Last year, Virginia baffled Penn State by dropping eight men into coverage.

That team was led by a young Zack Mills at quarterback and a resurgent group of young receivers bolstered by some of the most creative play-calling in Penn State history.

This year, Penn State has a featured back by the name of Larry Johnson, and everything has changed.

"I think, obviously, now that they've got a guy running like they do they're a different team altogether," Virginia linebacker Angelo Crowell said.

Johnson's emergence will cause the Cavaliers to rethink their theories from a year ago. Last week, he became the first Penn State back since Ki-Jana Carter in 1994 to record two games of over 200 yards rushing in a season.

And according to Johnson, he hasn't peaked yet.

"I don't think I'm satisfied right now," Johnson said. "I don't feel like I'm at the top of my game right now. At the end of the season we'll see how things go."

Virginia is coming off a bye week, much to Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's chagrin, and should be well prepared for the Lions attack.

"I would think they made a lot of adjustments to make sure certain things happen or don't happen," Johnson said.

The key to stopping Penn State is stopping Johnson, who is now being mentioned as a potential Heisman candidate.

The award, though, is something he's not thinking about.

"I'm just trying to finish out the season," he said. "We've got a long way to go. It's a prestigious award and anything can happen, but I'm not going to base my whole season on that."

Penn State has had just one Heisman winner, tailback John Cappelleti in 1973. The landscape of the Heisman race has changed drastically since then. Many schools run campaigns to promote potential candidates, spending thousands of dollars to send promotional items to voters. Those items include mouse-pads, posters, T-shirts and video-tapes.

Just this year, Marshall sent out Byron Leftwich bobble-head dolls.

Mills said Penn State's lack of aggressive promotion may hurt Johnson, but that he respects Paterno for making what he believes to be the right decision.

"Now you've got people putting pictures on billboards and guys having their own web sites," he said. "Just by that it dictates that for a guy to be a front-runner you have to do that."

Mills is referring to the most famous instance of Heisman promoting, which occurred last season, when Oregon spent $250,000 to plaster quarterback Joey Harrington's likeness on an 80-by-100 foot billboard in Times Square.

Said Johnson: "I can't worry about a trophy that is really for people that promote those sort of things. Penn State is more of a team philosophy. We can't worry about what Larry's doing, or Zack's doing, or [receiver] Bryant [Johnson]'s doing."

Penn State Sports Information Director Jeff Nelson said the program's decision not to promote candidates stems not only from Paterno's team-first philosophy but also from the fact that Penn State receives a large amount of national attention.

"We've been on TV 100 of the last 101 games, I think," he said. "But we do send out stats and information to potential voters for awards and All-American teams."

Just yesterday, the Penn State staff sent out a release about defensive linemen Michael Haynes and Jimmy Kennedy as well as safety Shawn Mayer.

Paterno, in his Tuesday press conference, pointed out that Capalletti "probably won it [the Heisman] in the last three or four games of the season."

Facing the nation's 106th-ranked rush defense on Saturday, Johnson has a chance to repeat Capalletti's feat.