Who will be Penn State’s starting QB? ‘Still in a competition phase,’ James Franklin says

It is nearly August and it seems like a foregone conclusion that sophomore Drew Allar will start at quarterback for Penn State. But head coach James Franklin isn’t quite ready to make that determination. At least, not yet anyway.

“Everybody wants to talk about quarterback,” he said in Indianapolis at Big Ten Media Days. “We’re still in a competition phase. Obviously there’s a lot of people talking about Drew and what he brings to the table. ... But Beau Pribula is a guy everyone in our program has a ton of respect for as well.”

Allar entered the program as a five-star quarterback according to recruiting rankings and did nothing to make evaluators believe that judgment was incorrect.

He played limited snaps behind last year’s starting quarterback Sean Clifford, but when he had his chances, he took advantage and showed what he can do.

“Probably the thing I was most impressed with last year was his poise when he did get in games,” Franklin said. “You saw him in the Purdue game. We opened the season, primetime, black out, conference game. And he got in there and he just looked poised and confident. All of those things you can develop and train. That’s something that’s hard to develop and train. Either you have that or you don’t. And he has it.”

Allar’s play on the field showed that the tools he has don’t just show up in practice or in camps when he was in high school. It proved he can take his abilities and translate them into real production. And those abilities are among the best you’ll find in a quarterback. Allar is 6-foot-5 with a strong arm and the accuracy and feel for passing that allows him to make every throw in the book.

But while all of those attributes are tantalizing, Franklin doesn’t want to discuss what the upside is just yet because of his lack of experience.

“For me to sit here and talk about his ceiling when he hasn’t started a game in college football, it’s hard to say,” Franklin said.

Improvements with NIL

Franklin made comments on former Penn State tight end Adam Breneman’s podcast that the program was two years behind when it comes to name, image and likeness (NIL) and players’ ability to profit off them. Athletic director Pat Kraft said Tuesday that the athletic department is rapidly making progress and on Wednesday, Franklin said strides have been made.

“Pat has come in here and made a significant impact and emphasized this more to what we’re competing against not only within the conference but also on a national level,” Franklin said. “And then I just felt like although we had made progress, it had kind of leveled off again and we needed to take that next step.”

With NIL, it’s difficult to quantify what progress actually looks like. The amount of money players make isn’t widely publicly available info and neither is the amount that each individual collective — organizations that raise funds and help organize opportunities for athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness — has at its disposal.

That raises the question of what it looks like when a team is where it needs to be with regards to NIL. For Penn State, there are ways they can find out the information they need and use that to find out where they need to improve and what they need to do to get where they want.

“You try to benchmark as much as you can with things publicly, you’re using that,” Franklin said. “The other thing you’re using is when you’re talking to your current players and they have good friends at other programs. That’s a way to gain some information. When you hire new staff. ... You’re able to gain information like that from people you hire coming from other programs and getting specific information.”

Transfer portal

The other side of NIL and how it impacts high school recruiting is how it impacts roster management and player retention. Of course, it’s against NCAA rules for schools to contact players in other programs and try to lure them away with lucrative NIL packages, but of course it happens anyway.

That’s no different at Penn State where the Nittany Lions dealt with schools reaching out to their players after the 2022 season ended.

“As you guys know, too, some of our current players were offered opportunities,” Franklin said. “And I say ... this because it’s happening all over college football. Where our players after the season were contacted from other programs to transfer and were offered deals.”

While Penn State was trying to fill out its roster, it was also fighting to keep its own players in the fold. Franklin said every program in the country was concerned about what the portal was going to look like leading into the window when it opened up in early December.

Still, the program fell back on what they preached to their players and it allowed them to retain all of their star players that had remaining eligibility and didn’t enter the draft.

“We had a ton of conversations with our players,” Franklin said. “I think, although we’ve had some challenges in the NIL space, I do think there’s a ton of respect from our players in how we have handled things. I think there’s been some examples of maybe places that were very aggressive early on, which is good, but also if not handled well it can cause you some real issues in your locker room, too.”

Quick hitters

• Deion Barnes has impressed Franklin thus far as the team’s defensive line coach. Franklin acknowledged that he didn’t expect to hire him early in the process, but he excelled in his interview and that made him a legitimate target.

• Franklin said he spoke to former Penn State running back Saquon Barkley a few days ago and wants to be a resource for him for the rest of his life. Barkley recently signed a one-year deal with the New York Giants after they franchise tagged him earlier this offseason.

• The Penn State head coach glowed about new wide receivers coach Marques Hagans, calling him both a first class person on and off the field. Franklin added that Hagans has seen the development from the team’s wide receivers this spring.