Penn State football’s offense wasn’t good enough against Oregon, and although QB Drew Allar is far, far from blameless, it isn’t entirely on him.
Hey, I get it.
The quarterback is the one who gets the lion’s share of credit when his team succeeds and the lion’s share of blame when it fails.
That’s certainly true at a school as nationally prominent as Penn State and absolutely true for a guy like Allar, who was the No. 1 prep QB in the country before starting his college career.
When Allar came to Penn State in 2022, everybody knew it would only be a matter of time before he’d be the starter— some even wanted it to happen right away.
When Sean Clifford used up his sixth and final season of eligibility, Allar was the guy.
Since then, he’s turned into perhaps the most polarizing QB in Penn State history.
Allar’s defenders will point to Penn State’s team success since he’s been the starter. Penn State is 26-7 in Allar’s starts, with two double-digit win seasons, three New Year’s Six Bowl appearances and a semifinal run in last season’s College Football Playoff.
Allar’s detractors will focus on the seven losses.
All seven have been to ranked opponents. Six of them have been against teams in the top ten, and the last three have featured a critical late interception thrown by the Penn State QB.
That brings us to Saturday night, which Penn State fans have blamed Allar for in a big way.
Yes, Allar (14-25, 137 yards, 2 TD, game-sealing INT against Oregon), should be held accountable, and yes, he hasn’t delivered when it’s mattered most.
But he’s not the only problem Penn State’s offense is facing.
Let’s think back to before Allar got to Penn State.
The program had just gone through a two-year stretch where it lost as many games as it won (11-11). The 2021 team was up to par defensively bur struggled on offense and struggled to run the ball. Therefore, Penn State went from being 5-0 and ranked No. 3 to 7-6 and losing the Outback Bowl.
The next season, while Allar was learning from Clifford, two of his classmates were reshaping the Penn State offense as true freshmen.
Nick Singleton (1,061 yards) and Kaytron Allen (867 yards) gave Penn State one of the best running games in the country. With the defense still strong, Penn State went 11-2, won the Rose Bowl and finished in the top ten. The rise of Penn State’s running game coincided with the rise of the offense line, which had been under consistent scrutiny for almost a decade.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.Through Allar’s inconsistencies, Penn State’s line and running game continued to thrive in 2023 and 24.
That brings us to Saturday night.
While everybody criticized Allar, Singleton, who, like Allar, was the No. 1 prep player at his position in the 2022 Class, carried the ball 11 times.
He gained 21 yards.
That’s under two yards per carry.
Allen was better, averaging 5.4 yards per carry.
The problem was, he touched the ball 12 times, one more than Singleton, who wasn’t effective at any point.
This shows that Penn State either doesn’t realize that Allen— who out-rushed Singleton in Penn State’s first three games— is Penn State’s best runner, or does realize it and is more worried about building Singleton’s self-esteem than using its best players.
This doesn’t mean that fans should take all their anger toward Allar and project it to Singleton instead. That would be absolving the offensive line of blame. Just as the big fellas deserves credit when Penn State tore Oregon up for 297 yards rushing in last seasons Big Ten Championship Game, they deserve blame for Penn State only having 139 against Oregon, including the overtime period.
They also deserve blame for some of Allar’s struggles.
Per Pro Football Focus, Oregon pressured Allar 18 times on 25 drop backs.
That’s not ideal for a quarterback, is it? This was supposed to be the best Penn State offensive line maybe in school history, and what has it shown so far?
There must be blame at the feet of Andy Kotelnicki, too. In Penn State’s two regular season losses since he took over as OC in 2024, Penn State never scored a touchdown before the fourth quarter. That’s not good enough, and maybe Kotelnicki’s scheme— which caters toward dual-threat quarterbacks— isn’t what a traditional pocket passer such as Allar needs.
Drew Allar needs to be better, and in big games, he needs to be much better.
With that said, the reactions of PSU fans make it seem like, next to James Franklin, he’s the sole reason for these big game failures, and it’s just not true.
