Penn State Football Recruiting: Nittany Lions Flip Commitment From Top PA Prospect Andrew Olesh

The Penn State staff had a busy signing day.

26 players signed with the team during the early signing period – and if you watched their live broadcast of signing day, you may have noticed that a 27th spot was placed on the board in the background after they were done. That fact was never brought up or discussed on the broadcast.

Well, it turns out the 27th recruit was TE Andrew Olesh.

BREAKING: Elite 2025 TE Andrew Olesh has Flipped his Commitment from Michigan to Penn State, he tells me for @on3recruits

The 6’5 215 TE had been Committed to the Wolverines since July

“Let’s bring home a National Championship to Penn State! The best in PA stay in PA 🦁”… pic.twitter.com/yB5F1NxLMl

— Hayes Fawcett (@Hayesfawcett3) December 6, 2024

Olesh had been committed to Michigan since July, but had backed out of that and was considering Oregon and Penn State, as well. He had announced he would not be announcing until Friday at an event at his school.

It isn’t a huge shock to see a PA player and a tight end flip to Penn State – Tyler Warren is a top-five Heisman candidate and will absolutely be getting drafted pretty high in the next few months.

Even before that, Penn State tight ends have been having solid to great NFL careers in recent history from Jesse James, Mike Gesicki, Pat Friermuth, Brenton Strange and, most recently, Theo Johnson all playing significant snaps in the NFL with the latter four being active today. That doesn’t even include Juwan Johnson, who played most of his career at Penn State before transferring out for his final year.

Olesh announced then that he had signed to Penn State, including the mantra “The best in PA stay in PA”.

The Southern Lehigh tight end is the top ranked player in PA for the 2025 cycle, giving Penn State the state’s top recruit four years running. Once a concern for how poorly they seemed to be doing in the state early on, the Nittany Lions have now managed to flip both Olesh and previously flipped Cam Smith out of Philadelphia.

Their in-state recruiting for the cycle may not be over, either, as edge rusher Zahir Mathis out of Philadelphia had been committed to Ohio State since January but recently decommitted among a strong push from Penn State. He announced he will not be signing in the early window, meaning he’s likely to sign in February as the Nittany Lions look to get another top-five player to stay in-state.

The oddity of the commitment is that Kahlil Dinkins and Luke Reynolds appear likely to play most of the snaps next year, but in particular that Olesh is joining a class that not only had Virginia’s Matt Henderson and Pittsburgh’s Brady O’Hara already committed at the position, but also got a flip from Ohio’s Brian Kortovich (previously committed to Purdue) the day before signing day.

That means the class contains four tight ends, abnormally high for the position and meaning there would seem to be lots of competition.

Penn State’s recruiting class is a top-15 class nationally once again.