Penn State defensive tackle Alonzo Ford Jr. set to miss the 2023 season
Penn State landed defensive tackle Alonzo Ford Jr. from Old Dominion out of the Transfer Portal this offseason with the hopes that he would bolster depth in the rotation at a position of need. That won’t happen in 2023, as sources confirmed to BWI that Ford will miss the upcoming season due to injury.
The 6-foot-2, 287-pound Ford was an All-Sun Belt honorable mention pick in 2022 for Ricky Rahne and the Monarchs. A true junior, he will be able to use his redshirt season in 2023 and have two more years of eligibility remaining with the Nittany Lions starting in 2024.
Ford was expected to compete for snaps in the back end of Penn State’s defensive tackle rotation this fall and compete for a starting spot in the coming years. His absence doesn’t change a ton for the Nittany Lions’ plans in 2023.
“We will see,” Head coach James Franklin told BWI’s Nate Bauer back in May. “I think what it does do is it gives us, at the very least, another guy that can be in the rotation, that’s played college football, that’s played against Virginia Tech, that’s played against Virginia, that’s played major college football. So there’s value in that.”
Penn State grabbed Ford from the Portal in the spring
Penn State missed on its defensive tackle targets in the first portal window, but got a chance for redemption in the spring period. Ford committed to the Nittany Lions in May with the blessing of Rahne, who was an offensive coordinator under Franklin at Penn State.
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“I just felt like we needed a little bit more depth at d-tackle,” Franklin said this summer. “Those positions, there’s a lot of physicality and contact. So having some guys with experience at those positions, and depth, being able to watch him on tape against Virginia and against Virginia Tech, and how he played against those opponents, was helpful for us because we feel like that’s got the best ability for us to kind of determine how his skills will transfer at this level.
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“But then also obviously having Ricky Rahne, one of my former staff members, as the head coach there, being able to call him and get feedback there as well, and another guy that has multiple years of eligibility, is really a three for two guy. So that helps, too. But I think for us, we’d like to build it with high school players, but when you can go out and solve some problems, whether it’s starters or depth, with proven commodities from other colleges, that helps. We also like the guys that have multiple years, because it gives them time to adjust too.”
Ford arrived at Old Dominion in the Class of 2020 out of Varina High School in Richmond. The program sat out the 2020 season and Ford got onto the field with true freshman eligibility in 2021. A productive player on the interior, Ford had 74 tackles, 8.5 tackles for loss and four sacks in two years with the Monarchs.
