{"id":629557,"date":"2026-03-03T16:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T16:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/629557\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T16:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T16:18:18","slug":"what-went-wrong-for-penn-states-former-five-star-qb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/629557\/","title":{"rendered":"What went wrong for Penn State’s former five-star QB"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2026 NFL Combine<\/strong><\/a> came and went with little chatter surrounding ex-Penn State<\/a><\/b> quarterback Drew Allar<\/a><\/b>. The former five-star recruit turned in a solid performance<\/strong><\/a> in throwing drills, but barely moved the needle as other quarterbacks dominated the headlines.<\/p>\n

The lack of buzz served as yet another punctuation mark on one of the biggest NFL Draft freefalls in recent memory. Allar was mocked as high as No. 2 last offseason<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 now he sits at No. 167 overall<\/strong><\/a> and No. 6 quarterback in a notably weak class of passers.<\/p>\n

So, what went wrong for Drew Allar during his four-year tenure in Happy Valley?<\/p>\n

A run that began with\u00a0championship aspirations\u00a0and ultimately coincided with the firing of decorated head coach James Franklin<\/a><\/b>. Team insiders and national experts shared the inside scoop on where things unraveled.<\/p>\n

Allar arrived at Penn State<\/a><\/b> as the No. 3 overall recruit and the top-ranked quarterback in the 2023 class, equipped with the “prototypical build”<\/strong><\/a> of a modern NFL quarterback \u2014 ideal size at 6-foot-5 with plenty of arm strength to match.<\/p>\n

After sitting his freshman year behind Sean Clifford<\/a><\/b>, Allar took over as the starter in 2023 and posted strong numbers on paper: completing 59.9% of his passes for 2,631 yards and 25 touchdowns against just two interceptions.<\/p>\n

However, Allar completed just 11 of his 36 passes of 20-plus yards (30.6%) in 2023, an inability to hit big plays downfield that would plague him throughout his career.<\/p>\n

Over his three seasons as a starter, he connected on only 38 of 94 attempts of 20-plus yards (40.4%). For context, USC<\/a><\/b> quarterback Jayden Maiava<\/a><\/b> led all of college football this season with 39 completions of 20-plus yards in just 13 games.<\/p>\n

“Allar hasn’t fallen because of a lack of talent so much as a lack of consistency,” said\u00a0CBS Sports<\/strong><\/a> NFL Draft analyst Ryan Wilson<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 NFL Combine came and went with little chatter surrounding ex-Penn State quarterback Drew Allar. The former…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":629558,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[1318,1317,1315,1316,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-629557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116166151919563594","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}