Sunday Column: Outstanding Freshman Backs Took Us — and Plenty of Big Ten Defenders — to School This Season
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.
During the last few months, Singleton proved he was as-advertised, but Allen showed he was every bit as impactful, finishing the season with more carries than any Penn State back. He was arguably more reliable in short-yardage and goal-line situations and had more catches and receiving yards than Singleton as well.
The lesson: Sometimes you get a Saquon Barkley. Sometimes you get a Tony Hunt beating out an Austin Scott. This year, Penn State was fortunate enough to get a Barkley and a Hunt in the same class.
Development
While most fans (and, uh, most columnists) could not stop focusing on the developmental reps Allar was or was not getting behind Sean Clifford, Singleton quietly made some big strides as a runner. We saw his breakaway abilities against Auburn and at a few other junctures, of course, but as the season went on, he also showed an improved ability to run in traffic, to shed some of the leg tackles that had literally tripped him up earlier in the season. This is a credit to him, of course, but also to the coaching of Ja’Juan Seider. And it’s a big recruiting feather in the cap of a program that continues to produce pro talent at the position.
The lesson: No one is ever a finished product, especially not true freshmen.
Catalysts
The efficiency and growth of its two freshman runners helped the rest of Penn State’s offense compensate for injuries and a relative lack of spark at wide receiver, the limited ceiling of Clifford as a thrower, an offensive line that still had a ways to go after two seasons of, for lack of a better word, meh, and playcalling that just as often made you scratch your head as nod it in approval.
Gauging the offense’s true seasonal progress is difficult considering the bulk of the defenses Penn State faced down the stretch were flawed-to-fugly and the line dealt with an increasing number of injuries of its own, but it’s hard to look at the second half of the season and see anything but an upward trend. The tight ends came to life, Clifford played some very efficient football and the playcalling was smart and even, at times, fun. The running backs didn’t make it all happen, but they were the spark that allowed the rest of the offense to eventually light up.
The lesson: The impact a player (or two players) can have sometimes stretches far beyond his position.
Two Heads ≥ One
Penn State hasn’t shied away from a committee approach at running back since Seider arrived in 2018, but also hadn’t had much success with it before this season. Whether Singleton or Allen got the start, the other one would also wind up with plenty of snaps and touches, and the Nittany Lions had success in formations with both of them in the backfield. This formula seems more than sustainable moving forward with this particular pair of complementary skill sets—Singleton’s burst and Allen’s shiftiness and power—but also useful to show recruits at the position that they might not have to wait behind the incumbent.
The lesson: There’s only one football, but the better the players you have touching it, the more snaps you’ll have to spread it around. Penn State has two that are capable of keeping the offense on the field … or covering the length of the field in only a few seconds.
