Penn State Football: Allar Shines, but Growing Talent Around Him Is What Can Make Him Truly Special

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — It is natural to get caught up watching the arm of true freshman quarterback Drew Allar. His release is pretty, his throws effortless and his potential seemingly endless. His boyish face a reminder of his youth and the long road ahead that he has to get even better still.

But there is a limit to what one kid can do. As Penn State’s once equally youthful quarterback Christian Hackenberg found out, the quarterback position is as much about the talent around you as it is the talent within you. A great quarterback can drag a team only so far, an elite quarterback is often the marriage of his skills coupled with the skill around him.

Former Penn State quarterback Trace McSorley is the most recent example of this. While the Virginia native had many intangibles and no shortage of skills in his own right, the success Penn State had under McSorley’s was equal parts his own doing and the complement of talent found next to him in the huddle. Penn State’s 2016 and 2017 teams in particular were loaded with playmakers, some of the best to ever take the field for Penn State. McSorley was skilled, but it sure did help to have all that talent at his disposal.

So yes, as the Nittany Lions rolled past Indiana 45-14 on Saturday afternoon it was hard not appreciate watching Allar take the field and make more than his fair share of plays in the second half. How could you not?

But perhaps even more importantly for his own future and the future of the offense he is likely to helm in 2023 was the continued emergence of running backs Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton. The true freshmen duo amassed 159 yards on the ground and four touchdowns Saturday, a physical effort, and an impressive display of vision mixed with power. Allen in particular was seemingly more mature than his age on Saturday as he deftly maneuvered through Indiana’s defense with ease and command. Singleton, too, found his own stride with increasingly bruising hits as the game went along.

It’s in this where Penn State can find success, merging the talent Allar appears to have with the talent growing and maturing around him.

“I think it’s really important,” Penn State coach James Franklin said after the game. “We’ve got two really good backs that obviously we’re excited about. And they’re getting a ton of reps and a ton of experience. What we have to continue to do is not only continue to develop and recruit at the quarterback position, but then we also need to make sure that we surround those guys with as much talent as possible so that we give ourselves the best chance to win week in and week out no matter who the competition is.

“To be able to take a check down and hit Kaytron and have him be able to break it for 30 or 50 yards. Those are big time plays. To be able to hand the ball off to Nick Singleton … he’s a threat to score at any point during the game. The tight ends we’ve developed, the offensive linemen that we’re starting to develop. That’s the challenge. It’s how do you get all the pieces of the puzzle there at the same time.”

Penn State’s offensive line deserves some credit in this as well. While the presumed departure of sophomore tackle Olu Fashanu to the NFL Draft won’t help this group, the Nittany Lions are slowly but surely finding themselves in the trenches. If Penn State wants to give Allen and Singleton credit for nearly 200 rushing yards on Saturday, it can also give credit to a line that was without both Fashanu and the injured Landon Tengwall.

Franklin and company will need to find the same sort of rising skills in Penn State’s receiver room, but Trey Wallace, Liam Clifford and a handful of other untapped wideouts are all seemingly poised to start to make that next step. That group can be especially bolstered if receiver Parker Washington opts to return .

Nevertheless, as Allar took the field and guided the Nittany Lions to multiple scoring drives, the young quarterback was as much a benefactor of the skills around him as the skills he too possessed. It was the marriage fans have been waiting to see, because if Penn State is going to do much of anything with Allar at the helm, that will have as much to do with it as anything else.