Sunday Column: How Far Can a 5-Star Backfield Take Penn State? Depends on the 5 Guys Up Front
Nicholas Singleton, the electric running back from Governor Mifflin High School, this week became just the third player from Pennsylvania to be named the Gatorade National Player of the Year since the sports drink juggernaut created the award – whose past winners include Emmitt Smith, Payton Manning and Kyler Murray – in 1986.
And yet he wasn’t even the most heralded recruit Penn State signed on Wednesday.
That unofficial honor went to the only player ranked ahead of Singleton in a rather impressive and nearly full Penn State Class of 2022 – Drew Allar, the five-star quarterback from Medina, Ohio. The signing of either player would have been a watershed moment for a program that has recruited lots of good recruits over the last few years but few great recruits, but landing both of them as part of an already solid class gives the Nittany Lions a chance to have some dynamic offenses in the coming seasons.
That is, if Penn State can get some guys to block for them.
In one sense, the Nittany Lions have been here before. They signed Christian Hackenberg, another five-star QB, at a time when, for reasons beyond everyone’s control, it simply wasn’t going to be possible to put together an elite offensive line, and Hackenberg all too predictably paid a lot of that price. The line play had improved a few years later, when Saquon Barkley was entering his jaw-dropping prime, but he did most of his damage by going by, through, or above tacklers, not running through wide holes at scrimmage.
Go back further to when Penn State had NFL talent at basically every offensive skill position in one huddle – Kerry Collins, Ki-Jana Carter, Bobby Engram, Kyle Brady. Those four guys would have succeeded in any offense, but would also be among the first to tell you that the reason the 1994 offense was so inescapably good, against any defense on any field, was the outstanding play of Jeff Hartings, Marco Rivera and the rest of the line.
And that brings us back to the current and future versions of Penn State’s offensive line. The Nittany Lions were inarguably better at protecting Sean Clifford than they were at blocking for anyone brave enough to carry the football on a running play – and yet they still tied for last in the Big Ten with 32 sacks allowed. The team finished 118th out of 130 FBS programs in rushing offense, averaging 107.6 yards per game and less than 3.2 per carry. The running backs and tight ends and playcallers played their parts in this nightmare, too, but Penn State’s consistent failures in short-yardage situations were harder to look at than the stat sheets each week and emblematic of a front five that looked confused as often as it looked outmatched.
Is it going to get better? Eric Wilson and, ostensibly, Rasheed Walker will be gone next season, leaving a pair of starting jobs open, and the rest of the group could stand to be pushed if not replaced outright. There are a couple of tackles with potential on the roster in freshman Landon Tengwall and redshirt freshman Olu Fashanu, and four-star tackle Drew Shelton and Lackawanna College transfer JB Nelson signed on Wednesday, but offensive linemen typically take longer to cook than most positions, and these players might be more than a year or two away from being ready to contribute.
It is possible Allar and Singleton are able to play behind a cohesive, talented (and hopefully just the right kind of mean) offensive line for multiple seasons, but Penn State, dating all the way back to those tremendous lines of the early 1990s, has not been able to consistently field lines that can go step-for-step with the skill talent it has acquired, or, more importantly, match the physicality and athleticism of the best defensive fronts in the conference. There are some potential building blocks, to be sure, but the same was said of most of these previous lines, including the 2021 version.
The Nittany Lions’ skill talent got the sort of boost on Wednesday that would – and could – be a program-changer for a lot of programs. At the same time, the timer on just how long Allar and Singleton will have in blue and white started ticking. It’ll be up to their current and future offensive linemen exactly what they, and their teammates, can achieve before that time expires.
