Recruit Rewind: Penn State finds 'diamond in the rough' with DL De'Andre Cook

Penn State will kick off spring practice in just over three weeks from now. With two weeks to go in the February dead period, plus spring break from March 3-9, head coach James Franklin and his staff have just a few more weeks to focus on their current roster before on-campus recruiting starts up again.

With that in mind, we’re looking back on Penn State’s Class of 2024 these next few weeks, profiling all 25 players. We’ll start with one of Deion Barnes’ defensive tackles.

De’Andre Cook
Defensive Tackle
6-4, 270
Friendship Collegiate Academy
Washington, D.C.

Rankings	Stars	National	Position	State
On3 Industry	***	807	75	4
On3	****	N/R	28	3
ESPN	***	N/R	67	5
Rivals	***	N/R	N/R	5
247Sports	***	N/R	71	2

Statistics

• Totaled 11 tackles for loss and 10 sacks as a senior
• Totaled 20 tackles and and nine sacks as a junior
• Won back-to-back DCSAA Class AA championships 

Notable

• Named team MVP in 2023
• Was a two-year team captain

Recruitment

• Committed to Penn State on June 30, 2023
• Recruited by Deion Barnes and Anthony Poindexter
• Picked Penn State over Boston College, North Carolina, Rutgers and Washington
• Officially visited on June 16, 2023

Projection: Cook will need time to add weight, as Penn State is aiming to get him closer to 280-285 pounds by the start of the 2024 season. Refining his technique will also be important, but early feedback from winter workouts has been positive. However, with multiple upperclassmen returning at his position next season, we’d expect Cook to redshirt.

Friendship Collegiate Academy Head Coach Michael Hunter: “De’Andre is a great student-athlete with a great work ethic. He’s going to have a great future.” 

Get to Know Penn State DL De’Andre Cook

Penn State’s Class of 2024 features a handful of players that could ultimately outshine their high school rating and Friendship Collegiate Academy defensive lineman De’Andre Cook certainly fits that mold.

A three-star prospect throughout his entire recruitment, Cook will go down as one of the lowest-ranked players in Penn State’s class this year, coming in at No. 807 nationally and No. 75 at defensive tackle in the On3 Industry Rankings, which combines On3, Rivals, 247 and ESPN for a cumulative grade.

However, after releasing his senior season film, On3 Scouting Director Charles Power saw what Penn State’s staff had believed all along, moving Cook up from a mid-range three-star prospect to a four-star player. Positionally, Cook made a major move, climbing from No. 52 overall to No. 28 at the defensive tackle position. Other sites still have him as a three-star, which kept his Industry Ranking low, but for On3 at least, Cook was easily the biggest mover in PSU’s class following his senior season.

Back on National Signing Day, recruiting assistant Alan Zemaitis took the opportunity to let everyone know that Cook is one of the most slept-on players in the class. At 6-foot-4, 270 pounds, he not only has the size and strength, but Cook proved back in July that he moves well at that size, running a 4.9-second 40-yard dash and a 4.6-second shuttle.

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“Cook is a guy that played [defensive end] for Friendship,” said Zemaitis. “When we were going through this recruiting class, we found that we liked and wanted guys that can move inside. Obviously, you want height and length, so sometimes you’re going to find those bigger guys out on the edge in high school.

“A lot of those guys that we found and recruited for D-tackle position were just bigger ends, and that’s what he was. He was hampered by a high-ankle sprain, which nobody really knew about his senior year. But you saw, when he came back from it, that last game of the season, he had five sacks. He was the MVP of [his championship] game. But he’s another guy that’s like 6-4 and a half, so he’s a giant, and he can move.”

Zemaitis added that playing alongside five-star defensive end Dylan Stewart may have also impacted his recruitment. 

“That’s a guy that we trusted our evaluation with,” he said. “He was overshadowed by the number one player in the country [Stewart] who played on that team, but we trusted our evaluation. Just talking with other teams around the country, they saw we ended up getting on him first in terms of heavily recruiting him for the inside position. But a lot of people agreed with what we were seeing. So we feel like we got a diamond in the rough with that guy.”

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Cook also totaled 30 scholarship offers, which is more than many others in the class who rate higher. In addition to Penn State, he took official visits to Boston College, Rutgers and North Carolina in June. He also took an unofficial visit to Washington in April 2023. Cook said that the Huskies were among a few schools that pushed hard in the final months before he enrolled in January.

“Yeah, there were a few schools who kept reaching out,” Cook said. “It was mainly just my top schools when I committed. Washington was definitely on me, but I just kept telling them that I was with Penn State the whole way. I was never going to flip. They were just trying to see if they could get a foot in the door, mainly. I always told them no.”

The early feedback on Cook has been positive coming out of winter workouts, too. He made it clear before he enrolled that adding another ten pounds was the goal before preseason camp.

“I’m going to mainly be focusing on getting up to the right weight,” Cook said. “They want my body to get to where they want it to be, which is around 280 pounds. They want me to be a D-tackle, so I need to get my weight up some. That’s the main thing. I just want to do whatever I need to do to get into the rotation. I’m excited for spring practice and to see what that’s really like. But mainly, just getting to work and learning everything.”