If this Saturday's game against Northwestern was being played six or seven years ago, the big story that would have been splashed all over Pennsylvania's newspapers this week would have been how Penn State's defense was preparing to stop the spread offense of Randy Walker's Wildcats.

Those stories still abounded, but, as many Penn State players pointed out this week, facing a spread offense isn't that uncommon in the college game any more.

"Central Michigan ran a lot of the same stuff that Northwestern runs," defensive tackle Jay Alford said. "So that's pretty much like two weeks we have had to prepare for Northwestern."

These days between Walker and Joe Tiller, who last week jokingly referred to his offensive style as "sissy ball," teams in the Big Ten get plenty of practice facing teams that like to spread it out and toss it around. Even Penn State has been experimenting some with the spread in this season's infant stages.

"I think football coaches have long been the greatest plagiarists in the world," Walker said earlier this week. "We got excited in 1999 when we saw Clemson on TV with Rich Rodriguez and coach [Terry] Bowden. It was just a matter of time. I think there are some really good things about the spread offense. There are some things it gives you."

If any team has a defense that is perfect for stopping the spread offense, it would be Penn State, and the Nittany Lions have proved that they are quick enough in the defensive backfield and in their linebacking corps to deal with teams that try to spread the field.

"With that spread offense, we know we are going to have to play a lot of nickel and dime defense and we are going to have to be ready to have our linebackers running all over the field chasing all those receivers," safety Chris Harrell said.

This has been a role that Penn State's linebackers have been performing a lot this year. All three of the Lions' non-conference opponents often sent out three or more receivers at a time.

"Hopefully, I'll be able to use my speed to make some big plays," Shaw said. "We have great team speed on defense, so the bottom line is we hope that will enable us to make the plays we need to make."

With speedy linebackers like Shaw and Paul Posluszny, the Lions should have no problem running with Northwestern's receivers, but a lot of nickel defenses means a lot of playing time for nickelback Paul Cronin and fewer snaps for middle linebacker Tyrell Sales.

"During the spring, [Cronin] worked some with the linebackers. He has linebacker size, and he gives us a big body that can run and move, and I'm sure we're going to see a lot of him," Harrell said. "He's so valuable to our defense because he can cover and blitz, and that's a dimension that we need."

The Nittany Lions rarely play dime defense due to the speed of their linebackers, but Harrell said that the defensive coaches had not decided whether the game plan for Saturday's contest would include a package that called for six defensive backs.

Interestingly enough, in the past it has not been defending the passing attack of a spread-style offense that troubled Penn State. Instead, Penn State has struggled stopping the run out of multiple receiver sets.

This is a big part of Walker's offense, and it allowed Noah Herron to gash Penn State's defense in the last two contests between the Lions and Wildcats.

"They ran the ball on us all game two years ago," Alford said. "They pretty much ran the ball on us at will. It was going downhill on us every play. It just wasn't good."