Two For The Show

As Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen prepare for their curtain call campaign in Happy Valley, they’re poised to rank among the greatest running back tandems in program history.

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It’s safe to say Penn State has rarely had a pair of backs like Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton.

Both arrived on campus in 2022 and were quickly namedropped by running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider as difference makers who had instantly transformed the tenor of a room coming off one of the worst rushing campaigns in school history. The freshmen made good on their coach’s praise that Fall, igniting a potent rushing attack that led the Lions to a Rose Bowl championship in the game’s final year pitting the Big Ten against the PAC-12.

Following a sophomore outing that failed to match the highs of their debut yet still included plenty of positives and finished up strong, they now enter what is presumed to be their final season together at Penn State. With three years of college service, both are expected to enter the NFL Draft next year. In anticipation of this special duo’s swan song, we looked at how their years together in Blue and White stack up against the very best running back tandems in program history.

We examined the most productive combined single seasons for a pair of backs along with the greatest career numbers for pairings who, like Kaytron and Nick, played together their entire careers. Already, State’s modern dynamic duo compares favorably with the very best to ever lace up the black cleats, and their performance this Fall will determine how they match up with the gold standard of Penn State running back tandems: Franco Harris and Lydell Mitchell. No two backs have accomplished more together for the Nittany Lions.

The pair boasts Penn State’s most productive single season for a pair of running backs as well as the best shared career. In 1971, the Nittany Lions finished 11-1 with a final AP #5 ranking after their shellacking of Texas in the Cotton Bowl. That year, splitting carries almost evenly, Franco and Lydell racked up over 2,200 yards on the ground and reached the end zone a staggering 32 times – 10 more rushing TDs than Allen and Singleton tallied in their second-ranked campaign of 2022 (see Table 2). For their careers, which spanned 1969-71, Harris and Mitchell accumulated nearly 5,000 yards rushing and scored an absurd 62 rushing touchdowns, all in an efficient 62 games (see Table 1 for comparison with other top performers). College and the NFL are different animals to be sure, but both also went on to tremendous success at the professional level.

Harris, of course, won four Super Bowls with the Steelers, for a time was second in NFL career rushing yards (he’s 15^th today), scored arguably the most famous touchdown in history with the Immaculate Reception, and was enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame. Mitchell, the feature back while at Penn State, couldn’t match those unique superlatives, but played nine years in the pros amassing over 6,500 rushing and 3,200 receiving yards with 30 scores on the ground and 17 through the air. Though he never made it to Canton like Franco, Lydell Mitchell did reach the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame in 2004 and remains the second leading rusher in Colts franchise history.

Allen and Singleton can feel honored to be mentioned in the conversation with these two all-time greats, and with a 2024 season that tracks with their combined output from prior years, these two modern-day Nittany Lions will dethrone their famous peers in a marquee statistic. The table below shows the best cumulative numbers for running back tandems who spent their entire Penn State careers together. Kaytron and Nick must team up for at least 1,355 rushing yards this year to move into first place all-time. Their combined totals so far (1,928 in 2022 and 1,654 in 2023) suggest this mark is well within their reach.

It’s an unbelievable list that evokes Penn State’s rich gridiron tradition. Mike Guman and State College local Matt Suhey led several of JoePa’s juggernauts of the 1970s, culminating with the excellent 1978 team that fell heart-breakingly short of a national title against Alabama. Bill Belton and Zach Zwinak carried the Nittany Lions through the most challenging years in Penn State history and heroically persevered through decidedly suboptimal conditions to produce a shared body of work that stands among State’s best. Few fans will forget Zwinak’s breakout 2012 or Belton triumphantly ending the 2013 Michigan game with a score. Don Abbey and Charlie Pittman powered the early offenses of the Joe Paterno era, including the undefeated teams of 1968 and 1969.

The next table shows the top 10 years for single-season production from a Penn State running back tandem. With this list, we sought to include seasons where both players made substantial contributions to the bottom line, a la the shared efforts of Nick and Kaytron. Therefore, all of these are years in which the complementary back accounted for at least 30% of the production. As an example, the 1994 season where Mike Archie and Ki-Jana Carter combined for 1,842 yards would rank third on this list, but 84% of that total belongs to Carter (Evan Royster teamed with Rodney Kinlaw in 2007 to match Archie and Carter’s 1,842, but just missed the cut with Royster owning 28% of the yardage).

Allen and Singleton are one of two duos that cracks the top 10 twice, joining the great Curt Warner and Jon Williams, who make the list with their 1981 and ’82 campaigns. Warner actually appears for a third time, as he combined with Booker Moore in 1980 for the list’s tenth-place entry, a ranking Allen/Singleton could displace with a shared output that matches or surpasses their 2023 totals.

The remaining entrants, including the aforementioned Harris/Mitchell and Belton/Zwinak combos, recall some of the very best years of Penn State football. The 2008 Big Ten champions saw future career rushing leader Evan Royster complemented by speedster Stephfon Green, who doubled as a potent receiving threat as well as a runner. The 1996 Nittany Lions finished 11-2 with a win over Texas in the Fiesta Bowl (shout out to defensive MVP Brandon Noble), and their punishing ground attack featured program great Curtis Enis sharing the load with fellow power back Aaron Harris, whose promising career was hampered by injury. The 1993 season is best remembered as a prelude to the undefeated juggernaut of ’94 mentioned above, but before Ki-Jana Carter turned in the masterpiece that made him the top pick of the 1995 NFL Draft, he split carries more evenly with Mike Archie for a team that went 10-2 and waxed highly-touted Tennessee in the Citrus Bowl.

An important note regarding these numbers is that the tables use official statistics, and the NCAA did not begin including bowl games with a player’s career stats until 2002. As a result, the likes of Franco, Lydell, Curt, and Ki-jana get deprived the benefit of their bowl performances. While not fair to the greats of the past, it reflects how things will look in the record books.

Any attempt to rank the all-time top 10 Nittany Lion running backs reveals the embarrassment of riches the program has enjoyed at the position over many decades, and the impending addition of Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen to the mix will further complicate such debates in the future. Both will be relied upon heavily if this year’s team is to finally achieve the playoff invite that eluded its predecessors. That chase for postseason satisfaction may provide intrigue enough for 2024, but as the season unfolds, keep in mind that we’re watching Penn State history being made with each carry and each score by either one of these exceptionally talented running backs, the latest links in a long chain of college football legends.