Penn State announced linebacker Max Granville will miss the remainder of the 2026 season, marking his second consecutive year sidelined by injury. The junior has not appeared in a game since late 2024.
Granville sat out all of 2025 recovering from an undisclosed injury. He returned to fall camp in August 2026, participated in portions of preseason practice, and was listed on the two-deep through Week 3. He has not dressed for any of Penn State's first six games. The program confirmed Wednesday he will not return this season. No specifics on the current injury were provided, and no timeline for 2027 availability has been set.
The timing matters for defensive coordinator Tom Allen, who inherited a linebacker room with four returning starters when he arrived from Indiana in January 2024. Granville was the developmental depth behind that group. Now Allen is running a three-man rotation at inside linebacker with Kobe King, Abdul Carter relegated to situational pass-rush packages, and true freshman Josiah Silver logging 18 snaps per game in Big Ten play. Penn State faces Ohio State on October 21, Michigan on November 4, and needs to bank wins against Wisconsin and Maryland before that window closes. The linebacker rotation holds if no one else goes down. It does not hold if they do.
Penn State's recruiting class ranked eighth nationally in 2025, with zero linebackers signed. The 2026 class includes one linebacker commit, four-star Ta'Mere Robinson from Tampa, who enrolls in January. Robinson is 205 pounds. Granville was listed at 235 before his first injury. The gap between those numbers is the gap in Allen's depth chart. Penn State has not signed a top-50 linebacker since 2023, when it landed three. Two transferred. One is Carter, who plays edge.
The medical staff's handling of multi-year injuries does not often surface in public scouting reports, but it surfaces in agent conversations. Granville's situation is the second consecutive year a Penn State defender has missed back-to-back seasons after an initial injury. Safety Zakee Wheatley sat 2023 and 2024 before medically retiring in March. Strength coach Dwight Galt, hired in 2022, oversees return-to-play progressions. No pattern has been established, but two years is enough for questions during campus visits.
Penn State's defense ranks fourth in the Big Ten in yards allowed per game and ninth in third-down conversion rate. The linebacker play is competent. It is not surplus. Allen's contract runs through 2027 at $1.8 million annually, making him one of the three highest-paid coordinators in the conference. His defenses at Indiana ranked 105th, 52nd, and 38th nationally in his final three seasons. At Penn State, he inherited talent, not depth. Granville's absence subtracts one margin-of-error body.
The next linebacker decision arrives in 11 weeks, when Robinson signs his National Letter of Intent on December 20. Early enrollees report January 6. Penn State's bowl game, assuming it qualifies, falls between those dates. If Silver is still playing 18 snaps per game in a New Year's Six bowl, Robinson's redshirt becomes less likely. That compresses his development window and moves Penn State's linebacker depth problem from 2026 into 2027.
Allen's two-deep for Ohio State will be published October 18.
The takeaway
Penn State's second straight season without Max Granville leaves Tom Allen three-deep at linebacker heading into the Big Ten's hardest month.
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