How Penn State QB Drew Allar could use the Peach Bowl as a springboard to the 2024 playoff

Drew Allar’s first year as a starting quarterback at Penn State has seen plenty of ups and downs.

Look at his stats, and you’ll see an efficient quarterback who took care of the ball to the tune of a 23-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio. Dive a little deeper, and you’ll see a quarterback who was not at his best in the biggest games against Ohio State and Michigan. Go even further into the film, and you’ll see he was not always put in a position to succeed until late in the season, after Penn State let go of offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich and replaced him with co-coordinators Ty Howle and Ja’Juan Seider.

Those are among the many positives and negatives of a sophomore quarterback taking over the starting gig as a 19-year-old, but those changes at the end have a chance to propel the team forward into 2024, all thanks to a few minor alterations by Howle and Seider.

“I think Coach Seider and Coach Howle have done a great job of giving us simple rules to follow, not giving us too many looks or too many rules,” Allar said Wednesday morning. “... That allows those guys to play fast. Same with the tight ends in that aspect of route running, and that makes my job a lot easier just because I think the timing and communication got on like a different level because I was able to anticipate more what everybody was doing out on the perimeter.”

Now it’s about capitalizing on that simplicity and taking another step forward into a very important 2024. The College Football Playoff will expand to 12 teams and Penn State is primed to make it for the first time. But it won’t be able to do that without its star quarterback succeeding at an even higher level.

That falls on him, but also on the coaches tasked with helping him in practice. This year that meant a lot of coaching from Yurcich — who was also the quarterbacks coach — with help from graduate assistant Danny O’Brien. Next year, that setup will look different. O’Brien will be joined by head coach James Franklin and offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki in coaching the quarterbacks, according to what the new OC said at his introductory press conference.

O’Brien’s involvement is an important part of that. And that was something Allar advocated for.

“I felt Danny was great for the room,” Allar said. “Not only for me, but Danny fits the whole quarterback room really well. I think we just needed him around for that and to be that stable guy in that room — kind of be the mediator between whoever the new OC was, at that point because Coach K (Kotelnicki) wasn’t hired at that point, and Coach Franklin, since Coach Franklin is the head coach. And I think Danny aligns with the program in the right way. ... He just brings a lot of experience and knowledge to that room, and I think he just relates to everybody really well.”

Familiar face for Andy Kotelnicki

For many players at Penn State, Kotelnicki is a new face to get to know. But for one of the team’s captains, he was a familiar one.

“Not a lot of people know this, Coach K was my brother’s offensive coordinator at college when he was at Buffalo,” tight end Theo Johnson said. “So I know him pretty well. He came up to Canada and recruited him. The day he got the job, he FaceTimed me and we were talking and catching up.”

Johnson’s brother, Dominic, played for Kotelnicki from 2016-2020 at Buffalo, where Theo would travel to see him play. Those games served their expected purpose for Theo and his family — watching Dominic — but some of those trips turned into much more for him.

“Whenever we would go watch my brother play, they would try and bring me in and sit me down and talk to me and stuff,” Theo said. “They tried hard.”

Ultimately, Theo said the Buffalo staff knew their odds of landing him were not good once Penn State and other big schools came calling. But just under four years after he signed with the Nittany Lions, he was able to have a reunion with the coach who once tried to recruit him.

“The first time I met him was eighth grade, ninth grade, maybe,” he said. “I remember the first time I did a camp in front of him, I was at the ‘Best of the Midwest’ camp. He came out there and that was the first time he’d seen me in three or four years and he was like, ‘What happened to you? You’ve completely changed.’ ... We talk about the football gods brought us together for whatever reason.”

Despite that, Theo will only learn under Kotelnicki for a short period of time. He made his announcement to declare for the 2024 NFL Draft this month, despite the coordinator’s efforts to bring him back for one more year.

It would have been easy for the OC to cast his tight end aside since he wouldn’t be in any of his future plans for the 2024 season, but Theo said that isn’t what happened.

“Once I announced, nothing changed,” he said. “Which kind of was a surprise to me. Just a really good dude and my brother has nothing but good things to say about him and his offensive mind and the things he’s been able to do with all the offenses he’s worked with.”

Quick hitters

• Johnson said he hasn’t decided on if he’s going to play the entire Peach Bowl or if he will be on some sort of snap count.

• WR Harrison Wallace III has not played since he was injured against Indiana in October, but could be ready to return against Ole Miss. Johnson said Wallace looked like the team’s best receiver in training camp prior to the season.