After Tony Rojas suffered a season-ending injury in practice the week after Oregon, Penn State football needed a young linebacker to step up. Six games later, the answer has been Keon Wylie and Alex Tatsch.

Against Michigan State, Wylie was in for 19 snaps, and Tatsch was in for nine. Against Indiana, the counts flipped; Tatsch had 22, and Wylie had nine. Wylie, a redshirt junior, was an obvious fill-in at the linebacker three position. Tatsch, on the other hand, is a true freshman and was not expected to burn his redshirt this season.

“His development has been tremendous,” Penn State interim head coach Terry Smith said. “He’s going to be one terrific player here. He’s big, he’s strong, he’s fast, he’s smart, he’s being tutored by one of the greatest of Penn State History and Dan Connor. He’s going to be a great one for us.”

Tatsch hails from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and wasn’t a highly recruited prospect. The three-star had offers from Boston College, Cincinnati, and Duke, among other schools, before he decided to join James Franklin’s team in Happy Valley.

“Should be viewed as a potential starter at the second level for a Power Five program with intriguing long-term upside,” Hudson Standish, a 247Sports National Analyst, said in an evaluation of Tatsch.

The linebacker said it was challenging to learn the position in college initially, especially given the complexity of a Jim Knowles defense. Tatsch was moved to the developmental squad around the time of the Oregon game and had to learn from his mistakes.

“You have to look at yourself in the mirror. You can’t think. It’s hard. It’s easy just to blame someone, it’s definitely hard,” Tatsch said after practice on Wednesday. “You have to have a conversation with yourself, almost like what you were doing wrong? Are you doing enough things to fix it, and how are you fixing it?”

Tatsch said he had to learn how to learn football; at the end of the day, he just needed more time in a college system. The more live reps he got, the better and faster he could play, Tatsch said.

Having experienced veterans in the linebacker room also made the transition easier for the Latrobe native. Guys like Amare Campbell, Rojas, and Dom Deluca all have at least a year starting at the Power Four level.

“Tony’s awesome. I know he’s doing rehab and stuff right now, but he’s been great, just as a teammate, also just as a friend,” Tatsch said. “Amari, just all the knowledge he had playing a similar system to Knowles before, helped me a lot. You see it from his perspective, a player’s perspective, like he’s almost a coach in himself.”

It’s also helped Tatsch to have a former All-American linebacker as his positional coach. Conner was the one who recruited Tatsch in the first place and showed Franklin his film, the true freshman said.

Tatsch said he and the rest of the room had pulled up Conner’s highlights from when he was in college, and they were impressed with his decision-making and downhill speed. Conner had 334 tackles, 29.5 tackles for loss, and four interceptions in three seasons with the Nittany Lions.

Now, as Penn State continues to fight for bowl eligibility, Tatsch has become a vital part of this improved Nittany Lions defense.

After being moved from the development squad to the second unit, Tatsch had made appearances in the past three games. In that time, he has seven total tackles, one tackle for loss, and one pass defended. His emergence has given relief to Deluca and Campbell, allowing them to improve their play as well.