Penn State Nittany Lions football picks up commitment from 4-star safety Jaylen Reed
Penn State football picked up its second commitment in the last month in the 2021 recruiting class Thursday evening. Four-star safety Jaylen Reed joined the class when he committed to the program via his personal Twitter account.
Reed is the second-highest rated commitment in Penn State’s class behind four-star offensive tackle Landon Tengwall, the No. 45 player in the country who committed to the Nittany Lions at the end of March. Reed plays for Martin Luther King High School in Detroit and helped the school’s football team to an 11-3 record and a state runner-up finish in the 2019 season.
The four-star safety is listed as 6-feet tall and weighs 190 pounds. He fielded scholarship offers from 33 different programs, including Georgia, Michigan State, Oregon and USC.
His 247Sports profile lists co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach Tim Banks, also a graduate of Martin Luther King High School, as his primary recruiter.
Banks said Thursday morning he has plenty of longstanding connections to the area.
“I’ve been recruiting for a long time and I’ve made a lot of great relationships,” Banks said on a teleconference with the media. “Relationships are everything. I’ve had a chance to develop a lot of great ones and ones that bode well for me and the university.”
The Penn State assistant made note of the challenge of recruiting Detroit because it’s a talent-rich area. To overcome the competition, he treats it as unfamiliar territory to keep himself recruiting players, like Reed, hard.
“(I’m) just not taking it for granted,” Banks said. “(I’m) continuing to go in and act like the area is new to me, if you will. Turning over every stone and making sure I’m evaluating every guy, whether he has no offers or many offers. Just continuing to recruit it as hard as I possibly can has given us an opportunity to be successful.”
Reed is the first defensive player to commit to Banks and Penn State in the 2021 class and the No. 10 safety in the country according to 247Sports’ Composite rankings. The rankings also have him as the No. 8 player in the state of Michigan and the No. 237 player in the country.
He joins Tengwall, three-star offensive guard Nate Bruce, of Harrisburg, and three-star wide receiver Liam Clifford, the younger brother of current Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford, in the class.
Allen Trieu of 247Sports wrote an evaluation of Reed on Feb. 21 and compared him to three-time Pro Bowl safety Antoine Bethea.
“What stands out about him is his consistent ability to make plays,” Trieu’s evaluation on Reed’s 247Sports profile reads. “Can go into the box and is excellent in run support because he is smart, instinctive and tough. Willing to put his nose in the action and take on blocks. Solid in man to man coverage but instincts allow him to jump routes in zone ... If put in the right position, he will be extremely productive in college and have an opportunity to play a similar role beyond college because of his skill set.”
The evaluation included a day three projection for Reed if and when he enters the NFL Draft.
Penn State’s 2021 class moved up 13 spots to No. 24 in the 247Sports Composite team rankings. The class moved up two spots in the Big Ten rankings to No. 8.
This story was originally published April 9, 2020 at 5:05 PM.
