Penn State football has — perhaps the surprise of some — won 11 games four out of the last seven years. It’s a mark that generally ranks among the best in the sport and while the COVID-19 season and the 2021 campaign lacked (for various reasons) the quality Penn State fans have come to expect, the overall consistency of play and results has remained at a fairly high level since the start of the 2016 season.
As quarterback Sean Clifford rides off into the sunset, the most pressing question about the program’s future is if presumed starter Drew Allar can do even better? Or in the very least, reach the 11-win mark again?
At best the answer is a cautiously optimistic one. College football is full of randomness and projecting Penn State to suddenly go from 11 wins to a national title simply because the quarterback has changed is perhaps a bit premature. Until Penn State starts beating Ohio State and Michigan on a semi-regular basis there’s no reason to assume it will suddenly start happening.
That said, there’s no denying the sort of “know it when you see it” factors that Allar brings to the table. All the same he will need to learn and learn quickly if he wants to turn physical tools into winning ones. That’s not to say he won’t, but rather it won’t simply happen over night.
But if he’s going to, Penn State’s suddenly proficient running game between Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen might be the key to unlocking Allar’s potential. Nothing helps a young quarterback like not making him the only one to carry the load. While former quarterback Christian Hackenberg’s career might be a complicated one, it’s perhaps no surprise his most successful season also included the team with the most talent surrounding him. If in the very least, every time a running back runs the ball well, it’s another play a young quarterback can avoid a mistake.
“I think in general when you have a great running game like we do and a great [offensive line] like we do, it just helps everything for the whole offense,” Allar said after the Rose Bowl. “I mean, you can set up different types of play action shots and it really helps your pass game because the defense can’t just rush because you have to respect the run. They can’t just avoid their gaps. So it helps everything out, and when you have a good running game, it just helps helps you stay on track more than if you had to pass it over four downs.”
Between Singleton and Allen, it will be interesting to see how Penn State’s offense morphs into a combination of what Allar is good at and an undeniable truth that the Nittany Lions might make an official right hand turn into becoming a run-first offense. How good Allar truly is in the starting role is to be determined, for all of the flashes he has shown, there’s little information regarding what he struggles with. Whatever Clifford’s shortcomings might have been, he was extremely adept at identifying defenses and changing plays at the line with poise and calm. Allar might prove to be capable of that to some degree, but it seems unlikely he was start where Clifford finished in that department.
So to the matter of offensive identity and how does the presence of a running game change the developmental timeline for a young quarterback?
“I think you have to play the quarterback strengths, you want them playing at a very confident level,” Penn State offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich said earlier this season. “So therefore if they throw on the run, well, you better have some plays for you to throw on the run. If they’re a dynamic duel thread, you better have some zone read or power read or whatever your plan is from a run game standpoint to take advantage of your personal strengths.”
“[…] I think what you want to try to do is put the best product on the field period and play to the quarterback strengths […] and to help those quarterbacks. They’re still going to be both to young quarterbacks next year, right with limited experience. So we need to make sure that with our backfield we have some direct tailback runs, that we’re handing the ball off to our tailbacks and coming down hill with a physical demeanor and attitude and establish that toughness. Coming straight down hill at people and then have the play action passes off that and then there’s a lot of dynamic plays that that you want to incorporate because they take advantage of space and put defenders in conflict with whether it be RPOs or whether it be some quarterback zone runs which they both can do. So we have a good problem.”
“And all those things are part of it at the same time. You have to play to your personal strengths both at quarterback and tailback and receiver and tight end. […] So that’s that’s gonna be really important for us moving forward to have a plan as far as that’s concerned and to have that toughness and grit in your run game that we want to hang our hat on.”
And if you want to see Allar throw it non stop, consider this: of the 18 Penn State seasons that have ended with 11 or more wins, 10 of them involved a 1000-yarder rusher [at least two more with rushers coming inside of 200 yards of that mark] while the remaining eight saw a collection of backs run for at least 1,300 yards. So yes Allar will be fun, but the success of his early career, and Penn State’s 2023 season, might just happen when the ball isn’t in his hands.
