The Last Player of Penn State's 2025 Recruiting Class Joins the Roster

Daniel Jennings should be preparing to begin his senior year at Princeton High in West Virginia. Instead, the defensive end is going through summer workouts with the Penn State football team, having begun his college career a year early. So far, so good, according to Penn State strength coach Chuck Losey.

"We’re not in a rush to get anything done," Losey told reporters in State College this week. "We’re just going to slow-cook him, see how he responds to the training stimulus that we’re putting on him and we’ll go from there. We’re just going to take our time with Daniel."

Jennings, a 6-1, 249-pound edge rusher, chose what's known as reclassification to get a head start on his Penn State football career. Jennings initially committed to Penn State's 2026 recruiting class but sped the timeline, enrolled in home-school classes and graduated this summer. That allowed Jennings to get to Penn State a year ahead of schedule.

“It really had nothing to do with us,” Penn State coach James Franklin said in June. “He wanted to reclass[ify]. He wanted to see if it could work from a Penn State’s perspective, if we had room to make it work. He was working back at home with his high school. Part of it, I think, is he lost his high school coach. High school coach left, and basically he felt like, in some ways, he was ready."

Jennings was a 4-star prospect and the top-ranked player in West Virginia in the 2025 recruiting class once he reclassified, according to the 247Sports Composite. According to West Virginia MetroNews, Jennings was named first-team Class 3A all-state after rushing for 1,373 yards and 23 touchdowns and making 10 sacks for Princeton.

Franklin said that, once Jennings committed to the process of reclassifying, the program was on board as well.

“So once they wanted to do that, then it was ‘Ok, is there a way to make this work, to fulfill your responsibilities for graduation from high school from an NCAA perspective and from a Penn State perspective?’ And then once we realized we could check all those boxes, we said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,'" Franklin said. "And I think for them, it’s like, what’s more valuable?

"Even worst-case scenario, playing a senior year or redshirting at Penn State — although he’s going to have the opportunity to come in and compete — I think they felt like, we’re going to base this decision off worst-case scenario. And him being here and being in our weight program and nutrition program and getting an extra year of school started ahead of time, I just think they felt like the value of it."

Jennings made the same decision that fellow Penn State defensive end Max Granville did last season. Granville reclassified to the 2024 recruiting class and ended up playing in seven games, including three in the postseason. Granville sustained a spring injury that could cause him to miss the 2025 season.

Losey said that Jennings reminded him of two current Penn State defensive linemen, Zane Durant and Xavier Gilliam, who arrived on campus with potential but needing time to develop. Which prompted Losey's comment about not rushing the defensive end.

"Anytime we get an early enrollee like that, especially in Daniel’s case where he reclassified and he’s super young for a college kid, it just depends on where his baselines are," Losey said. "I look at him and I look at his baseline testing and performance, he reminds me a lot of a Zane or a Gilliam when they came in. Same body type, similar measurables similar outputs from a performance standpoint."

Penn State opens the 2025 season Aug. 30 against Nevada at Beaver Stadium.