Takeaways from Neeo Avery’s Commitment to Penn State Football

2. Holding Strong in DMV

To most people, the DMV is the place where you wait in hour-long lines for a driver’s license picture, for Penn State Football, it’s recruiting heaven.

The DMV stands for (Washington) D.C., Maryland, and Virginia.

It has been a massive pipeline for the Nittany Lions over the years with the likes of Trace McSorley, Yetur Gross-Matos, Tariq Castro-Fields, P.J. Mustipher, Brandon Smith, Ellis Brooks, Curtis Jacobs and many others hailing from the region.

Avery is also from this region, being from Olney, Maryland. Fellow 2023 commits Alex Birchmeier, Mathias Barnwell and Joshua Miller also live in the DMV area. The 2022 class also had a ton of talent from the region end up at Penn State, including Dani Dennis-Sutton, K.J. Winston and Tyler Johnson.

Penn State Football will have some fresh competition in the area going forward as Virginia hired Tony Elliot as their head coach and Virginia Tech hired Penn State’s own Brent Pry as their new head man. These two first-time head coaches will be thorns in the side for Penn State, but neither has the type of pull that Penn State does.

Then there’s Mike Locksley and Maryland. Despite an unimpressive track record as a head coach, Locksley and the Terps still pull in a premier DMV prospect or two every cycle. It’s definitely not the type of success Maryland fans hope for, but it is taking players like Nick Cross away from Penn State. As long as the Nittany Lions keep defeating Maryland on the field, there shouldn’t be much of a worry about things changing in the region.

The big boys like Alabama and Georgia will come up to the region every once in a while and give the Nittany Lions a battle, but Penn State landed Dennis-Sutton over both, and Avery had a Georgia offer.

We’ll wait and see what happens at the two Virginia schools, but James Franklin still has to feel good about his recruiting dominance in the area.