Sunday Column: Lions Lose Their Offensive Linchpin, But The Season – and an era – Might Have Already Been Over

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It was all over his face.

James Franklin had just watched his super-hyped, seven-figure quarterback get helped off the field on the Nittany Lions’ gotta-have-it drive, then his backup come in and get squashed on another futile fourth-down call, then his defense fail to get a stop and provide his offense one more fleeting chance.

It was the third loss in a row in a season that was supposed to have been the one that finally got him and his program over the hump. Franklin made his customary walk to midfield and congratulated his counterpart, Northwestern’s David Braun, while the fans who he had always praised and encouraged serenaded him with a chorus of Homecoming boos and “Fire Franklin.”

He didn’t know quite how it had come to this — no one did — but Franklin has always possessed a remarkable ability to see the big picture better than most, and there was no sugar-coating or glossing over the picture that came into sharp focus for the third straight week:

The program is broken.

Sure, the Nittany Lions look like a football team and talk like a football team and, on a few occasions, even play like a football team. They got Kaytron Allen going for a few stretches on Saturday after his almost inexplicable lack of touches the previous two weeks. They blocked another punt and came up with a fumble of a muffed punt. Transfer wideout Devonte Ross had — among other things — what might be considered a breakout game.

But they lost the game to what should have been an inferior opponent, and not because a knee might or might not have touched grass or because Andy Kotelnicki couldn’t dial up a red-zone winner. They lost because, for all of their future pros and talented depth and expensive coaching staff, they are simply not a good football team right now, and it is very hard to see a path that would lead them to be one even if Drew Allar hadn’t been lost for the rest of the season.

It wasn’t that the Lions didn’t show fight or fire after one of the most embarrassing defeats in program history. They did — some, at least. But they didn’t show any more attention to the details than they had in the previous five games. Ross looked baffled when the officials didn’t let him advance a punt that had bounced — despite the fact he’d already signaled for a fair catch. Allar, after an early completion, hustled his team to the line for the next play, apparently having no idea that the first quarter had come to an end seconds earlier. Penn State had twice as many penalty yards (71) in the first half as they did passing yards (35).

There were some small signs that the coaches were attempting to shake things up — Allen getting first crack at carries over Nick Singleton for the first time this season, despite massively outplaying him in every game. A few new faces seeing time in the secondary and along the offensive line (TJ Shanahan), a few more three-linebacker looks featuring youngsters like Keon Wylie. A concerted effort to get the ball to Ross, who has been the most dynamic of a group of not-so-dynamic receivers. But, mostly, it was more of the same old, same old. Allar holding the ball for an eternity, waiting for receivers to come open. Kotelnicki dialing up gimmick plays that went for negative yardage as often as for positive yardage. The defense looking terrifyingly soft up the middle against the run. Franklin built the winning culture in this program on continuity despite the rotation of coaches and, as the portal era became more established, of players. His reflex response when things go wrong is to stay the course, rely on the things that got you there. And, for the better part of a decade, that worked.

In the last two weeks, following a brutal but forgivable, understandable loss to a well-balanced Oregon team, the Nittany Lions were in desperate need of a shakeup, some sort of meaningful change in scheme or emotion, and it never came. It will now, simply because the offense will look different — and maybe not entirely in a bad way? — without Allar the rest of the way. But the gloom, the shell-shock, the disconnection that has fallen over this team and its fan base like a shroud is going to be much more difficult to fix than breaking in a new QB1.

The time for get-right games has passed. At UCLA, home against Northwestern — these were supposed to be the get-right games, not at Iowa and at Ohio State and at home against what very well could be a top-3 Indiana team.

The bigger question is not what the future holds for the 2025 rendition of the Lions but for their head coach. His seat went from warm to scalding following last week’s loss and he and his team showed very little on Saturday to indicate things are going to turn around. Regardless of how much we might have overestimated the ceiling of this team, it is stunning to see how far Penn State has fallen from the very good-if-not-great standard that Franklin had set, and how quickly. The future of the program arguably now lies not in the hands of its head coach, the university’s highest-paid employee, but in the hands of his boss and the board of trustees. They are no doubt as stunned as anyone right now, but if the season progresses on its current trajectory, they might not have a choice other than to obey the chant that was ringing in Franklin’s ears as he left the stadium.