Of course we all know by now that Mike Mauti and Mike Yancich have committed to Penn State. I said it before but I'll repeat it, this will end the linebacker recruiting for this year. So if you're hoping to see Jon Major or Shayne Hale in Blue and White, it ain't gonna happen.
Penn State held their annual Seniors Only camp last weekend. So far two confirmed offers came out of that camp. RB Mike Cox from Connecticut and WR D.J. Woods from Ohio.
Several commitments to other schools of note. Lucas Nix committed to Pitt. No big surprise there. His brother plays for Pitt and he never really considered any other schools.
E.J. Manuel committed to Florida State yesterday. This had been rumored for a week or so ever since he came back from his unofficial visit to FSU and scheduled a press conference. Manuel was highly coveted by PSU so this one hurts a bit. I keep thinking back to an article I read where Manuel seemed a bit put off by the PSU coaches. PSU got into the game a bit late with him. He already held offers from some big programs, but PSU wanted him to attend their camp before they offered. He seemed a bit insulted that he had to drive to State College to get his offer. Oh well. It will be interesting to see if Penn State decides to ride out the Terrelle Pryor sweepstakes or start turning to some second tier prospects.
Running back Brandon Barnes decided to stay close to home and verballed to NC State. I don't think PSU ever really had a shot with him.
I took running back Jonas Gray off the board. I was holding out hope PSU was going to offer him. They asked him to come camp in State College and he was planning on doing that. But he decided to go to the Michigan camp instead and got an offer from them. He seems to have a chip on his shoulder about the Big Ten schools snubbing him. I don't think a PSU offer will be coming.
Graham Pocic decided to attend Illinois. I thought we might have had a chance with this kid. He has family in PA and we got him out for a visit. I think the coaches did all they could here, but in the end he wanted to stay close to home.
The Will Hill ship seems to have sailed. He named his top nine and PSU wasn't in it.
Overall I think the state of recruiting is ok. We filled all of our linebacker spots which was a need. We got a good center to take over when Shipley graduates. We would like to get a quarterback and right now the only one on our radar is Pryor. This kind of bothers me, but with Devlin having four years of eligibility and Clark having three left I guess we can handle a Plan B type kid if we have to.
Running backs and offensive tackles are still a huge need. We still have a bunch of running backs on the board and I feel good about our chances with Ryan Williams, Dontavius Jackson, and Michael Shaw. Darrell Scott is still an outside possibility, but he isn't tipping his hand right now. The offensive tackle situation has me worried. We have five offers out with two spots to fill and right now nobody seems to be speaking very highly of us. This is a case where I believe our reputation is hurting us. Our offensive line sucked last year and our offensive line coach spends more time looking at retirement property brochures than he does game film.
We could use a few defensive backs even though we're pretty deep there. Jarred Holley is the only true corner we're recruiting, but we're looking at several athletes we could plug in and some of them think very favorably of PSU.
So we filled some needs, but we have more to fill. There is still a lot of time so no need to panic yet, but I would feel a lot better if we had an OT and RB verbal by August.
UPDATE: Almost forgot. The Recruiting Board has been updated.