Sunday Column: Another Big Win, Another Missed Opportunity to get Allar work. Not That It Matters …

Sean Clifford became Penn State’s career passing leader Saturday, when the uber-veteran quarterback went 12-of-23 for 139 yards and one touchdown in the team’s 30-0 smacking of Maryland.

He also, thanks largely to a Nittany Lion defense that channeled Bobby Boucher from the first series to the last, was the best quarterback on the field, as Taulia Tagovailoa went 11-of-22 for 74 yards, not including his early completion to Aric Harris, one of his offensive linemen.

It was not an afternoon for aerial fireworks in soggy Beaver Stadium.

Of course, that didn’t stop many fans from keeping their focus off a defense that seems to be improving each week since the full-body dry heave in Ann Arbor, or how much more patient and eager to take on contact Nick Singleton looked against the Terps, and putting it squarely on the kid who played two inconsequential series late in the third quarter.

Penn State fans have swallowed the fact that Drew Allar is not going to be the starter at any point this season, and even if that particular pill tastes a little more bitter each time Clifford airmails an open receiver or simply doesn’t set his freaking feet, all but the true contrarians get it. They don’t like it, but they get it.

Getting the rookie extra work on a night when the game was not only well in hand by halftime but, truly, early in the second quarter is another matter. And James Franklin, for his typical conservative reasons or as a master troll stroke, let an obvious opportunity to get Allar some run with the ones pass him by as the rain poured down.

Look, I can’t — and won’t — defend that decision. There was no reason for Clifford to still be in the game in the second half, and the only real choices should have centered on how aggressive they wanted to be with the playcalling for Allar given time, score, and the nightmarish conditions.

But I’m also here to tell you that this ever-elusive game experience for Allar is wildly overrated as it pertains to 2023 and beyond.

On the face of it, sure — getting live reps against Maryland, even a beaten and battered Maryland in a game that’s well out of hand, is better than even the most competitive practice rep for a young player, let alone one who plays a position that determines so much of the outcome. Game speed, opponents who want to do real damage to you, all that … I get it.

But I want to mention three quick examples of other Penn State quarterbacks who got a ton of early experience that didn’t exactly pay off later.

Zack Mills set the world (OK, central Pennsylvania) on fire in the fall of 2001, leading Penn State to some gutty wins after a brutal start while supplanting less effective veteran Matt Senneca. By his senior year in 2004, though, injuries and repeated visits to the turf had taken their toll, and Mills was a shell of the electric player we’d seen during his (redshirt) freshman campaign.

Christian Hackenberg won the starting job immediately as a true freshman in 2013 and had some early success, showing poise and maturity beyond his years. By the time he left Penn State two years later, though, both he and most of the team’s fans were more than ready for a fresh start.

Did that early experience save Mills from a lack of offensive weaponry around him in 2003 and 2004? Did the extensive playing time Hackenberg had as a freshman help him avoid the pounding he took as a junior behind insufficient lines, or the watered-down offense he was given to operate?

Has Clifford developed all that much from the (pulls out abacus) 48 games of experience he’s acquired since arriving in State College?

This is not to say I’m not bullish on Allar, whose talent and potential might exceed that of any quarterback who has ever worn a Penn State uniform. But the Drew Allar that takes the field next fall as the presumptive starter is going to be a different player than he is today. He’ll be bigger and stronger thanks to another offseason with Chuck Losey and his crew. He’ll have had more time to study Mike Yurcich’s system and how opposing defenses will try to stop it. You could argue that a few more reps here or there than he’s had to date, and going forward, would speed up that development process, and you might not be wrong.

College football is not played in a vacuum, though, and Allar’s experience/development is just one piece of the puzzle, an important piece though it may be. His success next season and beyond will be determined by the line Penn State puts around him, by the continued development of Singleton, Kaytron Allen, and an intriguing but still crazy-raw receiving corps, by the way Yurcich designs the offense around first Allar and then around each week’s opponent, and ultimately by the way he prepares as the starter. If he is truly made of the right stuff, the reps he missed out on this year won’t matter, and his inevitable growing pains will be brief and minor. If he’s not, well, we’ll figure that out pretty quickly, too, and the snaps he might have received this fall won’t matter.

I’ll leave you with one more example. Two years ago, Tagovailoa came to Beaver Stadium and completed 18 of 26 passes for 282 yards and three touchdowns to lead his team to a 35-19 win. Has the game experience he’s picked up since then not helped him develop as a player? How could it not? Did that experience, though, save him this Saturday against a rabid Penn State defense? Not a bit.

To reiterate—experience can certainly be a benefit for young players. We’re seeing weekly examples of that on Penn State’s defense and each time Singleton touches the ball. It’s important to remember, though, that experience alone is no more valuable to a college quarterback than premium gasoline is to a car that is missing a wheel. Reps are great, but if quarterbacks don’t have the processing tools, instincts, or touch going in, their ceilings will be limited no matter how many reps they get. We’re seeing that every week now, too, with Penn State’s starting QB.

You can say that Franklin is doing Allar a disservice by not playing him more this season than he has. I say that getting the right pieces around Allar in 2023 will mean a lot more than anything he does against Maryland or Rutgers or even a decent bowl opponent — and that no matter how much he plays or doesn’t play this fall, we can’t know what he and those pieces will look like — never mind how they fit — until September.