Recapping LB Ken Talley's path to Penn State football
Penn State fans, the following story appears in Blue White Illustrated’s upcoming Class of 2022 recruiting magazine. It features over 70 pages of analysis, bios and superlatives on the most recent class. You can order today at BlueWhiteOnline.com.
Few Penn State signees in recent memory offer as much in the personality department as Class of 2022 linebacker Ken Talley.
Out of Northeast High School in Philadelphia, Talley is about as enthusiastic as they come. And his classmates say he frequently put that energy to use when it came to recruiting them and helping the class gel together as it was built.
“Ken has been recruiting me hard for a while,” linebacker Abdul Carter said after his own commitment. “Me and Ken are close. He’s been telling me for a while now that I need to come there and help them build a national championship team.”
If the Nittany Lions do indeed reach Talley’s ambitious summit, it’s likely that he’ll have played a part well beyond his peer-recruiting prowess.
Talley is a four-star prospect according to On3’s Consensus ratings, which also tabbed him as the No. 36 edge rusher in the country and the No. 11 prospect in the state of Pennsylvania.
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Penn State listed Talley at 6-foot-2, 238 pounds during its National Signing Day festivities, and labeled him as a linebacker moving forward.
He joins Carter and Keon Wylie as the third linebacker in this year’s cycle, with all three of them coming from high school programs in the Philadelphia region.
“Ken is the life of the party,” his head coach at Northeast, Eric Clark, said. “He has the biggest personality. He loves having fun with the people around him from his family to his teammates and our staff and it’s contagious. He’s always got a big smile on his face. He plays with a passion that can’t be taught.”
Talley finished his senior season with 12 sacks, 20 tackles for loss and 95 total tackles on his way to earning US Army first-team All-American honors on his way to Penn State.
He paced Northeast to a 6A Philadelphia Public League title during his final season at Northeast. He was also named the league’s most valuable player.
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“I’ve never seen someone play with such passion and we’ve had great players come through our program and he’s special,” Clark said. “I remember a play when he chased down one of the top track stars in the area to save a touchdown. He does some freakish plays on the field. From hard hits to physical plays, running sideline-to-sideline, he’s a game changer.”
Talley’s Penn State recruitment kicked off in June of 2019, when he received an offer after impressing at a camp hosted by the staff.
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He went on to take a pair of unofficial visits to State College before the COVID-19 Pandemic shut down the possibility of conventional recruiting visits.
Talley gave the Nittany Lions his verbal commitment in September of 2020, choosing them from an offers list of 24 schools, including the likes of Texas A&M, Michigan and Tennessee.
His close relationship with former Northeast staffer and Penn State graduate assistant Deion Barnes helped him make that choice.
“I already liked Penn State a lot, so having him up there only helps everything,” Talley said. “He’s been taking me up there for years. Before he was part of their staff, he already showed me where to eat up there and some other things around the town. I learned a lot about Penn State from him.”
