For the better part of the last six months, Penn State football has found itself in a unique limbo between longtime quarterback Sean Clifford and whoever might get the nod come Week 1 as the Nittany Lions take on West Virginia.
The assumption, of course, is that sophomore quarterback Drew Allar will edge out Beau Pribula for the job. Penn State has spent too much energy developing Allar, too much effort hanging onto him in the recruiting process and simply has too much to lose if Allar — the former five-star prospect — isn’t named the Nittany Lions’ starter. Even if Pribula is legitimately pushing Allar for the role, head coach James Franklin might not have much of a choice in the matter for a whole handful of reasons.
It’s fun — for the sake of not much else going on — to contemplate if there really is a competition at quarterback or if Franklin is simply going through the motions, giving Pribula just enough of a sliver of hope and just enough of a role in the offense that he doesn’t jump for the transfer portal, leaving Penn State with just two quarterbacks on the roster heading into the summer. Even if he doesn’t start, losing Pribula would be a critical blow to a team that has seen its starting quarterback leave the game with injury every season since 2018.
Even without the benefit of any actual evidence to support this claim, it’s also fair to contemplate the possibility that Allar isn’t quite living up to the hype. It seems an unfair assumption to make, given the fact he has shown more flashes than not, and even with a somewhat ho-hum performance in the Blue-White scrimmage, it’s hard to put too much stock in a game not designed to be much more than a public practice session.
In all likelihood, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle of it all. Allar seems likely to be the starter, Pribula perhaps better than he gets credit for and Allar certainly the benefactor of certain gifts, but still a prospect in need of development.
On the whole, the answer to the question “should we care that Penn State hasn’t named Allar the starting quarterback yet?” is more a thought experiment than it is anything else. It seems worthwhile to note that Franklin himself has talked about Allar in interviews this summer using nearly every nice word he has in his vocabulary without actually saying the word “starter.” For their part, Allar’s teammates have tried to walk the near-impossible tightrope of talking about Allar in tones of an open quarterback competition without winking at the end of every sentence.
Whatever the case might be, however it all shakes out, history might be the best guide to it all.
Because consider this: James Franklin has reasonably needed to name a starting quarterback twice while at Penn State. In his first year, Christian Hackenberg had the job locked up before Franklin stepped foot on campus [for his part, he was named the starter publicly when he took the field against Syracuse under Bill O’Brien in the 2013 opener], but in 2016 it was Trace McSorley getting the nod officially on August 24, the Wednesday before game week. Then in 2019, Sean Clifford was named the starter on August 23 the Friday before game week. He would hang on to that role for 1,229 days. As for his time at Vanderbilt, Franklin named his last starter, Austyn Carta-Samuels, as the Commodores’ starting quarterback in 2013 on August 21.
“To be honest with you, I doubt it will happen [naming the starting quarterback after the Blue-White Game],” Franklin said back in 2016. “We wanna give Tommy [Stevens] every opportunity to fight for the job. We’ll go back and evaluate everything after spring ball’s over, but we’ll most likely take that competition into the summer.”
Fast forward a few years later to the Clifford and Will Levis competition.
“We haven’t even talked about it. Honestly. Swear to God,” Franklin said after a practice. “We haven’t even discussed it at this point. “We’re obviously getting close to that, but we haven’t had a discussion yet on quarterback — or really on any position when it comes to depth charts and rotations and stuff like that.”
Penn State would name Clifford the starter two days later.
Now earlier this April as Allar and Pribula battle for the job:
“It’s been a really good competition,” Franklin said. “Those guys are battling. Sometimes it’s hard to compare and contrast. Our No. 1 defense is good and talented, so we’re making sure Drew gets reps with [the second-team offense] and Beau with the [first-team offense] and vice versa. Those things are important. Those two guys are both battling.”
So should you worry that Allar hasn’t been named the starting quarterback? Not yet. In fact, if history is our guide, it might not happen for a while now.
