At critical juncture, Penn State Class of '22 must diverge from prior path: Column

Penn State has been here before.

Set to welcome the On3 No. 7-ranked recruiting class in the country on Wednesday, the effort will be the Nittany Lions’ best since the Class of 2018. 

In every respect, the two groups will be inextricably linked.

The first, for what it represented then and how it panned out. The second, for what it represents now.

That group, ranked fifth nationally, signed concurrently to a second New Year’s Six bowl appearance for Penn State and a combined 22-5 record with two New Year’s Six bowl appearances and a Big Ten title.

Led by five-stars Justin Shorter and Micah Parsons, high four-stars Ricky Slade, Rasheed Walker, P.J. Mustipher, Jayson Oweh, Nana Asiedu, Zack Kuntz, Pat Freiermuth, Jahan Dotson, Nick Tarburton, Daniel George, Jesse Luketa, and Juice Scruggs, each of whom were among the nation’s top 250 recruits in On3’s consensus rankings, the 23-man class represented unlimited potential.

And as Penn State’s then-receivers coach Josh Gattis explained at the time, those prospects were all-in on that notion.

“We sold those guys on a vision, and now we’re able to come in and we’re showing them. Two years in a row undefeated at home. We’ve won a Big Ten Championship. We’re competing on the national stage to position ourselves for national championships,” said Gattis. “So now it’s all about finishing that vision. We’ve shown that the plan works, the vision works. Now we gotta continue to sustain our classes and continue to sustain our roster to compete at that high level.

“We’re excited about this class. We feel this is a complete class full of playmakers. “It’s probably one of the most talented classes that we’ll have the past few years. We’re excited. We’re going to keep at it, keep recruiting and keep developing these young men. So we’re excited about what the future brings for Penn State football.”

That envisioned future never came to fruition though.

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While the stories behind the individual trajectories are varied, the reality has been one of unmet potential.

– Parsons played just two seasons, opting out of what was set to be his star turn before the mangled 2020 season. 

– Shorter, Slade, Kuntz, Trent Gordon, Judge Culpepper, Isaiah Humphries, and Will Levis all transferred out of the program. 

– Asiedu and Jordan Miner saw their football careers end due to health complications before ever beginning at Penn State.

– Parsons, Freiermuth, and Oweh are all, to some degree, budding NFL stars in their first seasons in the league.–

– Only Walker, Mustipher, Dotson, Tarburton, Luketa, and Scruggs were starters for Penn State’s 2021 campaign.

Precisely because of those trajectories, Penn State’s Class of 2022 arrives at a drastically different moment for the program.

Sitting at 7-5 this season with an Outback Bowl date against No. 23 Arkansas still to play on New Year’s Day, the Nittany Lions have struggled to find consistent success. Beginning the year with wins against ranked opponents, Wisconsin and Auburn, everything since has been marked by injury, disappointment, and losses. 

All of this, of course, came following the stunning disaster of a once-promising 2020 season.

Allowing for the reality that different pieces of the group will take different paths to the field, what’s ahead of the Nittany Lions’ Class of 2022 is undeniably crucial to the program’s future successes or failures.

Led by two quarterbacks, two stud running backs, potential game-changing defensive linemen, a pair of high-end tackles, and skill players on both sides of the ball, their collective trajectory must diverge wildly from that of the Class of 2018. 

Needing to develop, stay healthy, avoid a life-altering pandemic, have some luck, and remain in the program, should be chief among them.

Determined to reach a level of success that hasn’t been seen at Penn State since, the path back to the program’s juncture of December 2017 will depend on it.