Allar May Not Change the Course of Penn State’s Season, but He Might Give the Program and Franklin a Running Start Toward Future

ANN ARBOR, MICH. — In and of itself, Penn State losing to Michigan in Ann Arbor on Saturday was not a particularly surprising nor existentially alarming thing. Losing happens. Losing to a top-five team happens. Losing on the road happens. These are facts of life for every program in America. If the Nittany Lions had made the trip to Michigan and fallen by 10-14 points it would have felt normal enough for fans to stomach and move on with their lives. The idea that “Penn State isn’t as good as Michigan this year” is neither new or problematic.

But that’s not what happened. Penn State was run off the field. The Nittany Lions were bested in every area and in every facet during the 41-17 defeat. It’s only by the grace of a strange pick-six and a short run by Kaytron Allen on fourth and goal that Penn State ever found the end zone in the first place. Michigan posted over 400 rushing yards at a 7.6-yards-per-carry average in a physical attack that started in the trenches and finished as Michigan backs bowled their way through linebackers. Receivers were open when they were needed and quarterback JJ McCarthy was smart and generally accurate when asked to throw the ball.

Michigan looked ready. Michigan looked like a top-five team. Michigan was quintessential Michigan in all the ways that fans of either program have come to know it.

Penn State was all the things that it has tried to avoid over the last few seasons. The Nittany Lions tackled poorly on defense after getting bullied along the defensive front. Receivers struggled to get open. The offensive line created no consistent push and Sean Clifford was asked to do so little in the passing game that 40% of his passing yards came on a single play. While Michigan executed with purpose and poise, Penn State tried to win without being good at much of anything, looking to mask all of its weaknesses but with no safety net to be found.

In fairness, these things happen from time to time. Isolated moments when somebody just lands too many good punches and the other guy just can’t get up. As an individual data point, you can say Penn State played poorly against a very good team and paid the price for it. These things happen, and getting blown out by a top-five team is generally true for everyone. Much of the broad disappointment and surprise surrounding Penn State’s performance was predicated on the assumption that the Nittany Lions were not that far off from being a top-five team in their own right. But this is clearly not the case.

And that is where the challenge lies for James Franklin, and where the growing curiosity of the future is rooted.

Broadly, there is nothing that says Penn State should be a top-five team right now or is entitled to that status. Franklin having been at Penn State for nine seasons does not mean his ninth should be his best by virtue of being the most recent. Longevity in coaching is as much about avoiding prolonged periods of absolute failure as it is regular high level success. Whatever his shortcomings might be, Franklin has afforded Penn State the opportunity to play in games like Saturday’s by winning all the ones that came before them. The theory has always been the same: keep knocking on the door and you’ll eventually be let in. There is something to be said for that. At the same time, the more you fail to open the door, the more people despise knocking in the first place.

That said, the most striking aspect of Saturday’s performance was how far the Nittany Lions felt from what they aspire to be. There was nothing to hang a hat on, nothing to point to and say “if this had gone their way.” Penn State lost and it wasn’t even all that close.

Removed from Saturday’s affair, the next few weeks will greatly inform everyone how much this performance was a singular moment in time or the sign of something bigger. In either case, there was little about Saturday that makes anyone think this season will blossom into something unique. Short of that happening, Franklin will spend the rest of the year — especially if/when the Nittany Lions fall to Ohio State — fending off a growing sense of ambivalence fans, both those in the stands and those with money in the suites, may have toward his vision and great-but-not-elite success. Assuming that a loss to the Buckeyes occurs, there will be few things Franklin can do to slow down that feeling.

But one of them is to start Drew Allar, especially if Sean Clifford —who went into the injury tent in the fourth quarter on Saturday as Allar closed out the game — isn’t healthy.

Because fair or not, it’s very likely that what happens to Penn State football in the next decade is going to come down to the period in time that Allar is almost certainly Penn State’s starting quarterback the next two seasons. If Franklin and company can develop enough pieces around Allar to both protect him in the pocket and give him weapons to work with, the Nittany Lions will have both the high-profile quarterback prospect they have coveted and the support system to make the most of it. Those pieces are there in part right now (the idea Allar is the missing link to Penn State’s national title aspirations in 2022 willfully ignores all of the other issues Penn State faces, it’s incredibly on brand for everyone to watch the Nittany Lions give up 400 yards on the ground and then turn around and talk about the quarterback) but they are incomplete.

Losing on Saturday in the fashion that Penn State lost only accentuates this point. The Nittany Lions could very well go on to win 10 games this year with Clifford at the helm and proceed to go to a nice looking bowl game — but it will feel like all the other seasons with the same ending. It will be good and better than average, but in an era of “what have you done for me lately?” the answer will have been more of the same. Not horrible if the same is 10-2, especially if that record helps land the pieces Penn State needs around Allar, but 10-2 (which seems ambitious right now) is not the bigger-and-better things either.

Getting to where they want to go means doing something they haven’t done before, and that means taking a chance. And taking that chance — playing Allar — is going to give Franklin a spark he has desperately needed the past few seasons.

Alternatively, the question becomes what happens if the Drew Allar era doesn’t turn into something. That’s not say Penn State has to win a national title in the next three years for it to be a success — college football is a wildly chaotic sport — but if Allar goes the route of Christian Hackenberg and never even forms into the player people think he can be, it will be hard not to wonder why and harder still not to point to the coaches around him. In turn, Penn State will find itself double-digit years deep into the Franklin era with one Big Ten title that was won in part because another team got them into the game. Penn State can never afford to outright fire Franklin without cause. The athletic department would owe him upwards of $56 million if it did so after 2024 — nearly the same amount the NCAA fined it during the sanctions — but his buyout for other prospects sits at just $2 million if he felt any urge for a new office after 10+ years looking at Mount Nittany.

So all said, there’s no time like the present start the process. If Penn State wants to win with Allar it has to block better, run better, coach better, recruit better, play better defense and play better football. It also can’t waste the time it has getting him ready for the moment when it all comes together. If it ever does.

None of this is really about Sean Clifford. Clifford is who he is, both deserving of more credit while clearly not the player Penn State is hoping Allar will become no matter how many 10-2 seasons he has. Clifford is constantly prepared and forever working on his craft, and he’s far from the reason Penn State lost on Saturday. But his celling is not changing in the next few months and, barring some strange sequence of events, his NFL future is not going to be drastically impacted by the decision. The die has been cast on that.

But for the rest, the clock is ticking, not because Penn State should move on from James Franklin but because there is no guarantee the quarterback Penn State has been missing out on for the last several decades — the truly elite — will once again be waiting in the wings by the time Allar leaves. If he isn’t, the playoffs will expand in 2026 and the Nittany Lions will likely find themselves in a game similar to the one we saw on Saturday. A big game, but one they are not fully equipped to win.

Playing Allar is less about the now as it is the future, something that runs counter to how football works and finding a way to win next week. It’s not about Clifford. It’s not even about winning more games in 2022, but if Penn State is going to do something bigger and better under James Franklin and do something with Drew Allar, that window is only getting smaller by the week. If nothing else, playing Allar also gives Franklin a bit of carte blanche for a time as the freshman is given the freedom to have somewhat inconsequential growing pains. And if the Nittany Lions are going to play like they did on Saturday against Ohio State and anyone else who takes it to them, then the change might buy Franklin some of the positive momentum he needs right now heading toward two potentially program-defining seasons.