How Penn State DL coach John Scott Jr. was inspired by DC Brent Pry to get into coaching
John Scott Jr. likely wouldn’t be at Penn State if it weren’t for Brent Pry. In fact, the defensive line coach said he might not be a coach at all if it weren’t for the Penn State defensive coordinator.
“Coach Pry and I are like family,” Scott said on a teleconference with the media Thursday morning. “I’ve known him for 21 years of my life and he’s a big reason why I decided to get into coaching. I enjoyed the way he coached me with his energy, his passion (and) his knowledge of the game.”
Pry was Scott’s defensive line coach when Scott was a senior defensive end at Western Carolina in 1998. It was there that their 21-year relationship began, and Pry impacted Scott in a way that made him want to do the same for others.
Before he found his career as a coach, the former defensive end played in the Arena Football League. He hung up his cleats from the AFL in 2001 and focused all of his efforts on being a coach and a teacher.
Scott spent almost two years teaching high school and coached West Davidson High School’s defensive line in 2001. He loved part of his job, but quickly grew tired of the rest of it.
“I taught 10th and 11th grade English for almost two years and decided I loved the coaching part,” Scott said. “And hated the teaching part of it. Seventeen and 18-year-olds at that time could solve all the problems in the world. And so that kind of drove me nuts.”
Fortunately for him, Pry took the defensive coordinator job at Louisiana-Lafayette, which opened the door for Scott to enter the coaching ranks.
“I reached out to Coach Pry (in 2002 when he was at Louisiana-Lafayette),” Scott said. “He gave me the opportunity to be a graduate assistant.”
They spent 2.5 years together at Louisiana-Lafayette before Scott left his post as a defensive graduate assistant to take a full-time job. as the Norfolk State defensive line coach.
The two would reunite again in 2010 when Pry was hired as the Georgia Southern defensive coordinator and Scott was the team’s special teams coordinator and defensive line coach. They only had a year together on the Georgia Southern staff before Pry left to join current Penn State head coach James Franklin at Vanderbilt.
While they weren’t on the same staff together, Pry’s time at Vanderbilt helped Scott build another relationship that would ultimately help him get on the Penn State staff.
“I got to know Sean (Spencer) when Coach Pry went to Vanderbilt,” Scott said. “I got a chance to meet him and know him and talk football. We kind of just became friends and stayed in contact with each other.”
Spencer was the defensive line coach under Franklin from 2011-19 at Vanderbilt and Penn State. Once he decided to leave the college ranks to take a job in the NFL as the New York Giants’ defensive line coach, the door was open for Scott, who was the defensive line coach at South Carolina last season.
His relationships with Pry and Spencer helped him get his foot in the door with Franklin and the Nittany Lions.
“(Spencer) started telling me about what a great opportunity he had at Penn State working with Coach Franklin,” Scott said. “Along with what Coach Pry said about working with Coach Franklin. ... Just having the opportunity to coach at a place like Penn State. I was excited about that. When I had an opportunity to talk with Coach Franklin and talk with the defensive staff things just kind of fell in place.”
Now that Scott has Spencer’s old job, which he took over in February, he has big shoes to fill. The Nittany Lions had at least 40 sacks from 2015-19 for the first time since the program began tracking team sacks in 1988. He’ll have to replicate that production without the team’s leading pass rusher last year, Yetur Gross-Matos, who was drafted last week in the second round of the 2020 NFL draft.
Gross-Matos accounted for nine of the team’s 45 sacks. He combined with other departed players, like Cam Brown and Robert Windsor, to tallied 19 of the 45 sacks.
Scott will have to rely on the team’s leading returning pass rusher, redshirt senior defensive end Shaka Toney, to step up and play a bigger role within the defensive line room.
“The first time I met Shaka I was impressed with how good of a teammate (he) is and how connected he is with the guys,” Scott said. “When you walk in that room, it’s like all the guys look up to Shaka because of the way he plays. He cares deeply about his teammates, and his teammates look up to him. He can have an unbelievable presence in the meeting room because his teammates believe in him ... I think his presence for the young guys can be really good. He has some strong leadership qualities. I think Shaka can have a great year.”
Toney’s leadership will be important for the Nittany Lions, but so will Scott’s ability to tap into it.
The defensive line coach knows he’s a new face for everyone in the room and establishing a rapport with the leader will have an impact with everyone else he coaches.
“You’ve got to go in and establish a relationship,” Scott said. “I think it’s a huge plus when you can establish that with who the guys perceive to be the leader of the room or the leader of your group. I think you have to have a good relationship with that guy. I think when you’re able to establish a relationship with someone the guys look up to, I think that only helps you as a coach in the room and it only helps the other guys to buy in. ... That’s a critical piece.”
Toney will be one of the unit’s leaders, but it could be the young players in the room who will have the biggest say in the team’s sack production.
Redshirt freshman Adisa Isaac and redshirt sophomore Jayson Oweh will likely take on the biggest workload increase from 2019 to 2020. Both flashed their potential last season. Oweh tallied two sacks in the team’s 28-7 win over Michigan State, while Isaac racked up 1.5 sacks and a forced fumble when he got extended playing time in Penn State’s 59-0 win over Maryland.
Scott has been impressed by both young pass rushers.
“Both of those guys made plays last year when they had opportunities in the game,” Scott said. “I think both of those young men, they do have a high ceiling. ... (They) are ultra-talented guys. They have great quickness, great physicality, they’re both smart football players.”
The two young defensive linemen will have their opportunity to help continue Penn State’s streak of at least 40 sacks in a season when they take the field this year. Their unit has been one of the most productive on the team in Franklin’s tenure thanks to Spencer’s efforts.
His departure has opened a void in the team that hadn’t existed in the past five years. Now Scott has the chance to see if he can carry on the work Spencer started, and be a positive asset to the coordinator who helped him find his way into coaching.
