Penn State Football: Two Lions land on Phil Steele’s Preseason All-American team

ESPN Insider Phil Steele put together his list of preseason All-Americans. The Penn State football program was fortunate enough to have two guys listed.

Football season is so close, yet so far away. As training camp for most programs begin late next month, many fans and even analysts are getting antsy as they wait for the start of the 2019 NCAA season. As always, we never know what to expect heading into a season. Although expectations for the Penn State football program remain high as always, we never know what’s going to happen, or who is going to perform at a high level.

However, ESPN Insider Phil Steele has recently made some bold predictions. As always, Steele decided to put together his list of preseason All-Americans. By no means is he right or wrong, as these are his predictions — but it’s necessary to note that Steele is highly-respected within the college football community. So his words and predictions are credible and do carry some weight.

Are there any Nittany Lions on the list?

So with Steele’s predictions, you might ask: Did any Nittany Lions end up making the list? The answer is absolutely! They might not have loaded up on Penn Stater’s, but the football program was fortunate to have two mentions on there. Late on Saturday when the Nittany Lions caught wind of the list, they took to Twitter to announce who made it on there. To no surprise, it happened to be two defensive players in Micah Parsons and Yetur Gross-Matos.

https://twitter.com/PennStateFball/status/1140060554465349632

Expectations are running high for Penn State as a whole, but the program is really expecting a breakout year from linebacker, Micah Parsons. He made his debut in 2018, playing in all 13 games. He totaled for 82 tackles, four of which, were for losses.

A sack and a half, along with two forced fumbles made Parsons’ Freshman season a success. He already gained Freshman All-American accolades after his first season, so there shouldn’t be any reason as to why Parsons can’t not only follow up with another impressive season but also blow his initial stats out of the water.

As for Yetur Gross-Matos, he’s another player on Penn State’s defense with high expectations. As a rotational pass rusher, he did an excellent job of remaining relevant on the roster. This season, Matos is expected to get more playing time, which calls for better production on the stat sheet.

With All-Big Ten honors from the media in 2018, Gross-Matos is expected to be within the conversation of All-American with Steele’s latest acknowledgment this season.