Penn State’s defense lost its catalyst when Mustipher exited the Iowa game with a knee injury that ended his 2021 season. Things were just never the same after that. Mustipher was such a dominant force in the trenches he made all three levels of the defense much better - oftentimes, quietly doing the dirty work to put the others in position to make plays. The pass rush suffered, it became much easier for blockers to get to the second level and take the linebackers out of the play, and quarterbacks were able to find more holes in pass coverage thanks to all that extra time in the pocket.