There was supposed to be a ceremony at his high school, complete with TV cameras, family members, teammates and four-star offensive lineman Landon Tengwall sporting a suit.
There’d be one Penn State and one Notre Dame hat on a table, and the traditional recruiting commitment ceremony would conclude with Tengwall picking the Penn State hat, much to the delight of Nittany Lions fans who would congratulate him the next day at the Blue-White Game. It would give Penn State’s 2021 class momentum, as the No. 45 player in the 247Sports Composite Rankings would make a splash with his pledge and then spend the weekend working on recruiting other highly touted players to join him in Happy Valley.
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Well, sometimes even the best plans get altered.
Tengwall’s Good Counsel High School in Olney, Maryland, is shut down through at least April 24 because of the spread of the coronavirus. Penn State’s campus is also closed as it works through the rest of the spring semester via online classes. So, Tengwall sat at home this week in Maryland and was tired of waiting. He was ready to let everyone else in on what he’s known for quite some time.
“If we’re being truly honest, I didn’t decide all the way back freshman year, but I had a pretty good idea that I was probably gonna end up at Penn State,” Tengwall said Thursday over the phone, hours after committing to the Nittany Lions. “But if we’re talking actually deciding where I was gonna go, I knew I was going to Penn State probably after the (football) season.”
Tengwall said he felt he fit in best with Penn State’s players and coaches, which includes a roster full of players he’s familiar with and a recruiter in Penn State tight ends coach Tyler Bowen who first started working on Tengwall when he was an eighth-grader. Bowen was coaching at Maryland when Tengwall was in the process of transforming from a 6-foot-4, 180-pound eight-grade wide receiver to a 6-4, 265-pound ninth-grade offensive lineman. He said Bowen was the first college coach he met.
That relationship strengthened when Bowen went from Maryland to Penn State and kept recruiting him. Even the Penn State offensive line coaching change from Matt Limegrover to Phil Trautwein this winter didn’t bother Tengwall. Trautwein called Tengwall shortly after accepting the Penn State offensive line job to make sure they’d start building a relationship. The lineman jokingly asked Trautwein why he didn’t recruit him at Boston College.
“I was like, ‘Man, you never offered me.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, you’d never give me the time of day if I would have texted you,’” Tengwall recalled. “As soon as he got hired, 30 minutes later, I think he told me I was one of his first calls. So that meant a lot. And then ever since then we’ve texted almost every single day or called every single day to work on my technique. I’ll send him videos of, you know, my technique, all that good stuff.”
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Securing this highly touted offensive lineman was enough for James Franklin to send Tengwall a video of his two daughters cheering and celebrating like crazy as the family rides out the coronavirus isolation in Colorado. Tengwall will have a ceremony at his high school eventually, but he didn’t need the now-canceled spring game at Penn State to get busy recruiting other players.
He’s just the third commitment in the Nittany Lions’ 2021 class, but Penn State has big hopes for a class that includes plenty of high-priority recruiting targets in the Washington, D.C., region. Tengwall has an outgoing personality to go with a star-studded reputation that can help Penn State further pursue some of these targets. Should Penn State sign a few of those big-time guys, Tengwall could be part of the reason why.
Penn State already has a pledge from three-star offensive lineman Nate Bruce and three-star athlete Liam Clifford. It remains in the running for five-star offensive tackle Nolan Rucci, which could greatly change the trajectory of the class should the Lions land Pennsylvania’s top prospect to go along with Tengwall, the top player in Maryland.
COMMITTED pic.twitter.com/YifF98l8ys
— landonTengwall🌎©️🌟 (@landon_tengwall) March 26, 2020
After Tengwall’s commitment video posted on Thursday, one of the first calls he made was to one of the top players in Maryland, former Nittany Lions verbal pledge and four-star wide receiver Dont’e Thornton Jr. He touched base with Thornton and his uncle to see what they were thinking. Thornton remains close with incoming Penn State freshman linebacker Curtis Jacobs.
Four-star defensive end Demeioun Robinson from Maryland’s Quince Orchard High School can expect to be hearing from Tengwall shortly, too.
“Seeing all these other schools like UNC, Ohio State, even Notre Dame get all these recruits, it kind of makes you like, ‘Dang, I want to start building a class too,’” Tengwall said. “I wanted to commit so we could get this class rolling. I feel like I’m a big piece of that. I’m definitely trying to get a lot of DMV guys, that’s the goal. Definitely (five-star quarterback) Caleb Williams would be a huge get, so we’re working on that, too.”
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Williams, the top-ranked quarterback in the 2021 cycle, is from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., and has Penn State among his final five schools. The heated Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) rivalry between Tengwall’s Good Counsel and Williams’ Gonzaga can be momentarily set aside, as Tengwall would love to help keep Williams upright in a few years. He’s quick to point out that Good Counsel hasn’t lost to Gonzaga during his time there, but Williams hasn’t disappointed.
Tengwall’s natural leadership ability can help Penn State piece this class together. Every class has one or two players who spearhead recruiting efforts, and Tengwall has already connected with last year’s class leader, Nick Dawkins.
One of Penn State’s best recruiters on the current roster, tight end Pat Freiermuth, even made sure Tengwall knew how much Penn State wanted and needed him a few months ago. That’s saying something, considering that by the time Tengwall arrives next summer — the WCAC doesn’t allow players to enroll early — Freiermuth will likely already be on an NFL roster.
“He sells Penn State just like how I know it is,” Tengwall said of Freiermuth. “All the guys I talked to, I haven’t heard anything bad about Penn State. Not one of the players has told me anything bad, and I know the players don’t lie either. …They rave about the coaching staff and (strength coach Dwight Galt). Both of his sons went to Good Counsel, so he’s been around the program for about 20 years. … I love the weight room, so we talk a lot, and that’s honestly, the strength coach I’d almost say is more important than Coach Trautwein, as far as I’ll be with Coach Galt (year-round) way more than I’ll be with Coach Trautwein.”
Tengwall is a regular in the Good Counsel weight room and has been since he went from the skinny wide receiver to this massive 6-6, 303-pound lineman. That’s what 4-5 eggs, a bagel with peanut butter and at least a half-pound of meat for breakfast every day for nearly a year will do to an eighth-grader with the right kind of frame to carry such weight. Now, with 23 percent body fat and plenty of time spent in the weight room and with a private offensive line trainer, Tengwall is in a good spot physically, though he wants to get down to 18 or 19 percent body fat by the time he enrolls.
“He is chiseled,” said Good Counsel head coach Andy Stefanelli. “We tease him a lot telling him that he’s getting his beach body ready, but he really is dedicated, not only in the weight room, but with his nutrition he really, really takes care of himself and it shows in his weight lifting numbers and his overall build.
“He really is a great kid. Really good student. You know, he really checks all the boxes.”
(Photo: Jonathan Newton / The Washington Post via Getty Images)
