Manny Diaz praises Abdul Carter’s competitive spirit

Penn State defensive coordinator Manny Diaz recently praised sophomore linebacker Abdul Carter for his competitive spirit.

As Diaz explained, Carter wants to be a great player on a great team. To reach that goal, he knows that he needs to put the work in on the practice field.

“He’s a highly competitive guy,” Manny Diaz said. “We’ve got some guys, you know, in his class that are of the same cloth, that they do not like to lose. They want to be great.”

Abdul Carter was a four-star recruit in the Class of 2022, according to the On3 Industry Ranking. He immediately broke out when he got to Penn State, helping the Nittany Lions win the Rose Bowl while earning All-Big Ten second-team honors as a freshman. Carter had 10.5 tackles for loss and 6.5 sacks on the season.

“And to Abdul’s credit, guys that want that they don’t need to be pushed to be great. That’s okay, if that’s what you want, here’s how it goes. And, so, I don’t think Abdul came here to be mediocre in anything and I don’t think he came here to be part of a mediocre team in any way, shape, or form,” Diaz said.

“And I think it stands to reason that the more he played a year ago, the better that we played. I think he helped raise our level of play. Now, as I said, now onto year two, I just told him not 30 minutes ago, what you did a year ago isn’t good enough anymore. There’s got to be some sort of development and improvement. Otherwise, we’re just settling for what was, and I don’t think Abdul wants to do that.”

Abdul Carter has room to grow

What’s scary about Abdul Carter, for opponents at least, is that he still has room to grow as a player. During an On3 Roundtable, Sean Fitz of BlueWhiteIllustrated explained how good Carter has the potential to be going forward.

“He’s got all the athletic things. He’s got the size, he can run. He can close like crazy. When he gets to the ball he gets there violently, which is fun to watch. But there’s a lot of ways that he can get better. Reading his keys [for instance]. I mean, this is a guy that essentially thought that he might be an edge rusher, thought that he might be a linebacker, but he had the ability to stick a linebacker at his size, which you don’t you don’t always get. Especially at a place like Penn State. So he’s got so much room to improve and I think that’s the scary part,” Fitz said.

“I think he’s got first-round potential, athletically, but he’s gonna have to come along with coverage. He’s gonna have to come along with reading his keys and getting where he needs to be. It’s Micah Parsons in the sense that you can just freewheel him and let him do things but for him to be his best player, or the best prospect that he can be, he’s still got some room to grow and that’s that’s pretty scary.”