Penn State star safety Zakee Wheatley talks about his two mentors who are currently in the NFL.
Penn State star safety Zakee Wheatley is going to be one of the mid-round draft picks that many teams are going to be very excited about.
Wheatley is a very unique body type for the defensive backfield. He stands at 6'3" and weighs just 200 pounds, but he has incredibly long arms and great length that make him a very challenging player to attack.
For Wheatley, he cut his teeth in the Penn State program alongside two Nittany Lion legends.
In his early years, Wheatley was a student of both Joey Porter Jr. and Jaquan Brisker, both of whom are now teammates in Pittsburgh.
Porter Jr has put together a really impressive start to his career and has become a real top defensive back in the NFL. The story for Brisker hasn't been quite the same.
He landed in Chicago out of the draft in what many thought would be the perfect place for him. he proved to be a middle-of-the-pack player and a guy that is decent, but not good enough, at least in Chicago, to be the leader of a team.
For Wheatley, those two people were instrumental in his early development: “From the moment I came out here as a freshman, we’ve been best buds. Those are my brothers.”
Relationships like that are so critical in a young player's life and their career development. Having the veterans take a young player under their wing cannot go understated.
It doesn't just happen, the youngsters have to earn that respect, but once they have it, their grow expontetially.
Wheatley's career at Penn State was over the course of five seasons. He appeared in just one game in his freshman year in 2021, and then from there he was a backup from years two and three, and then the starter in his final two seasons.
Over his career, he has registered 222 total tackles, 144 of which were solo stops. He has six pass deflections and six interceptions to go along with one sack and two forced fumbles.
Wheatley's draft projection is that he will be a day two selection in either round two or round three. According to the NFL Network's draft profile, he projects as a future average starter in the league.
He drew the NFL comparison of Los Angeles Rams' safety Kam Curl, who has put together a very solid start to his NFL Career. Curl just landed a three-year, $36M contact extension after being a seventh-round draft pick in 2020.
Whetaley is following in the footsteps of his two mentors, and hopefully, he can put together a solid start to his career, wherever that may be.