This was a long time coming.
No, not Penn State’s 13-7 win over Indiana, although it came exactly 49 days after its last victory.
This was the play that pretty much guaranteed it would happen. The play Nyeem Wartman has been waiting for seemingly since he left Valley View and embarked on a linebacking career with the Nittany Lions that left him in a place that once seemed unthinkable.
A place from which he has been determined to remove himself. A category his teammates placed him in, either in total seriousness or to just get under his skin.
Wartman hardly cares which.
“I’m not going to lie,” the redshirt sophomore starts out, “if you look at the past two years, I’ve probably dropped a couple of interceptions. So now, with them it’s like, ‘You don’t got hands.’ I keep telling them I was second-team All-State tight end, and that I know what to do with the ball. I just never had a chance to show them.”
It’s so fitting, for Wartman anyway, that his first chance came in this game. One in which he and the Penn State defense didn’t allow a touchdown to the high-powered Indiana running game. One in which no player had more tackles. One in which he didn’t have to take a back seat to Mike Hull piling up a dozen stops, or to another team celebrating a close win. One in which he swung the hammer on the final nail driven into the Indiana coffin on, of all things, one of those interceptions he’s been dreaming of getting.
Let’s set the scene: Just 2:34 remained on the game clock. The Hoosiers had the ball at their 25, on a second down. First thing Wartman noticed from his linebacker spot was that Indiana quarterback Zander Diamont was rolling right. Then stopping. Then rolling some more. He was a frantic quarterback in that moment, Wartman said. He knows frantic quarterbacks tend to zone in on one receiver in sheer panic.
So, Wartman read Diamont’s eyes. He saw his right elbow come up, his forearm come forward and the ball spin off the fingertips on his right hand.
“He threw it right at me,” Wartman smiled.
This one, Wartman caught.
The game was pretty much history at that moment. Even if it got the ball back, the chances Indiana’s offense could traverse the field quickly enough to threaten the dominant Penn State defense seemed painfully remote.
But for Wartman, who had given Penn State every play it needed throughout the game, these were the few seconds he had to finally show his scoffing teammates exactly what it was like for defenders in the Lackawanna Football League to bring him down.
“I keep telling everybody, ‘I have the sauce. Wait until I get the ball. I’m going to do something with it,’ ” Wartman promised.
For the most part, he did.
One Indiana offensive player-turned-defender stormed toward him, and Wartman had none of it. He dodged that Hoosier like he used to dodge the Lakeland Chiefs.
“First thing that goes through my mind is, all right, where’s the lane,” Wartman said. “I was so excited I made him miss, I was looking forward to making someone else miss. Because I just wanted to show I have ball skills.”
The next guy was Diamont, the freshman quarterback who he had read so deftly just moments earlier. Wartman focused on juking him, too, the way he did the first player. But Diamont made a desperate dive that tripped him up at the 24, holding him to a 13-yard return.
As he got up, teammates congratulated him. But Wartman simply ran off to the Penn State sideline, seemingly unaffected by the big moment. Seemingly being the operative word, because all he could think about was that would-be tackler who he shook away, just as he said he would.
“That’s the reason I didn’t celebrate,” Wartman said. “I keep telling (teammates), don’t pat me on the back when I cross someone over. That was personal.”
Outside of Hull and maybe hard-charging defensive tackle Anthony Zettel, there have been few stars on this Nittany Lions’ defense. It has been a group playing complementary football perfectly, a group of anonymous assassins, keeping a sanctioned team with a struggling offense close in every game.
But it’s getting more and more difficult for Wartman not to bask in the attention his play warrants.
“You don’t really notice him too much on the stat sheet,” Hull said. “But he’s taking up gaps, doing his job every single play. He’s just going to keep getting better and better for us.”
Wartman hasn’t looked back on his up-and-down redshirt freshman season, and it certainly doesn’t look like he’s going to give up the starting job he wanted to prove to himself he earned this summer anytime soon.
With Hull leaving at season’s end, the Linebacker U tradition looks as safe in Wartman’s hands as that football did on the game-sealing interception. With the future looking bright at Penn State, it’s difficult not to see him being a big part of it.
Last season, he played like an unsure player at times. This year, there’s no doubt in Wartman’s mind he belongs. There are no regrets.
Except, maybe, for one in regards to that interception.
“Everyone keeps saying, wait until we watch the film,” he said. “ ‘You’re going to see you had a lane.’ That’s going to eat me up. I have never gotten to house an interception.”
He showed he had the hands. Then, he showed he had “the sauce.”
“But I don’t have ballcarrier vision,” Wartman shrugged.
Penn State will take him, regardless.
(Collins covers Penn State football Times-Shamrock. Follow him
on Twitter @psubst)