With a new football season comes new faces on the gridiron.
Penn football announced that freshman three-star quarterback Miles Teodecki will be the team’s starting quarterback this season. This announcement comes just days before Quakers’ season-opener match against Bucknell (1-2) this Saturday, where junior quarterback Karson Siqueiros-Lasky was originally expected to make the start.
“Miles Teodecki is going to start,” coach Rick Santos told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It was a quarterback competition from the moment fall camp started.”
A graduate from Vandegrift High School, Teodecki put up a formidable performance on the field under his last two seasons starting for Vandegrift. He accrued 5,755 passing yards with 69 touchdown passes. Teodecki brought Vandegrift their first ever state championship in the 2024 season. He is ranked as the No. 731 overall of high school quarterbacks and the No. 54 quarterback in the nation, ultimately becoming the only top-1000 ranked recruit for Penn since 2000.
Teodecki received offers from multiple nationally-ranked institutions like North Texas and JMU before originally signing with the Kansas State Wildcats.
However, Kansas’ newly-appointed coach Collin Klein planned to adopt a playstyle that had limited playtime for Teodecki. Teodecki ultimately flipped his commitment to the Red and Blue — and is no stranger to Penn football. His father, Steve Teodecki, played as a quarterback for Penn from 1993 to 1996.
This season marks the first time since 2021, under Aidan Sayin, that a freshman quarterback will play as a starter. Sayin ended his football career as the Red and Blue’s all-time leader in completions and boasted the second-highest in passing yards with 7,177 yards.
Last season, the Quakers under starter and then-senior quarterback Liam O’Brien finished the season with a 6-4 overall record and 4-3 in the Ivy conference, ending fourth among the Ancient Eight. O’Brien, who was also a captain, finished the season with the second-highest passing yards in the Ivy League with 2,376.
