Now that Penn State has wrapped up finals week, and the Nittany Lions can turn their (full) attention to the exam awaiting them in Pasadena, it seems a good a time as any to reflect on the lessons learned from two of the youngest Lions, Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen.
These two dynamic running backs have injected life into what had for the last few seasons been a mostly comatose Penn State rushing attack this fall, leading to a 69% increase in rushing yards per game from 2021, and in doing so provided some teachable moments on subjects including:
Expectations
Singleton was the five-star stud of the Class of 2022, the 27th overall player in the group and the top running back prospect according to the On3 consensus rankings. From the moment he committed, he had Penn State fans as excited as anyone not named Drew Allar, and when you watched some of his tape, that second name didn’t even matter. Allen, on the other hand, had some impressive bona fides of his own (the 136th overall prospect and No. 8 RB) but not the sizzle, even as reports of him impressing in preseason camp trickled into the collective consciousness.
