Penn State misses out on AP top-25; here’s where the Lions rank
Penn State has not found a home inside of The Associated Press preseason top-25.
The Nittany Lions are ranked No. 29. A media panel of voters put the ordered list together. It will be updated each week once the season begins. But, it has no bearing on the College Football Playoff, of course.
Head coach James Franklin’s team was not ranked last week in the USA Today Coaches Poll. They checked in at No. 27 in the ‘other teams receiving votes’ category.
Penn State starts week three of training camp today.
“We’re doing some creative things on defense and we’re doing some creative things on offense and that causes some challenges for the young guys,” Franklin said last week.
“This will be great film for us. The competitiveness has been really good, I think we’ve been really physical, as well, which has been important for us.”
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Inside the weekly rundown
Here were the sure bets from this morning’s weekly rundown:
Caziah Holmes and Ken Talley are the only Penn State players who will leave the roster during camp. The Lions’ running back was removed from the program’s roster sometime over the weekend. He was someone many thought might enter the transfer portal last offseason. Now, for whatever reason, he has decided to move on. Talley seemingly will, as well, after hitting the transfer portal on Monday. We don’t see this often happening at this stage of camp. And, we’re betting that no one else will join him in leaving before the start of the season.
Jaxon Smolik is the Lions’ last commitment of the month. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Lions landing the Class of 2023 three-star quarterback back on Friday. Penn State moved quickly to lock him up after Marcus Stokes flipped to Florida in early July. One of the cycle’s biggest risers, Smolik undoubtedly had many options. The Lions beat them all out in the end, however. With that pledge in, we expect things to be slow the rest of the month. There could be a surprise, of course, but we’re betting against it.
Jaquan Brisker is going to be a star in the NFL. If you watched any of his first preseason game with the Chicago Bears, it was obvious just how good the former Penn State safety will be in the NFL. He did have some hiccups, of course, but we really liked what we saw and expect him to be a force in 2022.
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