After suffering a series of slow starts early in the season, Penn State football gave up a 13-play, 42-yard drive to start the game against Washington Saturday night.

While the drive ended in a missed field goal from Grady Gross, it took over seven minutes off the clock. Although it looked like the Nittany Lions were on their way to giving up another opening-drive score, they only surrendered 39 more yards in the half.

“That was big time for us,” defensive end Abdul Carter said postgame. “We just kept building and building from there.”

The Huskies entered the game with one of the better passing offenses in the nation, averaging 280.7 yards per game through the air. During the first half of Saturday’s game, though, quarterback Will Rogers III and the Huskies’ offense had just 59 yards through the air.

While the Nittany Lions shut down Washington’s passing attack, the running game didn’t fare much better. Along with the 59 passing yards, the Huskies managed just 12 rushing yards as the defensive line plugged gaps throughout the half.

“This is the standard,” linebacker Kobe King said. “We don’t want anybody to run the ball on us, so I think we did a really good job.”

King ended the game with four solo tackles, a sack, and a tackle for loss, but another large part of the Huskies’ inefficiencies on the ground was caused by Carter. The junior registered two sacks and four tackles for loss as the group didn’t allow a touchdown the entire game.

Carter’s two-sack performance was tied for his most in a game this year after he got to Ohio State’s Will Howard twice last week against and Illinois’s Luke Altmyer in September. After the White Out, Carter now has eight sacks on the year after not recording any in the first two games of the season when he also had just one tackle for loss.

“I just go out there and do my job,” Carter said. “I know I can adapt to new things, take on new situations, and I’ll overcome it.”

After Rogers went 10-13 for 59 yards and an interception during a first half where the Huskies were shut out, Washington made a quarterback change.

Demond Williams Jr. entered the game for the Huskies’ first drive of the second half and was gifted great field position after a fumble from Tyler Warren ended a Penn State drive. Jordan Shaw pounced on the ball and the Huskies took over at the Penn State 34-yard line.

Rogers, who’s listed at 6’2″, had excelled in the passing game so far this season, while Williams, listed at 5’11”, was more shifty and hard to contain. Despite the different playing styles, the Nittany Lions contained Williams and hold the Huskies to a field goal off of the turnover.

“We knew he was a fast guy and that he was a runner,” King said. “We just dialed into our scheme and our responsibilities.”

After the field goal, Washington put together two long drives of 56 and 67 yards but only managed three more points to show for it.

The Nittany Lion defense held the Huskies to 193 total yards of offense on Saturday, with the majority coming on the last two drives of the game. After last week, when the Buckeyes ran for 198 yards on the ground, the group bounced back in a big way and limited one of the better passing attacks and running back rooms that the team will see this season.

“We trusted each other more than we did last weekend, and it showed,” King said.