Sunday Column: Are the Lions that got away – and glowed up – simply part of doing business or a sign of deeper dysfunction?

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Tre Wallace has averaged 86 yards through his first four games as a receiver for Ole Miss. He averaged 31 yards in 39 games as a Nittany Lion. Beau Pribula has thrown for 962 yards through his first four games at Missouri, which is 538 more yards than he logged through 24 games as a part-time Penn State quarterback.

Both of these former Lions are statistically out-pacing their current Penn State counterparts, which begs the question as the Lions prepare for one of their biggest regular-season games in years: Is there a fundamental flaw in Penn State’s offensive system?

To answer this question, which has been brought up more often than you would expect for a team ranked No. 2 and averaging a solid if not eye-popping 437 yards of offense per game, we must consider parts and wholes. The best football teams at any level of the game typically have better parts, on average, than their competitors, but the truly special teams can maximize the individual talents by getting them to blend into a synchronized, consistent whole.

Wallace and Pribula clearly had talent when they were in State College, and it showed in bits and pieces over the past few seasons. But neither were key pieces in the machinery. Pribula had Drew Allar ahead of him, while Wallace’s potential targets were sucked up by Tyler Warren, who is currently making one-time New York Giant castoff Daniel Jones look like a Pro Bowler in Indianapolis.

So why, then, are both players being more productive with ostensibly less talent around them? There is something to be said for change of scenery and change of scheme, and in Pribula’s case, the change to full-time starter gave him the chance to put up gaudy numbers he never had here. But this is more about what Penn State is and isn’t doing than what the guys who transferred out are.

Allar’s all-new wideout trio of Trebor Pena, Kyron Hudson, and Devonte Ross has been solid, combining for 32 catches and three touchdowns in the first three weeks, but the explosive plays have generally not been there, and the short and intermediate gains have looked both breathtakingly easy and impossibly hard at times this season. It’s like finding someone you have great chemistry with but each date also includes an awkward argument about a random topic.

Is it on the QB? Sometimes. Is it on the receivers to get open? Sometimes. Is it miscommunication between the two? Sometimes. Is it the scheme? Sometimes. In other words, the issues that nibbled at Penn State’s consistency the last couple of seasons, even as the Lions were marching through the playoff, haven’t been eradicated after what was basically a line change in the receiving corps. That suggests the (again, relative) struggles in 2023 and 2024 were less on Wallace, Omari Evans, and the rest of the beleaguered receivers and more on the other pieces of the offense, notably, Allar and Andy Kotelnicki. Those two parts are the most likely, and most responsible, to make the whole work.

And that’s the other, uh, part to this: The rest of the pieces of the Nittany Lions—defense, special teams, and to a slightly lesser extent the offensive line and running backs—have been pretty good, and fairly consistent, against mediocre opposition so far. There are lots of ways to win a football game, and the talent and cohesion Penn State has in those other areas have allowed the passing game to have some stops and starts while the team is still winning comfortably. The notion that Allar is going to have to start throwing for 320 yards and four tuddies per game for Penn State to be the best version of Penn State undermines the quality and capabilities of the rest of the team. The current formula of rock-star defense plus hidden yards via special teams play plus an offense that generally protects the football will be enough on its own to subdue all but a couple of teams left on the schedule, and it’s not hard to see Oregon and Ohio State falling to that same formula, too, with just a bit more sharpness from the quarterback and the playcaller, who have both delivered in big spots in the past.

So, then, it should be heartening to see Pribula and Wallace tearing it up in the SEC (it should be noted that their respective schedules will get tougher, too). It’s a sign that the Lions knew what they were doing when recruiting and developing both players. And it’s also worth pointing out that Missouri and Ole Miss are constructed differently, with different parts and different wholes than Penn State. The longer the current Lions go without making the whole into the sum of their talented parts, though, the longer the questions about the system that the former Lions left will linger, and the more time they’ll spend on the razor’s edge that separates the best teams from the almost-wholes.