The Penn State football atmosphere was suddenly chummy -- it was right after that uplifting Michigan State game and all -- and defensive end Matthew Rice was about to take advantage of it by describing how amped he is for next season.

"Oh man, definitely," he began -- and then he was stopped by one almost-graduated linebacker, Derek Wake. The man-embrace was next -- this time with a little extra emotion -- and, consequently, Rice shifted his course of thought.

"We're gonna miss Derek Wake though," he said. "We're definitely gonna miss him. And [safety Andrew] Guman. But all good things must come to an end."

The thing is, though Blue -- that's Rice's nickname -- will miss two of his buddies and two defensive starters, that's all he'll have to miss about this year's defense because everyone else will be back. Which means, of course, there is the possibility for the fab defense that held every opponent (highly touted offense or not) to 21 points or less to be even more fab next year. That also means that this good thing (the Penn State defense) certainly isn't coming to an end.

And with that in mind, defensive coordinator Tom Bradley has plans -- big plans.

"We've gotta develop some depth on our defense to go to the next step," he said, "and we've gotta be able to learn how to be a better pressure football team."

Depth, that's an expected concern. But that second point -- the bit about being a better pressure football team -- that's the interesting one.

Penn State played all season, as it has traditionally done, with a pretty conservative defense, more of a bend-don't-break type. The thinking behind it wasn't all too complex: Keep the ball in front of you, don't allow big plays, get to the football, tackle well. And there were, of course, reasons for this.

The opponents, for one.

"You start to play the teams we're playing, they do so many different things to you that they make you play a lot of times in a base formation where you don't have what I call trick 'ems in your back pocket," Bradley said. "We just have to line up and play fundamental-style football."

And, of course, being mismatched with an offense that struggled for the greater part of the season. You take a chance on a play, and give up a big score, and suddenly the offense is in a hole it can't get out of.

"A lot of times people say, 'You guys aren't a big blitzing team,' and we feel like we don't want to give up the big play," Bradley said. "A lot of teams that do blitz, they have an offense that can score a lot of points -- we're leery to take chances sometimes, so we just play solid defense."

But as good as this defense was, Bradley still doesn't think it is as good as it can be, and, other than becoming better physically, that's where becoming a better pressure football team comes into play. There's a whole winter program to do that, and a splendid cast of characters to deal with -- there is a player with significant playing time at all 11 of the positions -- so if shucking the tradition of conservative D is the goal, then now is the time.

And, the plan for it is this. First of all, send more people blitzing from more different positions -- in more technical terms, use more straight blitz packages than zone blitz packages. And, second of all, have all the personnel understand all the pressure situations, so that opponents don't know to expect a certain play when they see certain players.

"There's certain times when people know we're in certain looks," Bradley said. "They're checking a lot; they're figuring it out. We've gotta be able to counteract that with our personnel -- getting everybody to understand our schemes so we can mix it."

A well-laid plan, to be sure. The potential outcome -- a defense better than this year's -- that's a scarily intriguing prospect. And if that doesn't happen, well, they'd just have to fall back on the schemes they used this year and the attributes of the defense that made those schemes work.

"Our guys played hard -- they hustled and did everything we've asked them to do and that's why we're playing good defense," Bradley said. "It isn't because of some genius defensive coordinator, let me clue you me in ..."

A new, pressure-happy look to the defense, though -- maybe that would be because of some genius defensive coordinator. And when that happens, he better be told -- with no response to the genius crack, Bradley took offense, albeit sarcastically.

"One of you guys could have said, 'You are a genius,' but I didn't hear it," he said, eyes twinkling. "Alright, OK, no one said it. Next question."