La Salle’s Joey O’Brien is a prized two-way football recruit who could be the best to come through the area

His chubby, stubby baby feet did not feel the chill of the kitchen tile. Joey O’Brien had one thing in mind: a cookie. He crawled over and pulled himself up on his chubby, stubby baby legs from a low shelf. He was standing there when his mother, Tishara, caught him, she recalled, not wanting to scare him.

She asked, “Can mommy have a snack?” Joey looked up at his mother holding out a hand, and took his first steps toward her.

Joey had just turned 7 months old. The next week, he was scooting everywhere. When Tishara brought Joey to the pediatrician, the doctor could not believe it. She had to see for herself. Tishara put Joey down in her office hallway, and off he went. Most babies usually do not start walking until sometime between 10 and 18 months.

O’Brien has been doing highly unusual things almost since birth. His curly, black top is still there. So, too, are the amazing legs, now long and lean and no longer carrying him to reach for cookies but to incredible heights as the state’s No. 1 high school football player entering the 2025 season.

The 6-foot-5, 190-pound defensive back/wide receiver from La Salle College High School is the prized recruiting target of Penn State, Oregon, Notre Dame, Clemson, and Tennessee, with Old Miss and Miami still very interested. In his junior season with the Explorers, he caught 68 passes for a single-season school-record 1,029 yards and 12 touchdowns. On defense, he made 36 tackles and broke up 13 passes, notching one interception.

He was the best player in the state, in the best league, selected as the Most Valuable Player in the Philadelphia Catholic League Red Division, which produced two state champions, St. Joseph’s Prep (Class 6A) and Bonner-Prendergast (Class 4A).

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Joey’s genetics come from his parents. Joe, a 6-foot former football and baseball player at Roman Catholic, and Tishara, a 5-10 former three-sport high school star who went on to play volleyball and basketball at Cumberland University (Tenn.), where they met.

Everything else may come from his older sister Taylor, 26, who’s Plymouth Whitemarsh’s all-time leading basketball scorer (2,040 career points) and was an all-state finalist in the high jump and 300-meter hurdles and first team all-Suburban One League in volleyball.

Whatever Taylor did, Joey mimicked.

When Taylor, who plays professional basketball for the Essex Rebels in the Women’s British Basketball League, was learning how to do a backflip outside on the grass, Joey and his other older sister, Jordan, 22, who just finished her track career at Florida Atlantic, had to do it, too. It’s why a few years ago, Joey, 18, took great delight in finally beating Taylor in a one-on-one game of basketball.

“I never let Taylor hear the end of it,” Joey said. “I remember going to all her games at PW. I looked up to her like a God. She was. She was good at everything she did. I followed her everywhere. I was annoying. I tried to do what she did. I used to bug her all the time. Everything came so naturally to her.”

Like it does for him.

The Catholic League has produced some of the best football talent. To anyone’s recollection, no high school league has produced consecutive top-four picks in the NFL draft over the last 20 years. Like linebacker Abdul Carter, the 2022 La Salle grad who was selected No. 3 overall in this year’s NFL draft by the New York Giants, and wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., the 2021 Prep grad who was the No. 4 pick by the Arizona Cardinals in 2024.

O’Brien projects, at this stage, to be better.

For one, he plays both ways. Those former players didn’t, and he is usually the best player on both sides of the ball.

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“I have not seen a kid in my time here in this area like Joey,” said La Salle coach Brett Gordon, a 1998 La Salle graduate who went on to play at Villanova and led the Explorers to a 10-1 finish in his first year last season.

“When you factor in everything, size, athleticism, anticipation, ability to impact a game on both sides of the ball at the level he does, I’ve never seen anyone like him. I went to a couple of La Salle games in the 2023 season, and I had heard about him. He had not played a whole lot yet. He wasn’t being utilized a ton offensively before I got here. I remember seeing him the first time in the second game of his sophomore year, watching him just run around. You can tell he had the makeup of something special.”

Growing six inches and adding 60 pounds over the last two years has helped. Before he entered La Salle, O’Brien would undergo growth spurts, then level off. One fall, he was among the tallest on his various sports teams. The next year, he was among the shortest. As a seventh grader, he played with the eighth graders. He stood about 5-7, and weighed around 100 pounds. He was so tiny he would fit inside the huddle, too short to be in the circle around the quarterback.

“But I had these big, floppy clown feet,” he said, laughing. “I knew I was going to grow. I came into high school around 5-11, 130 pounds [and played a few games on special teams]. I remember being mad, because it [was] the first time I sat. I felt I should have played, and remember Coach Keita [Crispina, the former Temple star now an assistant coach at Division III Eastern University] telling me I need to play defensive back. It’s the fastest way on the field.”

In two years, O’Brien vaulted from 5-11, 130 to 6-5, 190.

“It’s made me think a lot, but I always believed in myself, and my parents and coaches always believed in me,” he said. “There was a time I was looking up at everyone I played against.”

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Crispina was coaching at La Salle during O’Brien’s freshman year and quickly noticed him in drills.

“You could see Joey was raw then but had a knack for getting around the ball and making plays,” Crispina said. “His maturation physically and mentally has grown considerably. I remember teasing him about his tackling. He needed work. I would tell him he couldn’t tackle his sister Taylor. What did he do? He put the time in to become one of the best tacklers around.

“Joey reminds me a lot of [former Prep and Penn State star] John Reid. John wasn’t 6-foot-5, 190 pounds, though. Joey could be another Sean Taylor. I told Joey his freshman year that he is going to be a state champion and an all-American his senior year, and be able to go anywhere he wants.”

Over the last two months, each time someone steps through the La Salle front office doors, the receptionist has instinctively asked, “What college are you from?” In the last two weeks alone, Oregon and Notre Dame have put on a heavy press. Last week, Oregon defensive coordinator Tosh Lupoi came across the country to meet with Joey and his family.

To Gordon’s recollection, O’Brien has been the most recruited player in La Salle history. His whirlwind tour seemed to have two favorites: Penn State and Notre Dame. That may not be the case anymore. The dilemma is that each time O’Brien visits a school, that school becomes his No. 1 choice. He wants to play both ways. He is projected to be a safety or cornerback. Initially, Oregon, Penn State, and Notre Dame told him that they would think about him going both ways, and since, Tennessee and Clemson have softened their stances.

“It’s tough,” he admitted. “I love my family and would like to be as close to home as possible, but I really love Oregon, Clemson, and Tennessee. Every place I have gone to has been great. I want to play both ways. I want to make a decision sometime in June or July. I have a responsibility to myself and my family, but I also have a responsibility to my team. We have a state championship to win. I don’t want my college decision to be a distraction. I want to know where I am going before my senior year.

“I know [college recruiters] are going to tell me what I want to hear. There’s no pressure. Me and my family are going to sit down together, and I know the decision is going to be up to me. But my family is going to be very involved. I don’t want my mom and dad to worry about me. I want to be set.”

O’Brien will make the rare step of leaving La Salle in January 2026 for his ultimate college destination, which Imhotep Charter and St. Joe’s Prep have allowed their prime seniors to do.

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It means taking classes over the summer and mixing in his official college visits, starting with Penn State, then Clemson, Oregon, Tennessee, and finishing at Notre Dame.

“We want him to get a true picture of what these colleges are about,” said Tishara, a grade school teacher. “We’re enjoying it. We like seeing Joey happy. He’s making great relationships throughout the country. Little Joey and his dad are going to most of these [unofficial] trips. We’re proud of him. To hear other people tell you that your son is a humble, great kid, as a parent, it’s good to hear.

“Joey wants to play without anything on his mind [in] his senior year. With all his accolades, what he really wants is a state championship. Taylor came close, but never won. That bothered her. I want him to enjoy being a kid in his senior year.”

Talking to the O’Brien family, the La Salle coaching staff, and a few of the schools interested in him, pay-to-play and NIL money have never been brought up by the family to the schools. This recruiting process has been focused on where O’Brien feels his skill set fits best, he said, and what he feels is the best social environment.

The O’Briens “haven’t mentioned anything about money,” said one of the recruiters talking to Joey. “It’s been about getting his degree, improving on the field, and social fit, in that order. It’s kind of refreshing because the first thing out of most families today is what kind of money their kids will be getting.”

After O’Brien makes his college choice, he realizes, “The Beast” is out there — three-time defending PIAA Class 6A state champion St. Joe’s Prep. O’Brien beat the Hawks last year during the regular season in a classic, quadruple-overtime game, 35-34, before a throng of 15,000 at Upper Dublin High School. On a play that mimicked the “Philly Special,” the Hawks sniffed it out, forcing O’Brien to improvise and dodge his way through a nest of enclosing Prep defenders, flicking the ball to Desmond Ortiz for the winning two-point conversion.

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Here’s the kicker: Despite the Prep being the three-time defending state champion, La Salle will be the team to beat in the fall, with almost its entire offensive line intact, along with Missouri-bound quarterback Gavin Sidwar and major offensive line recruit Grayson McKeough.

Anyone who knows Pennsylvania high school football knows the PIAA Class 6A state championship was really played on Nov. 9, 2024, when the Prep beat La Salle, 21-14, in the Catholic League 6A championship, not on Dec. 7 when the Hawks leveled Pittsburgh Central Catholic, 35-6, in the PIAA state title game.

“You can call this the calm before the storm, because if we don’t win the state championship this season, it will be a failure,” O’Brien said. “And it will be my fault. I’m saying it right here, right now. It will mean I didn’t do my job. This year is my time to be a leader on and off the field. I’m ready for that. I want to leave here a winner.”

Since the PIAA incorporated the 6A classification in 2016, the Prep has been involved in every Class 6A state title game, winning seven, including six of the last seven state titles.

Ironically, it was La Salle that made history in 2009 when the Explorers won their only PIAA Class 4A state title to become the first Catholic League team to win a state football championship.

And this coming season to get back there, O’Brien’s new position for La Salle’s defense may be “chaos.”

“We have a player in Joey who is the best player on the field on both sides of the ball,” Gordon said. “That’s a big plus. Everyone knows the history here. Tim Roken and Prep should have the same expectations every year. They are that good. We’re going into Year Two here, and all I want is for us to play to our potential. We are building a culture here and we need to play to our potential at the right time.

“From that standpoint, last year was a failure as far as I’m concerned. We’ll maximize Joey all over the field. Our goal is to play well into December. Joey is going to be a big part of that. We want to get our guys a college home. We have to keep everyone focused and locked in. We must prove we can do that. When I step back and take my La Salle hat off, the truth of the matter is La Salle is a really talented team that hasn’t proven it can win at the highest level in a long time. Print that. At the end of the day, it’s about taking the steps to be a winner.”

Steps O’Brien has continued to make since he was 7 months old.