Penn State recruiting thoughts: What to watch as Nittany Lions close 2023 class (2024)

STATE COLLEGE — Penn State footballnewcomers will be celebrated on Wednesday when they sign their national letter of intent.

Five days later, the coaching staff and current roster will fly to California and switch gears to preparing for the Rose Bowl. It’s been a month full of multi-tasking, in-home visits and hosting last-minute official visitors. Pretty soon, Penn State will reap the rewards for those efforts. As of Monday morning, 22 players are committed in a class that ranks 12th nationally and second in the Big Ten in the 247Sports Composite.

Here’s a collection of thoughts on Penn State’s 2023 class and what to keep an eye on this week:

1. Penn State is poised to clean up at linebacker after four-star prospect Kaveion Keys committed on Friday. Keys, the No. 4 player in Virginia, decommitted from North Carolina on Dec. 8 and joins Tony Rojas and Ta’Mere Robinson in the Nittany Lions’ class. Penn State appears to have hit the jackpot with the signing of Abdul Carter last cycle, and these three will also join Keyon Wylie, who redshirted in 2022. Linebacker U was able to survive on field this year despite not having a ton of depth and proven playmakers. Carter made an immediate impact, and now Penn State has to be elated in landing this 2023 trio of four-star prospects.

With Keys aboard, Penn State also has commitments from six of the top 10 prospects in Virginia.

2. Will safety Conrad Hussey sign with Penn State? He is the verbally committed player whose pledge is perhaps giving the staff the most anxiety between now and Wednesday. While James Franklin always wants recruits to surrender all other visits once they verbally commit to Penn State, that hasn’t been the case with Hussey. The St. Thomas Aquinas safety visited Florida State and Miami this month. Hussey’s high school teammate, King Mack, is set to sign with Penn State.

To add some more intrigue in the Sunshine State: Don’t forget about cornerback Daniel Harris. The four-star prospect from Miami’s Gulliver Prep has been in a back-and-forth recruitment with Penn State and Georgia for months. He’s the kind of addition that would significantly bolster an already strong class.

3. Penn State filled some important needs in the past week with a pair of defensive ends in Joseph Mupoyi and Mason Robinson. The Nittany Lions picked up some freakishly athletic ends this cycle who likely will need time to put it all together, but there’s a ton of upside. Mupoyi was a basketball player in the Congo before coming to the U.S. and starting to play football. Jameial Lyons was a safety who didn’t know he was a defensive end until he showed up to a 7-on-7 camp, only for his coach to tell him he wasn’t there for 7-on-7 — he was getting sent to the Big Man camp across campus. He’s transformed his body since then.

Robinson was once committed to Northwestern and played at McDonogh School (Md.), where defensive end Dani Dennis-Sutton starred last year. Penn State has a lot of moving parts at defensive end with 2021 signees Rodney McGraw and Davon Townley both in the transfer portal. Nick Tarburton announced Saturday night he isn’t returning for a sixth season, while Adisa Isaac is still mulling his NFL decision. Chop Robinson and Dennis-Sutton will have plenty of newcomers to get familiar with, but John Scott Jr. should feel good about what he has to work with.

4. Another player to watch between now and Wednesday is running back Cameron Wallace. Franklin, Ja’Juan Seider and Anthony Poindexter were in Mount Vernon, Ga., last week to visit the three-star athlete. Wallace visited Penn State in November and took an official visit to Georgia Tech this past weekend. Penn State already has running back London Montgomery in this class, though Montgomery is coming off a knee injury that cost him his senior season at Scranton Prep.

If Penn State can add another back to this class, great. If not, there’s depth there now, but also a potentially murky outlook beyond the top two standouts. Keyvone Lee is expected back for the Rose Bowl. Will he willingly stay at Penn State next season as a No. 3 back behind Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen? Caziah Holmes and Devyn Ford saw the freshman emerging in front of them and left before they even really broke out.

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5. Quarterback Jaxon Smolik will enroll at Penn State in January. He’ll step into a young quarterback group where Drew Allar and Beau Pribula were the newcomers last January. Smolik wasn’t on the radar for Penn State — or really any Power 5 team — at this time last year in large part because he missed most of his junior season with a broken collarbone. If it wasn’t for his breakout performance at the Elite 11 Finals, he likely ends up keeping his commitment to Tulane.

With Christian Veilleux transferring to Pitt, the Nittany Lions are slated to carry three scholarship quarterbacks into next season. All eyes will be on Allar, but they’ll need to make sure Pribula is ready to handle the backup role. It’ll be a critical offseason for all three quarterbacks under Mike Yurcich.

6. This is what stacking classes looks like with offensive linemen. Drew Shelton was an important signing in 2022 and already showed why he will be valuable after he burned his redshirt this season and relieved the injured Olu Fashanu at left tackle in November. Vega Ioane is already one of the largest linemen on this team and was a great add late last cycle. Now, having a 2023 class led by newly minted five-star prospect J’ven Williams (ranked No. 30 in the 247Sports Composite) and four-star Alex Birchmeier (No. 44) is a win for a program that struggled for so long to build an offensive line that isn’t a liability. Penn State supplemented the two blue-chip linemen with 6-foot-6, 250-pound four-star athlete Mathias Barnwell, who very well could end up on the line, and 6-5, 310-pound three-star prospect Anthony Donkoh.

Penn State turned the corner on the field with its O-line in 2022, and next season it has a potential first-round pick returning in Fashanu, in addition to getting 2021 class headliner Landon Tengwall back from an injury. With a calm and level-headed approach, Phil Trautwein has left a favorable impression on those already here and those set to sign. And the Nittany Lions are already off to a strong start in the 2024 cycle with an early commitment from four-star prospect Cooper Cousins of Erie, Pa.

7. After Penn State signed five receivers in 2022, Carmelo Taylor is the lone wide receiver pledge thus far. Yes, the Nittany Lions would like to add another, but it’s also been made clear that they will fill this immediate need via the transfer portal, where plenty of wide receiver offers have gone out. Penn State had one year with Mitchell Tinsley, and it ideally could add a younger transfer — like it did with Chop Robinson at defensive end — to help bolster the receiving corps for years to come.

8. Typically the first player who verbally commits to Penn State is the first one introduced during the staff’s signing day ceremony in the football building. That honor would go to Birchmeier, who committed in July 2021. However, Barnwell could also claim that title after he committed to Penn State in June 2020, decommitted in January 2021 and rejoined the class in September 2021. He hasn’t wavered since then.

9. Penn State could sign two pairs of high school teammates in Hussey and Mack of Fort Lauderdale’s St. Thomas Aquinas and Zion Tracy and Mupoyi of Connecticut’s St. Thomas More. And for the fourth time in the past five cycles, Penn State will sign a player from McDonogh School (Dvon Ellies in 2019, Curtis Jacobs in 2020, Dennis-Sutton in 2022, Mason Robinson in 2023).

10. Penn State added a commitment from FAU transfer punter Riley Thompson, who announced his pledge Saturday night. Though he’s not part of this recruiting class, it’s a good example of Penn State identifying and filling a need via the transfer portal. The Nittany Lions are not in line to sign a scholarship specialist in this class, which isn’t surprising after signing punter Alex Bacchetta in 2022 and kicker Sander Sahaydak in 2021. Special teams coordinator Stacy Collins said he’s been pleased with the progress of both young specialists who should factor in starting next season.

So, why did Penn State add Thompson, an Australian punter who was on scholarship this past season at FAU?

Thompson, despite playing just one season of college football, actually has only one year of eligibility remaining. His eligibility clock started when he was in Australia. So, for one year Penn State will turn to either Thompson or a competition between him and Bacchetta before Bacchetta is expected to take over in 2024. The transfer portal has been good to Penn State with specialists like Jordan Stout and Barney Amor. It’s an area where supplementing a young scholarship player with an incoming transfer who can help right away makes sense. Don’t expect Penn State to stop signing high school kickers in the years to come. Like all positions, if it can upgrade or add competition via the portal, it will.

(Top photo of J’ven Williams: Ben Hasty / MediaNews Group / Reading Eagle via Getty Images)

Audrey Snyder has covered Penn State since 2012 for various outlets, including The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Patriot-News and DKPittsburghSports. Snyder is an active member of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM) and is the professional adviser for Penn State’s student chapter. Follow Audrey on Twitter @audsnyder4