You certainly remember Penn State’s disheartening 20-12 loss to Ohio State in The Horseshoe last year. So does Nittany Lion QB1 Drew Allar, who was 18 of 42 for 191 yards and had seven carries for minus 23 yards.
Not pretty.
Neither was Allar’s post-game interview where he shed some tears and less than a minute into it, Allar confessed that, “I sucked.” (Watch Mark Brennan’s video replay here.)
That interview was not received very well by some of his teammates, as well as lettermen who had been led by the likes of hard-edged, take-no-prisoner quarterbacks like Trace, McGloin, MRob and Collins.
Granted, Allar was young — just 19 — but he was also well-compensated: tuition, room and board, plus $800k or so in NIL money. A prize package worth almost a cool million. With big bucks come high expectations — especially against the Buckeyes.
But on Tuesday night, in an interview inside Holuba Hall in the midst of Penn State’s preseason camp and 298 days after that stinging loss, Allar said — in so many words — the post-game breakdown won’t happen again. He was answering a question about how he reacts when Penn State’s defense shuts him down in summer drills. But, writ large, it was about how he handles things when they do not go well on the football field. College is … still, I am happy to report … about learning.
“I think the biggest thing for us is learning how to bounce back when things don’t go your way,” Allar shared. “Because we’re going to have a bad play and a bad series. But you can’t have bad quarters and halves.”
Or bad post-games after bad games.
“We’re doing a really good job of that as an offense, of just bouncing back faster and learning how to watch the last play,” Allar said. “Honestly, that’s a really hard skill to develop, whether the last play is good or bad.”
Here is the money line Tuesday night from Allar: “We’ve talked about being a thermostat rather than a thermometer” — that is, controlling the heat rather than just registering it.
Allar continued: “When something doesn’t go right, we’re getting guys back, rallied and ready to go. It’s been paying off, because my first two years here, I don’t think we had that.
“Last year, being a first-year starter, learning how to bounce back quicker was something I struggled with, because I would dwell on things when they didn’t go my way. I’ve done a better job of learning how to flush that.”
ENTER COACH K
Credit time and Andy Kotelnicki. Allar, still unable to legally buy a drink at the downtown Champs or The Den, has matured since he last played a snap that mattered. The 2023 season didn’t end all that well: Allar watched the man who recruited him to Penn State, Mike Yurcich, get fired after two losses in 22 days, and the Nittany Lions went 4-3 down the stretch.
Enter Kotelnicki: Allar has now spent the last eight months with the Tony Robbins of offensive coordinators — who has rebuilt Allar in mind, voice and scheme.
Allar, the titular head of the Nittany Lion offense, is a new man. He says so himself. His scraggly camp mustache is a visual sign of his efforts to present the new, Mature Drew Allar. His words underscore it. And by words, I mean not only to the media and to his teammates. But, maybe and especially, how he interacts with Kotelnicki.
I asked Coach K if Allar has had an “aha” moment in summer camp. Kotelnicki said no to the singular moment, but yes to why and how he is impressed by Allar. He provided a better answer than what my question allowed.
Kotelnicki is a smart guy, hard not to like. He loves to engage with the media after being at such literal backwater outposts as Wisconsin-River Falls, Wisconsin-Whitewater, Mary (a real school), Buffalo and Kansas. So his answers are, for the most part, honest and long, insightful and a bit fun as well.
“I don’t know if I’ve had an aha moment, because I would insinuate or lead you to think
that Drew didn’t ever have it at all,” Kotelnicki replied. Good point, Andy.
“I think what I’ve appreciated the most about Drew is the consistent dialogue between him, Coach (Danny) O’Brien, myself, the other quarterbacks in the room and Coach (James) Franklin. Just a question, like ‘Why? What if we do this? What if we just did that?’ It’s curiosity, if you will. Right?
“Since I first met Drew, he’s got really good football IQ and this really good sense of being a coach in the field. And I’ve appreciated the dialogue.”
So, for Allar, as he heads into a critical, expectation-filled 2024, it’s not just walking the walk of being a big-time QB. It’s also about saying the right words, in the right time and place.
