Questions surround defense

After sitting and watching Youngstown State's first jersey scrimmage of the spring last Friday afternoon, I'm still not sure about what I was seeing.
It was nice to see the offense enjoying a great afternoon passing and running the football, but these aren't the things that you are used to seeing in the team's first jersey scrimmage of the spring.
What I'm used to seeing in this first scrimmage is usually a defensive-dominated affair, with the offense struggling along trying to find its way into the next scrimmage.
What scares me the most is how easily the offense dominated the scrimmage. That's the same offense that was playing without four starters from last year's offensive line and two others who were being counted on to start this season.
Playing with a make-shift line, the offense passed for over 400 yards and rushed for another 200. Redshirt freshman quarterback Tom Zetts passed for 232 yards and completed 14 of 16 passes and had one dropped or he would have been 15 of 16. Nobody's seen anything like that since Jeff Ryan graduated.
Ryan and Zetts are both Boardman High graduates.
I certainly don't feel the defense is anywhere near as bad as Friday's outcome made them look, but there are some major question marks there.
Take into consideration that the defense has two new coaches working with them and both have a great deal of input into the system.
While they are not making drastic changes in the defense they are installing a lot of new terminology which takes time to learn and put into play.
Nobody knows more about the defense than coach Jon Heacock. He ran it for many years before taking over as head coach in 2001.
No panic
Heacock is concerned, but sees no reason for panic.
"We're still learning back there and there were things that I saw out there that showed just that," he said. "We might have been out of position on a couple of long pass plays, but they are things that can be corrected and will be corrected."
Terminology and being out of position are one thing, but the game made you wonder if they still have enough size and speed on the defense.
The size is better on the front line, but the bigger players are either hurt or inexperienced. The speed question arises in the secondary, where the offense burned them with 10 passes for more than 20 yards, including five over 45 yards.
There were a total of 19 different series during the two-hour scrimmage on Friday and on only four different occasions did the defense hold the offense to three downs and out. The offense scored on seven series -- five TDs and two field goals.
One can hope, but it's hard to believe that the YSU offense is going to be that good this fall. If it is and the defense doesn't get a whole lot better, we may be watching some real track meets this fall. But that's definitely not YSU football.
My guess is that you will see a big improvement in the defense between now and next Friday when the second jersey scrimmage takes place.
Strong kicking
One thing about this team that is for real is the kicking game.
Senior kicker Nick Terracina might be the best there is in the Gateway Football Conference and sophomore Joe Bishop is right up there with the best punters in the league.
There is talent on this team and there should be some help on the way this fall when the new list of recruits comes to camp.
For right now the Penguins need to just stay healthy the rest of the spring, get the defense straightened around and return everybody who is injured now to action in the fall.
Regardless, it was still nice to see the offense rolling up all those yards and points. It's been a while since we've seen that kind of success on the field, but the question remains whether they can do it against somebody else's defense, like Western Illinois, Northern Iowa or Western Kentucky, just to name a few.
XPete Mollica covers YSU athletics for The Vindicator. Write to him at mollica@vindy.com.