and we got back to that….Overall, it’s hard to argue with what we’ve done over the past two weeks, especially on the defensive side of the ball.”