Penn State Football: Top-25 players of the James Franklin Era

Penn State Football: Top-25 players of the James Franklin Era

The Penn State football program has had some excellent defensive ends in the seven years that James Franklin has been at the helm, and across the 2017 and 2018 college football seasons, Shareef Miller was a constant. A three-star recruit out of George Washington High School in Philadelphia, Miller did not really burst onto the scene until 2017 but became a menace to opposing quarterback across the next two seasons.

In 2017, Miller began to have his presence felt, racking up 11.5 tackles for a loss to go along with 5.5 sacks, a sign of things to come for the big man coming off the edge. The following season, he improved in both areas, making 15 stops behind the line of scrimmage, and getting to the quarterback seven times, all the while earning third-team All-Big Ten honors.

Overall, Miller finished his Penn State career with 14.5 sacks in only two real seasons as a starter and finished his career by being named the team’s Co-Defensive Player of the Year alongside Amani Oruwariye. He declared early for the draft and was a fourth-round pick of his hometown Philadelphia Eagles, but he has since bounced around, making a stop in Carolina, before landing with the Arizona Cardinals for the 2021 campaign.