MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. —
Drew Allar shouldn’t have thrown it.
He probably knew that as soon as he let it go. You don’t force throws, especially over the middle late in the play — a rule of quarterbacking that’s easy to understand and hard in the white-hot heat of the moment to always implement.
“I was just trying to dirt it at his feet,” Allar said, meaning throw the football low-and-outside enough that only Penn State wideout Omari Evans could grab it. If it bounced to him, OK.
“I should have just thrown it away,” Allar said.
Somewhere in there is a metaphor for Penn State’s historic but not great season, which ended very late Thursday night in a 27-24 loss to Notre Dame in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff at the Orange Bowl.
Allar’s imperfect throw was intercepted by Notre Dame’s Christian Grey, beginning a sequence that led to Mitch Jeter’s game-winning, 41-yard field goal with seven seconds left.
“It’s a game of execution,” Penn State coach James Franklin said. “We just made too many mistakes.”
That’s true, but only in the sense that it’s always true in every game that has ever been played by anyone.
This Penn State edition played defense well enough to win Thursday and to win a natty. It ran the ball well enough, certainly in season-defining games late in the season. It had a unique and devastating weapon in tight end Tyler Warren and fired it.
It prepared well enough and stayed healthy enough and was fortunate enough and, yes, clear your throat and say it, was coached well enough to win the whole thing.
But if Evans had caught Allar’s low-and-away fastball, it would have been the first catch of the game by a Penn State wide receiver.
No production from the group and seemingly little role in the game plan. Not for the first time.
That’s the story: The incredible, season-long dearth of production from the wideouts, which made Penn State too easy to defend. Not easy to defend, but too easy to win it all.
It made Franklin’s protestations to the media in the run-up to the game, that we weren’t chronicling his wideouts’ resurgence, seem pathetic.
Is it position-coaching? Franklin has had five receivers coaches in his 11 years at Penn State, four since 2018. The previous one, Taylor Stubblefield, was reportedly let go, in 2022, because he wasn’t getting it done as a recruiter.
It may be instructive that the 2022 recruiting class that forms the nucleus of this team, including Abdul Carter, Allar, Nick Singleton, Kaytron Allen, Zane Durant, Dani Dennis-Sutton … also included five wide receivers in Evans, Anthony Ivey, Kaden Saunders, Mekhi Flowers and Tyler Johnson. Only Evans has done anything of note as a college player.
Franklin perhaps belied his own argument about a WR renaissance by getting two commits from the transfer portal, Devonte Ross (from Troy) and Kyron Hudson (USC), just days after the portal opened last month.
The focus on wideouts, while reasonable, perhaps lets the quarterback off the hook too easily.
On the surface, Allar has everything. He’s 6-foot-5, 230, with a pure, but also highly developed, ability to throw a football. He was a five-star, franchise-type recruit. He by all accounts and appearances checks all the intangible boxes as a worker, leader and teammate.
But something’s missing. Halfway through this season he was in the top five nationally in pass efficiency and completion percentage.
Lately? His numbers Thursday — 12-of-23, 135 yards, one pick and no TDs — have been typical.
His teammates and coaches had his back postgame in a way that went beyond obligatory.
“He’ll handle it the right way,” Franklin said, as Allar pushed back tears and maybe Franklin did, too. “He’s hurting right now. We’re all hurting right now. It may not feel like it right now, but he’ll learn from this.”
He’ll have to if this emotional season is going to amount to something more than a nice run through a friendly playoff bracket.
