This season, Penn State Football is ready to take on the new-looking college football world.
The College Football Playoff expanded from four teams to 12, and their conference, the Big Ten, added four new teams: Oregon, Washington, UCLA, and USC.
The Nittany Lions will have to air the ball out to win big-time games this season. They have one of the best quarterbacks in the college game, second-year starter Drew Allar, who can position himself as a first-round pick in next year’s NFL Draft if all goes well this season.
Still, he will need some targets to give the ball, too, and one could be a lovely surprise in soon-to-be redshirt Sophomore wide receiver Kaden Saunders.
Saunders is from Westerville, Ohio, and was ranked as the seventh-best wide receiver and 77th overall player in the 2022 class, according to 247sports.com.
The 5-foot-10, 176-pound wide receiver redshirted in his true freshman season in 2022, only appearing in three games. In 2023, he appeared in all 12 games, mostly on special teams and as a punt returner, but had 56 receiving yards and a touchdown while playing receiver.
Saunders is heading into a significant season and can move himself up to being the number one pass catcher for the Nittany Lions.
Kaden Saunders: 3 Fast Facts
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Saunders was not just a great football player in high school but also a Division One college baseball prospect who decided to go down the football path.
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Earned Academic All-Big Ten honors in 2023.
Kaden Saunders Bold Predictions
Saunders will lead the team in receptions.
The redshirt sophomore might not have seen much action through his first two seasons, but this year will be different. He should often work out of the slot, which will be an excellent check-down option for Allar. Saunders should be able to help move the chains, and with the Nittany Lion’s outstanding running back duo in Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen, there is a chance they will be running and throwing short to kill the clock late in games, and Saunders will be a significant part of it.
Saunders will bring in seven scores this season.
Penn State is going up against USC, Ohio State, Washington, UCLA, and West Virginia, who are going to want to throw the ball, so Penn State is also going to have to throw to stay in games against those opponents, and this is a good way for Saunders to get some work in the red zone and see some scores coming his way.
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