Terry Smith thought deeply, searching the depths of his mind for a memory that perfectly captured the story of Abdul Carter. There were so many. How could he choose a favorite for one of the most electrifying talents in Penn State history, a sure-fire top-five selection in Thursday’s NFL Draft? But after a few moments, Smith smirked. He had one.
It was in the summer that preceded Carter’s senior year at La Salle College High School. Smith, who was then the Nittany Lions’ lead recruiter for the Philadelphia area, requested that Carter come to camp in late July to solidify a scholarship that the team would accept. Whatever uncertainties remained prior to that day quickly went out the door.
Smith was shocked by what he saw.
“He worked at the linebacker position, and he was really good there. And then, for the first time, we moved him down to the d-end, and we saw that day what the world saw this past season,” Smith said earlier this month. “It was easy, it was a no brainer. It was like, ‘We gotta have that guy.’ He trusted us. He trusted our process. And, man, he is reaping the reward. His family will be blessed forever.”
It’s been nearly four years since then, the day Carter committed to the Nittany Lions.
The once under-recruited linebacker from a Philadelphia-area Catholic school is now one of the most coveted defensive end prospects in recent memory. There’s not an NFL team that wouldn’t want him. Carter’s bend is generational. His athleticism is something that can’t be taught. And his mindset, well, it’s at the forefront of all his success.
“I feel like I’m just getting started. It’s my first year of playing a new position. I feel like I was the best at it, I dominate at it,” Carter said within Penn State’s practice facility in March. “So, the sky’s the limit for me. I just really feel limitless. I’m just getting started.”
THUS, IT WAS SPOKEN
Carter isn’t one to dwell in desires. There aren’t visions that flutter through his head, but truths. John Steinmetz, Carter’s head coach at La Salle, remembers everything that was spoken into existence. That Carter, then an underclassman, would play for his home-state Nittany Lions. That Carter, who had never taken a collegiate snap, would become a first-round draft selection.
“He talked about being a No. 1 draft pick for a long time, like being a first-round draft pick and then being a No. 1 draft pick,” Steinmetz told StateCollege.com. “This has been a goal of his since he was young.”
As classmates in a leadership development class discussed what they wanted to do for a living, Carter held on to a dream that most had given up in early adolescence. They went around the room and shared. One classmate said finance, another real estate. Then it got to Carter. “I’m going to play in the NFL,” he said with the utmost certainty.
This amused the teacher, who repeated the question, this time asking him to think realistically. Carter responded with the same answer. The teacher just nodded their head, later passing along the note to Carter’s linebackers coach Joe Leitner, who can only chuckle about it now, days before the most talented player he’s ever seen is set to walk the draft stage in Green Bay.
“That was very early in the process,” Leitner told StateCollege.com.
A GAME OF CHESS
Steinmetz remembers Carter as mostly quiet and “unknown” in those first two years at La Salle. He would stand to the side of his older teammates, keeping to himself as he became integrated as a freshman on varsity. In his spare time, Carter would lift — incessantly — and play chess, an aspect of his personality that always struck his high school coaches.
“I went out to dinner once with him and his dad and he had his little portable chess set while we were waiting for dinner to come,” Steinmetz said. “He beat me in that short period of time. … He would just carry it around. It just goes to show, he’s very precise in his thinking. And his football thinking’s the same way. He’s very analytical.”
Carter was used all over the field. At running back, at wide receiver. He ultimately found his best fit at linebacker. But after working with La Salle defensive line coach Steve Sinnott, it became clear to Steinmetz and Leitner that perhaps his true potential lay off the edge, rushing the passer. There’s now no question they were right.
“He was an outside linebacker, but towards the end of probably his senior year, we started to rush him a lot, sometimes at defensive end,” Sinnott told StateCollege.com. “And we would talk about it, like him rushing sometimes would be like playing chess, because you’d set up the offensive tackle three or four times in a row for one move and you’d hit him with the other move.”
Carter’s coaches learned quickly that the less they coached him, the better he’d play. They agreed to let him fly, scripting their defensive scheme almost completely around him. By Carter’s junior year, the strategy had paid off. He’d earned the coveted Penn State offer the previous April and had grown into a completely different player.
Steinmetz boasts that Carter’s 17-tackle performance in a 28-21 win over St. Joseph’s Prep in 2021 was the magnum opus of his high school career. But others, like Sinnott, have argued that his leaping overtime touchdown reception against Archbishop Wood takes the cake. That or Carter’s hustle play to exile Kyle McCord into the sidelines against Prep in 2020.
“You know those moments in movies like ‘The Matrix’ where everything else stops moving except for that one person?” Leitner recalled of Carter’s hustle play to stop McCord. “…McCord didn’t think he was within 10 yards. And Abdul just went so fast and just smoked him. Absolutely rocked him. That was one of those moments you look around and go, ‘That kid’s better than those kids.’”
CHECKMATE
It took Smith and his fellow Penn State staff members an extra visit, a third in two months, to be convinced that Carter was someone worth investing in. That he was, in fact, better than the hundreds of recruits that Smith had passed up on that year. Carter showed something that day, something that made Smith quiver with excitement, something different.
His headshot, alongside other Nittany Lions who earned first-team All-American status, is now plastered to the wall inside the program’s Lasch Football Building. Jack Ham, LaVar Arrington, Micah Parsons and many more. They’re all up there. Carter, four years after nearly missing out on the school of his dreams, is now officially an all-time great.
“Some guys may be a sophomore, they’re a no-brainer. Maybe some guys, it’s walking into their senior year. But he’s a story that it took us to the last camp that we had to say, ‘Yes, we’ll take him here,’” Smith said. “He’ll be a first, second, third pick of the draft. What an amazing story.”
Steinmetz still hasn’t beaten Carter in chess. He can hang in there for a bit, extending the play past four moves. But there’s never a doubt Carter will win. It must be the way an offensive lineman feels lining up before him. That even under a severe disadvantage, he’ll find a way. It’s one part analytical, one part physical. It’s all parts dominating.
Carter wrote the words “Darth Vader” across his eye black, strapped on his pads and heavily wrapped his left shoulder ahead of his final game at Penn State. Then he went out and played a College Football Playoff game with one arm. His shoulder injury, sustained two weeks prior, held him back from pre-draft workouts.
But he wasn’t willing to let it deter his availability that day.
Ask him now, and Carter still wouldn’t change a thing. His story lies upon a chess board. There is strategy involved, risk too. Switch positions, new outlook. Injured shoulder, knight captured. But in comes his bishop, darting diagonally from the only direction he can move in light of his setback, through barriers straight toward the king. Checkmate.
