There aren’t any players who would give Penn State football a better record right now, since it is a perfect 6-0, but would the team be better off with KeAndre Lambert-Smith, who played at PSU for four seasons before transferring to Auburn over the spring?
Penn State didn’t get to No. 3 in the country by having a ton of question marks.
With that said, many are still unsure about the wide receiver position.
Tight end Tyler Warren leads Penn State in receiving with 513 yards. But amongst wide receivers, Harrison Wallace III leads the team 283 yards. Omari Evans isn’t far behind at 236, and Liam Clifford has 206. All three of them have gone over 100 yards at some point this season. But none of them are putting up the numbers Lambert-Smith has been putting up.
Would Lambert-Smith be better off had he stayed at Penn State, and would Penn State be better with him?
Let’s dig in.
WHY PENN STATE MISSES KEANDRE-LAMBERT SMITH
Keandre Lambert-Smith celebrates his fourth quarter game winning touchdown in the final two minutes.
Lambert-Smith is having a career year at Auburn.
Through six games, he has 510 yards and six touchdowns, averaging 21.3 yards per catch, all numbers that would be at or near the lead amongst Penn State’s receivers (Evans averages 21.5 yards per catch on 13 fewer receptions).
Lambert-Smith is averaging 85 yards per game, the fourth-most in the SEC, and is on the mid-season watchlist for the Fred Biletnikoff Award presented annually to the nation’s top receiver.
Through the same number of games last season, Lambert-Smith had 31 receptions, 402 yards and three touchdowns.
It also isn’t as if Lambert-Smith if putting up stats because Auburn doesn’t have any other weapons. Malcolm Simmons (260 yards, 2 TD, 14.4 yards per catch) and Cam Coleman (212 yards, 1 TD, 23.6 YPC) have also done damage for Auburn. Lambert-Smith has also put up numbers against some Power Four competition, going for 156 yards against Arkansas, 77 against Oklahoma and 95 against Georgia. Lambert-Smith is playing the best football of his career, and if he was putting up the same production at Penn State, it’s fair to wonder what this offense would look like
But…
WHY IT DOESN’T MISS KLS
Photo by Jordan Leneberg, Nittany Sports Now: KeAndre Lambert-Smith
Multiple Penn State receivers have had moments of glory this season.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Wallace made a statement Week 1 at West Virginia with five catches for 117 yards and a touchdown.
Evans broke 100 yards for the first time against Kent State and Clifford did the same two weeks later at UCLA.
There’s also Warren, who’s on his way to having the best season any Penn State tight end has ever had. So Penn State’s passing game has featured a dominant tight end and an ensemble cast of receivers who each possess different a different set of skills. Despite the same personnel (with the exception of Julian Fleming) as 2023, Penn State’s receiving corps are much more balanced than it was last season.
a couple Penn State receiving notes:
– 2024: Liam Clifford is the fourth 100-yard receiver in 5 games
– 2023: 2 100-yard receivers in 13 games– 2024: 4 different leading receivers in 5 games
– 2023: 4 different leading receivers in 13 games https://t.co/I0tYfj7cLK— Daniel Gallen (@danieljtgallen) October 7, 2024
That doesn’t necessarily mean it was Lambert-Smith’s fault that Penn State’s receivers as a whole didn’t perform well last season or that things would be worse this year if he were in the fold.
But it’s hard to know exactly how much one player’s presence would impact things and hard to know how KLS would have fit into first-year coordinator Andy Kotelnicki’s offense.
We also don’t know what impact Lambert-Smith being in the fold would have on Penn State’s over receivers. Wallace and Clifford would be likely to still start, so how would that impact Fleming and especially Evans, who has been one of Penn State’s breakout players?
Would Lambert-Smith be playing as well at Penn State as he is at Auburn, and if so, would his targets make it harder for, say, Warren to catch 17 passes for 224 yards in a game? Who knows.
It’s also possible, if not likely, leaving Penn State was the best thing for KLS personally.
IN CONCLUSION
Lambert-Smith had an interesting career at Penn State.
He started games as a true freshman but never became better than a No. 3 receiver through his first three seasons.
When the time came for him to be a No. 1, he put up decent numbers (673 yards, four touchdowns, 12.7 yards per catch), but considering Penn State’s second, third and fourth leading receivers played positions over than wideout, it’s safe to say he didn’t have much help.
Four years is a long time to play at one program, especially in the age of the transfer portal. It’s possible that Lambert-Smith would be flourishing in Kotelnicki’s offense and the Penn State offense would be better off had he stayed. But it’s also possible Lambert-Smith made the move that was best for his career, and the numbers would back that up.
One more thing that’s possible is that Penn State’s receivers won’t put up numbers against Ohio State. If that happens and Lambert-Smith keeps putting up big numbers at Auburn, we might have to revisit this discussion.
