Penn State Football: Don’t Expect Clifford’s Starting Role to Change

While declarative headlines are absolutely never the sort of thing that come back to haunt you, it would seem that all the clamoring for true freshman Drew Allar to take over Sean Clifford’s role as starting quarterback is falling on deaf ears. Or perhaps better stated, those cries are falling on more informed ears.

“I had discussions with members on the staff,” Penn State coach James Franklin said Saturday, reiterating that the topic of who might start at quarterback against Indiana had been bounced around the Lasch Building. “But nothing had changed from our perspective. Everybody’s still solid the same way. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t too close to the decision. Literally to a man everybody [agreed].

“Now obviously we would have loved to get Drew in this game [and Penn State did]; that was part of the plan to hopefully continue to get him as many reps as we possibly can. I think the last time I got together with you guys I think my first seven questions were about the quarterback position. And for us it really wasn’t a long dialogue, one discussion that we had. And after that, we just kind of went back to our normal operation.”

While this decision might irk some fans who are hoping to get a more prolonged look at Allar prior to the 2023 season, the Nittany Lions find themselves three wins from a 10-win season with no real overwhelmingly challenging opponent in front of them. In turn, while Clifford might occasionally be prone to his career-long case of the “what was that?,” it doesn’t much change the fact he’s the far more experienced option. All told, if Penn State opts to finish out the year with — to steal baseball terminology — Clifford earning the win and Allar earning the save, then it’s a plan that might very well please all masters. If nothing else, a few early quarters here and there against Maryland, Rutgers and Michigan State might prove to make those games more interesting, but they likely would not prove to vastly change the trajectory of Allar’s career.

The general decision also relies heavily on the fact Allar’s strengths have been far more apparent to the public eye than his weaknesses, and while he certainly appears to be every bit the top prospect, he’s not necessarily Penn State’s best bet to win each of those final three regular season games — a point that Franklin once again reiterated in his own way.

“Everybody’s got strong opinions on what we should do,” Franklin said, “but with probably less than 1% of the information. Whereas we get to watch these guys in practice every single day, in meetings and in the games. And they’re both doing really good things and obviously we need to continue to get through as many opportunities as we can.”

As for why those discussions happened in the first place, Franklin chalked it up to simply making sure he was on the same page as everyone else. It is tempting to want to see Allar and in truth the best thing for Penn State football’s future is getting Allar as prepared as it possibly can. The problem of course is not sacrificing wins in 2022 for wins in 2023. The job is to win now, after all.

So yes, Franklin might have talked to coaches and people in the Lasch Building about who might start against Indiana, but that doesn’t automatically mean the answer was ever going to be anyone other than Sean Clifford.

“I remember back when you write essays and you write an essay over and over and over and you’ve got a typo in there and you don’t see the typo so you get a fresh set of eyes,” Franklin said. “I wanted make sure that the way I see it is the same way that offense coordinator sees it and the other guys that have got head coaching experience see it and the defensive coordinator … that everybody sees it the same way. Ultimately that’s really my job, in my opinion, is to make the best decisions that we possibly can for the program but I don’t sit there making those decisions on my own. I talk to the people that I have around me. We do that in recruiting, we do that with personnel, we do that in scheme, we have discussions. We got a bunch of talented people in the room with a bunch of different experience and with every decision I tried to get their input.”

So sorry, sir, James Franklin isn’t reading your Facebook post. But good news, Drew Allar will eventually be Penn State’s starting quarterback, just not likely in 2022.