Former Penn State star Abdul Carter grew up in Philadelphia and, thus, an Eagles fan, but that won’t be the case anymore.
Not only will Carter be playing for a different team, he’ll be playing with one of Philly’s rival: The New York Football Giants.
Carter— who went with his father to see what were the his Eagles win the Super Bowl in New Orleans this past February— was in Green Bay Thursday.
He made it clear that he understood the new assignment.
‘I’M ALL NEW YORK’
Photo by Matt Lynch, Nittany Sports Now, Abdul Carter
In an interview with ESPN not long after his selection, Carter made it known that he’s ready to embrace his new home.
“Yeah, I’m all New York,” Carter said. “New York getting everything from me. All the passion that I have, all the love that I have, all the excitement.”
New York is getting what many feel is a generational talent.
CARTER’S CREDENTIALS
Photo by Matt Lynch, Nittany Sports Now: Abdul Carter
So why was Carter selected third overall?
Well, this might help explain it.
This past season, Carter became the first Penn State player in almost a decade to reach double-digit sacks (12) and leads in the nation in tackles for loss (22), doing all of it in his first season as a defensive end.
In Carter’s final game at Penn State, he played with a shoulder injury. All he did was pick up five tackles (one TFL) and a sack.
Ahead of PSU’s first playoff game against SMU, Mustangs’ coach Rhett Lashlee said he was impressed with multiple of Carter’s teammates but agrees with everybody else that Penn State’slatest No. 11 is cut from a different cloth.
“The other couple of ends (Dani Dennis-Sutton and Amin Vanover) are really special. If they didn’t have Abdul, we’d be worried about them. We are worried about them. But Abdul is so dominant,” Lashlee said.“He’s physical, he flies around and makes plays, and then they move him to defensive end this year, and he’s got as good a get-off as anybody in college football. There’sa reason he’s a top-five, top-10 pick in the upcoming draft. And on top of it, our tackles have to deal with the noise of trying to hear the snap count, and so there’s a lot of things in his favor that he doesn’tneed, on top of the fact that he’sjust probably as talented a pass rusher as there is.
“But that’s not all he is. He’s an all-around player, and what really stands out to me is his motor. He plays the game the right way. You got a lot of respect for how hard he plays. He’llchase down plays from the backside. So just like we got issues with Tyler Warren and a lot of other guys on their offense, we’vegot some we got our work cut out for us on their defensive front and really their overall team speed on defense.”
