Penn State’s best player in 2020 is coming back for 2021.
Jahan Dotson was the brightest spot in a mostly grim season for the Nittany Lions, emerging as the Big Ten’s most productive wide receiver.
He firmly vaulted onto the radar of NFL scouts with his performance, but the Nazareth native announced Thursday evening he will stay in school to help lead the Lions next fall.
“I’ll be back in 2021 to give y’all the summary,” Dotson wrote on Twitter. “Chapter 4.”
The post was accompanied with a highlight reel from his breakout junior season and was punctuated with the caption, “The finale awaits…”
Penn State can only hope this last chapter can match the one he authored in 2020.
A successful complementary piece for the Lions in his first two seasons, Dotson entered this past season with more catches, yards and touchdowns than the rest of the team’s wide receivers combined.
Placed into a starring role for the first time, Dotson rose to the occasion in his nine games, leading the Big Ten in receiving yards (884) and touchdown catches (eight) while finishing third with 52 catches, just two off the league lead.
Had it been a full season, he may well have challenged school records. As it was, he just missed cracking the top 10 in multiple categories for a single season.
Dotson closed his junior campaign with a 189-yard, two-touchdown effort against Illinois. Had the Lions not held such a big lead in the second half, he may have broken Deon Butler’s school record of 216 yards in a game.
After the game, he said he had not made any decisions about his future. But his confidence grew as the year went along.
“The thing I learned about myself is, I can make things happen,” Dotson said. “I can make plays when the ball is in my hands.”
And it wasn’t as though he racked up most of his yards against lower competition. Dotson’s best performance came in Week 2 against an Ohio State team that is about to play for the national title.
Dotson finished with eight catches for 144 yards and three touchdowns against the still-unbeaten Buckeyes. More than that, he got the best of Ohio State corner Shaun Wade, a potential first-round pick in the spring.
On back-to-back plays in the fourth quarter, Dotson caught big passes down the sideline against Wade, with the second one a jumping, one-handed stab that went for a touchdown.
At the end of the season, Dotson also flashed his skill in the open field as a punt returner, weaving his way for an 81-yard touchdown against Michigan State and nearly scoring again the next week against Illinois.
Dotson’s return is an enormous boost for an offense that was largely inconsistent after having little time to mesh with new coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Without Dotson, the unit would have had a gaping hole for 2021. Instead, the Lions will be able to keep Parker Washington, a member of multiple Freshman All-America teams, in the slot while also continuing to develop another rookie from 2020, KeAndre Lambert-Smith.
This will also mark the first time Dotson will have the same wide receivers coach for two consecutive years in Taylor Stubblefield. After being originally recruited by Josh Gattis in high school, Dotson has now played for David Corley (2018), Gerad Parker (2019) and Stubblefield (2020).
Dotson credited Stubblefield, a former Big Ten record-breaker at Purdue, with helping him take the next step.
But despite the numbers, Dotson was voted just third-team All-Big Ten by coaches and media prior to that finale against the Illini. Afterward, he said it served as motivation for that game.
Now he’ll have another year to show what he can do.
“I never want to be complacent,” Dotson said. “I never want to get too comfortable with anything. There’s still a lot for me to improve on, so many parts of my game I can improve on and get better.”