Two Penn State football players suspended as training camp opens
Penn State football opened its first practice of the preseason on Wednesday afternoon. Ahead of the 2024 campaign, the Nittany Lions appeared without two prominent defenders.
Defensive end Jameial Lyons and linebacker Kaveion Keys were not spotted participating in practice on Wednesday. Asked the status of both players with the program, a Penn State spokesperson provided the following statement:
“They are on interim suspension handling a personal matter and we will not have any further comment.”
Penn State players face interim, ongoing suspension
Confirmed that they are absent from the program at present due to the ongoing, interim suspension, no further explanation was provided.
Lyons burned his redshirt in 2023. He made six tackles (2.5 for loss) over eight games. He was the coaching staff’s Developmental Squad Defensive Player of the Week in mid-September. And, while he was not going to start over either Abdul Carter or Dani Dennis-Sutton, he was set to have an expanded role as a projected second-team defensive end along with Amin Vanover.
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That will no longer be the case, however, at present.
It means that two positions, linebacker and defensive end, are short numbers-wise for the Lions entering the 2024 season. It, of course, starts at West Virginia on Aug. 31. Carter’s ability to play both spots will help matters. But, it doesn’t fully solve the numbers issue facing the program up front and in the middle of first-year defensive coordinator Tom Allen’s defense.
Keys, meanwhile, got his feet wet at the college level but ultimately preserved a year of eligibility in 2023. He saw time in two games. While his regular season usage was limited, the former four-star recruit shined on the practice field. He was a four-time coaching staff’s Developmental Squad Defensive Player of the Week pick and twice earned the Developmental Squad Special Teams Player of the Week honor last fall.
That culminated with him being the co-winner of both the Developmental Squad Defensive Player of the Year and Developmental Squad Special Teams Player of the Year honors. Those two awards were supposed to have Keys set for a rise up the depth chart in 2024.
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