Bye Week Recruiting Update

Wow, what a Saturday!  I'm pretty sure it's a good thing that Penn State didn't play because chaos seemed to reign supreme as 5 of the top 8 teams in the country all lost yesterday.  There are now only 9 remaining teams with unblemished records, with all but Georgia Tech ranked in the top 10.  Of the unranked Big Ten schools still receiving votes, Wisconsin leads the way, followed by Penn State, Rutgers, and Minnesota.  In the end, the outcome was a seismic shift in the college football landscape.  Feel free to check out all the game results here, and the latest AP rankings here.

When all the dust had settled, two major things happened specific to Penn State.  First, Rutgers (a team we already beat) defeated Michigan (our next opponent) which bodes well for the Nittany Lions as they head into Ann Arbor next week.  Second, Northwestern (the only team to beat us so far) defeated Wisconsin (supposedly one of the best teams in the conference).  More importantly, Northwestern beat the Badgers just as bad and in a seemingly identical manner to how they beat us last week on Homecoming.  Although we obviously didn't play well in that game, maybe we've been a little bit too hard on our boys in blue, and things aren't quite as bad as we initially thought.  Maybe this is just who Northwestern is, and they finally woke up.

Still, the fact remains that Penn State did not play, which gives me an opportunity to update everyone on other topics, like recruiting!  James Franklin made headlines when he showed up at a high school in Maryland in his patented #SwagCopter, a move he used to pull back at Vanderbilt.  But it didn't seem to help as the last of the top 6 PA recruits, Jordan Whitehead, finally made his commitment... to Pitt of all places!  Strangely, as you can see in this video (fast forward to the 10 minute mark), he seems to immediately regret his decision.  Around the same time, news came out that Penn State QB commit, Brandon Wimbush, was taking an official visit to Notre Dame.  Now, all indications are that this was more of a formality and that Wimbush is still firmly committed to the Nittany Lions, but coupled with the Whitehead announcement it was a pretty rough day for many fans.  

With all of that said, I realized something a little while back about our current 2015 recruiting class.  If you need a quick refresher on the 20 prospects currently committed to Penn State, check out the full list here.  Once you do you may notice, like I did, that we are only 2 offensive linemen away from a perfectly balanced, complete offense and defense!  This is actually quite rare in recruiting and yet another sign that James Franklin knows exactly what he's doing building talented depth across the board for the future.  For all the visual people out there, I made this convenient diagram.  It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it demonstrates my point.

Now, you'll notice that we do not have a TE or a FB committed yet, so I was forced to have the offense line up in a 3 WR/2 RB set.  Additionally, in order to make the defense work, first I had to move Ayron Monroe from S to CB.  Then I had to deal with the issue of the two players listed as "athletes," Daiquan Kelly and Kamonte Carter.  Thankfully Kelly projects as a LB and Carter projects as a DE, thus filling things in quite nicely.  If these guys pan out, all signs point to an extremely dangerous Penn State squad moving forward.  We could be witnessing the dawn of a wonderful era of Penn State football.  Enjoy it!

Ok, that will do it for this week, pending breaking news of course.  I'm in the middle of setting up a Facebook fan page as well as an Instagram account, so make sure you keep an eye out for those in the near future.  I'm already on Twitter so don't forget to follow me @PSUOptimus, and as always, go State!