How Penn State football commits helped build the 2022 recruiting class from within
Jerry Cross wasn’t the first player to commit to Penn State among those signing with the 2022 recruiting class on Wednesday, but he was close to it. Cross committed to the Nittany Lions on July 28, 2020, three days after wide receiver Kaden Saunders announced his pledge to Penn State head coach James Franklin and staff.
He committed without seeing the campus and without seeing a game in person, but that didn’t faze Cross. In fact, he was ready to take the plunge even sooner.
“When I called Coach Franklin to commit, they were fresh on recruiting me and everything,” Cross told the Centre Daily Times. “He didn’t want me to rush. They wanted me real bad but they wanted everything to click right. Everything ended up clicking right and I ended up committing. I just feel like I wouldn’t feel that spark from anywhere else.”
Once the four-star tight end joined the class, it was time to get to work.
Cross and several other players helped build the group from the inside that is set to finish as a top-10 class in the nation and features two five-star talents.
The future Nittany Lion took ownership of his role, alongside Saunders, as the flag bearers for the class.
“We were really the first two to get everything going,” Cross said. “Everybody looked to us, even Coach Franklin and (wide receivers coach Taylor Stubblefield), they looked to us to help make the decisions.”
Cross and Saunders took ownership of their roles and began working on fellow recruits. Cross began contacting players Penn State coveted and working on them.
They slowly but surely were able to help Penn State land talented players and in the process built a relationship with each other. Cross said he felt like he, Saunders and four-star linebacker Ken Talley did a good job of establishing those relationships and getting their peers to join them in the class.
“It was fun building relationships with other recruits across the country,” Cross said. “I feel like we did a good job of that. Ken Talley, too, is looked at as a leader in our class as well. We just did a good job of peer recruiting and looking at our friends and telling them to come join us.”
One of those players who ultimately joined is four-star defensive end Dani Dennis-Sutton, who made the call for Penn State in July 2021. He got to know four-star linebacker Abdul Carter, who he built a relationship with at a cookout at the Lasch Football Building over the summer, and had that going in his favor when Carter committed to Penn State.
Even though he got to know Carter and the other recruits, he wasn’t as much of a vocal peer recruiter as classmates like Cross. While he didn’t do it himself, he still understood the impact of what Cross, Saunders and Talley were doing had on the class.
“I think the other guys like Jerry and all of them other guys,” Dennis-Sutton told the CDT, “they do a really good job of recruiting and getting guys to want to come to Penn State and join our class.”
The leaders of the class had their impact and were able to build a strong bond within the group. In fact, there has been very little turnover within Penn State’s 2022 recruiting class when it comes to decommitments. Plenty of that credit goes to the coaching staff that brought the group together, especially the in-state prospects.
That was a key part of the pitch to the team’s targets and it helped it land five-star running back Nicholas Singleton, who was named the Gatorade National Player of the Year Tuesday morning. Singleton expected the group to be as good as it is because of the in-state talent in Pennsylvania.
“We have a lot of good players in Pennsylvania,” Singleton told the CDT. “The coaches have been preaching to us about staying in PA and making this a national championship team. I kind of expected this class to be this good.”
Some of the credit can also go to the relationship the players have with each other.
The sense of unity in the group was common, and has Penn State in position to take the next step. There are 14 four-star players set to join the program, and two five-star players — Singleton and quarterback Drew Allar.
Allar has the type of talent that can lead the program to Big Ten titles and College Football Playoff appearances — which makes sense, given that’s where this group wants to get.
“I think we can do something special,” Dennis-Sutton said. “I think we can do some special things. Hopefully we can win the Big Ten. You never know, we could be competing for a national championship one day if we put everything together.”
