The UCLA Bruins will have a daunting first Big Ten home game this season. They will welcome James Franklin and the Penn State Nittany Lions to The Rose Bowl in Week 6.
Penn State is fresh off a deep College Football Playoff run. It retained quarterback Drew Allar and running back Nicholas Singleton on the offensive side of the ball. The Nittany Lions still have plenty of talent on their defense too.
Penn State’s defense ranked behind just Ohio State and Indiana in the Big Ten last year. The Nittany Lions allowed only 16.5 points per game while allowing the fourth-fewest yards per game with 294.8. UCLA’s offense will look much different in 2025 than it did in the first year of DeShaun Foster’s tenure, but the Bruins struggled to run the ball and the Penn State defense will exacerbate those problems.
Nittany Lions’ defensive end Zane Durant was named to the Walter Camp Football Foundation with the announcement of its preseason All-American team. Durant was one of the three Nittany Lions named to the list. Penn State joins Alabama, Clemson, Indiana, and Texas as the only schools with three players on the preseason All-American team.
The Penn State defense will see more turnover from last season than their offense, which could cost them against the elite teams in the Big Ten but the Nittany Lions have the talent in place to be able to handle the Bruins but they’ll have to prove it on the field first.
This article originally appeared on UCLA Wire: Penn State defense won’t be an easy matchup for UCLA offense in Week 6
Reporting by Dylan McNeill, UCLA Wire / UCLA Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
