COLUMBUS—Penn State QB Drew Allar used one word to describe his performance at Ohio State Saturday.
“Sucked.”
When later asked why he felt he “sucked,” he said “because I did.”
What many thought would be a dream day for the Medina, Ohio native turned into a nightmare.
Allar ended the day going 18-for-42 with 191 yards, a touchdown and no interceptions. Penn State’s offense scored just 12 points, with six of them coming in the last minute when Ohio State was up 20-6 and the outcome was already decided. For both Allar and Penn State, the day was one big missed opportunity. Allar was visibly despondent afterward to the point where he was fighting back tears while talking to a large crowd of reporters.
For Allar and his receivers, the connections just weren’t there.
Allar will find out more when he watches the film, but he knows Ohio State’s defense did its job well.
“I’m going to have to watch the film and really dissect why that was a thing,” Allar said. “I mean, credit to Ohio State. They did a good job. They were playing a lot of off man… so they were able to kind of sit on some routes and they did a good job of when we did try to take shots, they were able to recover and not take the bait. So it’s a credit to Ohio State and their game plan that they had and how well their defense played today.”
Allar said he didn’t think he had felt as badly about a football game since high school.
Medina lost the 2021 OHSAA Division 1 Regional Championship game to St. Edward.
That was the last time Allar lost a game as a starting QB.
Unlike the St. Edward loss, this is not a season-ended.
Penn State has five games left, including a big clash with Michigan Nov. 11 at Beaver Stadium. All Penn State can do is learn.
“I think, at the end of the day, obviously, it sucks to lose, it’s not fun to lose at all,” Allar said, “but we have to take tomorrow to get better. We can only control what we can control, and at the end of the day, we have to go out and do what we did the first six weeks.”
In the first six weeks, Penn State won every game, and the offense scored at least 30 points in those games. But even amid the good times, people wondered about the offense.
They asked why there weren’t more big plays.
Was coordinator Mike Yurcich’s play calling too conservative?
What would happen when Penn State faced a top level defense?
Penn State’s offense went a long way toward answering those questions today, and the answers aren’t what any PSU fan wants.
“Obviously, today was not good enough at all,” Allar said.
For Drew Allar, a key to Penn State getting back on track will be for the team to “attack each week and don’t lose faith in each other.
“We can still be in the position we want to be at the end of the year,” Franklin said. “We just have to control what we can control and not worry about all the outside noise and other things. We just have to come together as a team and just stick together.”
“Overall, that was the message (in the locker room). Obviously, it sucks to lose like this, especially on the road. (Ohio State) is a very good team, but at the end of the day, we still lost. So there were a lot of emotions in the locker room, and for good reason. Nobody wants to feel this way.”
This isn’t a feeling Allar wants to get used to experienced.
“I mean, we put countless hours of hard work in,” Drew Allar said. “It sucks to have a result like this, but we have to watch it (the film), learn from it, because if we don’t learn from it, we’re just fooling ourselves. We have to really be critical of this game and just really learn from it and not let this happen again.”
