MADISON, Wisc. – Jaquan Brisker just kept getting up.
In fact on three different occasions Penn State’s senior safety found himself lying on the field of Camp Randall Stadium looking toward the sky in pain.
Three times he got back up and three times he returned to the game.
“I couldn’t let my teammates down,” Brisker said, his left shoulder wrapped in so much tape and ice that it made his jacket bulge. “You know they depended on me, especially being a leader and a captain of this team. I couldn’t go down […] I couldn’t let them down.”
And with 2:26 to go Brisker was rewarded for his toughness and his attention to detail, intercepting Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz’ pass nearly in the end zone, returning it 41 yards before being knocked to the ground one last time.
But this time he bounced up as quick as he hit the ground, and a few minutes later he celebrated one of the biggest wins of his Penn State career.
“They kept looking at him,” Brisker said of Wisconsin tight end Jake Ferguson. “Even if they missed him or he caught the ball, I figured I’m gonna sit back a little bit, you know, let the quarterback see that he’s open and then I just stole it.”
In reality Wisconsin would get the ball back one last time before it was intercepted by Penn State safety Ji’Ayir Brown – who like Brisker, is a product of Lackawanna College – but Brisker’s play was likely the one that truly saved the day for the Nittany Lions.
And it was moments like this that Brisker returned to Penn State for. By all accounts he could be – and perhaps should be – waiting to make his NFL regular season debut next weekend. But instead Brisker returned to lead a Penn State secondary that stands poised on paper to be among the better units the program has fielded.
Brisker is good, and he could have been so many different places on Saturday afternoon, but instead he was six feet from defeat, and in the face of that defeat he grabbed victory.
That said one might argue anyone could have made what was ultimately a fairly straightforward interception. In total Penn State forced three turnovers on Saturday with at least three others that nearly happened or were overturned. Brisker himself had another pass breakup to go with his four tackles.
But what not everyone could have done was get back up. Once, twice and then a third time.
“We’re all teammates and we’re all brothers so it’s worrying,” fellow safety Jonathan Sutherland said of seeing Brisker go down multiple times. “We get worried when someone goes down. But we know who he is, he’s gonna get back every single time. That’s just who he is.”
When the season finally draws to a close it will be easier quantify how consequential Brisker’s interception really was. In the history books it gave Penn State its fourth win since 1999 over a ranked team on the road and its second under James Franklin. That said the Badgers could turn out to have been overrated, or the Nittany Lions could turn out to be no good in their own right.
But for now Brisker’s interception is one of the more consequential, memorable and meaningful a Nittany Lion has produced. It might not be a Giftopoulos, but 35 years later the Nittany Lions will take it – because one does not take wins over Top 15 teams on the road lightly.
And as the season continues to unfold, Penn State fans can only hope Brisker’s toughness and willingness to bounce-back is a good omen for a team looking to prove it’s 2020 was an aberration.
