Penn State Football continues to stack defensive talent with latest addition

Penn State Football is looking to stack another elite recruiting class on top of the 2022 and 2023 ones.

Penn State Football received some very good news on Tuesday morning with 4-star LB Kari Jackson committing to the Nittany Lions.

The Michigan native is now the third commit in Penn State’s 2024 class, along with being the second linebacker in addition to Anthony Speca.

Rated as the No. 30 linebacker in the 247 Sports Composite, Jackson held offers from Cincinnati, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Ole Miss, Purdue, Stanford and Tennessee.

Listed at 6-foot-2 and 215 pounds, Jackson profiles best at the MIKE position. As a junior at West Bloomfield High School, Jackson recorded 103 tackles in seven games, which is an absurd number.

The Nittany Lions offered Jackson back in May of 2021, but he’s kind of flew under the radar since then. Obviously, a lot of the attention turned to Speca when he was closing in on a decision a month ago. The duo of the two highest rated linebackers in the region, Aaron Chiles and Kris Jones, also receives most of the headlines.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the likes of Chiles and Jones with likely only one spot remaining for a linebacker in the 2024 class.

With that said, defensive coordinator/linebackers coach Manny Diaz has done a great job of rebuilding the depth at linebacker. The Nittany Lions relied on just five scholarship linebackers during the 2022 season. Now, Diaz had already added five blue-chip linebackers between the 2023 and 2024 classes, and he’s not done yet.

Penn State Football now has the No. 21 recruiting class in the nation for the 2024 recruiting cycle. All three commits in the class are blue-chip recruits, adding to the recent run of James Franklin increasing the blue-chip recruit ratio of his roster.