Penn State quarterback Drew Allar had a good year statistically in 2023, his first as a college starter.
He ended the season with 2,631 yards passing and an outstanding 25-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio.
But Allar also took plenty of criticism because he played his two worst games against Penn State’s two biggestopponents.
In Penn State’s losses to Ohio State and Michigan– the only blemishes of a 10-2 regular season– Allar combined to go 28-for-62 with two touchdowns, both late in the fourth quarter when the outcome was all but sealed. Fairly or not, plenty of people judged Allar’s whole season based on those two games.
WVU head coach Neal Brown, who also knows what it’s like to be polarizing, was asked about his perception of Allar leading into West Virginia’s season-opening game against Penn State
Brown said he feels some of the discussion surrounding Allar is unfair, adding that he made the difference in Penn State beating WVU 38-15 in Week 1 of the 2023 season.
“I think the quarterback probably gets too much blame and too much credit when things go good,” said Brown in defense of Allar during his press conference Monday.
“I think, maybe this is more nationally than locally. There’s a belief that he’s got pressure on him or that he didn’t play well. If you go back and look, and you think about this as a first-time starter, the kid played pretty well last year. He played really well against us. He was the difference in the game last year. We did okay versus their run game, but he hit some explosive passes against us that really hurt us. I thought he was accurate with the football in our contest.”
Brown also said that the only questionable performances for Allar from 2023 were when facing Michigan and Ohio State, two teams most players often struggle against.
“If you look at his complete body of work, I think sometimes unfairly, a lot of people struggle against Michigan and Ohio State,” Brown said. “Michigan did win the national championship. Ohio State does have a pretty good and sporty little team, too. So, I think sometimes those are a little bit maybe unfair. If you look at his entire body of work as a first-year starter, he did some really good things.”
Brown and the Mountaineers were victim to Allar’s best game from his first college start.
Drew Allar completed 21-of-29 passes for his 2023 regular season-best 325 yards and threw three touchdowns. Overall, Allar posted a 61.3 completion percentage, threw for 2,631 yards with 25 touchdowns and only two interceptions while running for 170 yards on the ground.
The reporting for this story is from our partner site WV Sports Now. Part of the copy was taken from WVSN, too.
