Penn State Football: Tyler Elsdon commits, some clarity on Derek Wingo

The eventful week for Penn State football continues as the Nittany Lions picked up another commitment on Tuesday.

After a few weeks of losses of question marks surrounding the Penn State football recruiting process, everything is beginning to go up once again. We might be in the dead period for college football for about a month or so, but that doesn’t mean that everything is officially shut down for that time. The Nittany Lions can still receive commitments from their offered players, and on Tuesday they got their fifth verbal commitment of the week.

The wave of commitments begun on Friday as two prospects announced they would be joining the Nittany Lions for the 2020 recruiting class. First, it started with three-star safety Ji’Ayer Brown announcing on Friday night that he’s committing, followed by another quick announcement by the four-star wide receiver, Jaden Dottin.

Saturday would be just as successful as the Lions gained a couple more. The defensive line got better with three-star defensive tackle Fatorma Mulbah announcing that he’s joining the Lions. Following Mulbah’s announcement was a four-star defensive tackle, Coziah Izzard.

After a busy weekend, Penn State made it out with four commitments, but now a Pennsylvania-based linebacker joins the 2020 class this week as Tyler Elsdon announced his commitment as well. The three-star linebacker attended a camp held by the Nittany Lions two weeks back, which convinced the program to invite the Ashland, Pennsylvania prospect back for another workout this past weekend. That’s when Tyler Elsdon received his offer from the program. And in just a matter of days, Elsdon took to Twitter to announce that he will attend Penn State next fall.

What happened with Wingo?

So Penn State gained a linebacker this week, after losing one just a few days ago. Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based linebacker Derek Wingo announced his de-commitment from Penn State this past weekend just as the new wave of commits came in. Wingo initially made his promise to the Nittany Lions on Christmas in 2018.

Unfortunately, over time, he began to have a change of heart. That’s nothing new to the Nittany Lions program as Wingo became the fourth player to withdraw from his commitment with the program in a matter of a month. Why did Wingo decide to flip his decision? Well, his mother, Carrieann, described the situation as best as she could.

"“When Derek committed to Penn State last Christmas there was no doubt that is where he would end up. His whole heart was in it. Then, over time, I guess you can say he fell out of love. Sometimes you can’t really place when that happens, it just happens. It was nothing Penn State did or didn’t do. That is what in fact made the decision so hard. The PSU staff was good to us, so good to us, we consider them family and always will. However, his heart just wasn’t there anymore.”"

Carrieann Wingo made sure to mention that Penn State is not at fault here. Instead, she believes that these young prospects are committing too early. Once springtime rolled around, that’s when Wingo started looking into other schools and having a change of heart.

Obviously, the research he’s done on the Florida Gators gave him enough information to want to flip his decision. And now that Derek Wingo is officially out of Penn State’s 2020 class, he now joins the Gators for next season instead.