Penn State's National Title Hopes Rest on Drew Allar's Evolution in 2025

With the 2025 season approaching quicker than you think and Penn State likely done in the transfer portal ahead of this upcoming season, it's time to take a deep, long look at Penn State's roster for this upcoming season.

The 2025 season for Penn State, for most Penn State fans, features one clear expectation. That is, when the dust settles on the 2025 college football season, likely sometime in the late hours of January 19, 2026, James Franklin and his Penn State football program, for the first time since 1986, are the national champions of college football.

While expectations for previous, recent iterations of the Nittany Lions have been high, including the 2017 and 2023 seasons being particularly notable, this level of expectation and preseason hype surrounding the program on a national level has been absent from the program for nearly three decades. The last time that the Nittany Lions were truly in the argument for the nation's preseason No. 1 team was the 1999 season.

That season, the Nittany Lions began the year as the No. 3 team in the country and got off to a fantastic 9-0 start. However, a shocking loss to Minnesota in early November sent the Nittany Lions spiraling into a three-game losing streak to end the regular season. They picked up an Alamo Bowl win over Texas A&M to finish the season 10-3.

At the forefront of Penn State's quest for its first national championship in almost 40 years is its fourth-year signal caller, Drew Allar. Both Penn State and Allar's trajectories enter 2025 in a similar place.

The Nittany Lions, for the last several years, have been consistently a strong, very good college football program. Since the start of the 2022 season, the Nittany Lions have the fifth-most wins in all of college football with a 34-8 record. The only programs with better winning percentages in that time span are Georgia, Ohio State, Michigan, and Oregon.

For Drew Allar, the numbers speak for themselves. The Medina, Ohio native, as the program's starter, has completed 495 of 783 passing attempts, a 63.2% completion percentage for 5,958 yards, 49 touchdowns, and 10 interceptions. He also has 508 yards and 10 additional touchdowns on the ground.

While Allar's career is far from complete, he is only one of six quarterbacks since the year 2000 to, in their career, complete at least 60% of their passes, throw for over 5,000 yards, and throw for at least 40 touchdowns and 10 or fewer interceptions.

The other five quarterbacks are Justin Fields, Dwayne Haskins, Mac Jones, Bryce Petty, and Alex Smith. While it may not be a group of future NFL stars, it is by no means a small feat. Notably, four of those quarterbacks would end up being first-round NFL Draft picks.

But while the numbers are strong and Allar has been a very good college quarterback, he has yet to take that step into being an elite quarterback at the college level. That being said, now as a third-year starter and with a heap of talent surrounding him, the expectations for Allar, like Penn State, are sky-high in 2025.

With the hype surrounding both Penn State and Allar only growing as the 2025 season draws near, there is no beating around the bush. Penn State's 2025 hopes largely are on the shoulders of No. 15. Which begs one question: Can Drew Allar in 2025 make the jump from great to elite?

Can Drew Allar take that next step?

As just discussed, over the past two seasons, Drew Allar has been one of the best quarterbacks in not just the Big Ten but the country.

Despite the overall strong play, it has been felt that the former four-star quarterback has still left many wanting more. While the level of play from his supporting cast at wide receiver the last two seasons has been lackluster, there is no denying that the potential first-round pick in next year's NFL Draft has struggled against top-tier competition.

In 10 career games against ranked opponents, Allar is 157-for-291 (53.9%) for 1,662 yards and 14 touchdowns with five interceptions. Again, part of those struggles are a result of the wide receiver play, but many also fall on Allar himself. In key games, Allar has had his share of miscues, whether it's his usually good accuracy dipping or his typically dependable, strong decision-making becoming a bit more erratic.

Coming into the 2025 season, Allar is a decisive quarterback prospect from an NFL standpoint and even at the college level overall. While many believe he is without a doubt one of the best in the country, many will point to those struggles in key games, including his performance against Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl.

While the final stat line read 12-for-23 for 135 yards and one interception, Allar in reality threw three interceptions. Two were called back due to controversial penalties on Notre Dame. While the negated interceptions didn't count in the box score, both were the result of poor accuracy and decision-making.

Unfortunately for Allar, the biggest of those mistakes would not be negated. With just over 30 seconds to play and a chance to win the game, he would try to force a pass to wide receiver Omari Evans across the middle of the field. Following the game, Allar would say that he was trying to throw it to the feet of Omari Evans, however, the pass would instead stay well afloat and was picked off by Notre Dame's Christian Gray. The interception ultimately put the Fighting Irish in prime field position and allowed them to eventually kick the game-winning field goal.

For many quarterbacks, it could be a play that could destroy their confidence and linger in a quarterback's mind for months, if not years. Allar, admittedly, told the media during the spring that the first week after the Orange Bowl was a "long one."

"It was a long week for sure," Allar said. "Just with how everything happened, just a lot of stuff that was out of my control, and I was just not in a good state for that week after," he explained. "But once I stepped back in the weight room for this season, whenever that two or three weeks after that game, I was able to flush it at that point," he continued.

Ultimately, while Allar has said that he has flushed the feelings of that interception away, the true litmus test will come this fall when he is tasked with a similar situation. For him, it will be part of taking that next step from great to elite.

When it comes to taking that next step, Penn State, on paper, has well-equipped the fourth-year quarterback to take that final leap into stardom. While he will no longer have Tyler Warren at his disposal, he'll have a revamped wide receiver room that features three transfers who combined for over 2,400 yards and 20 touchdowns last season at their previous institutions. He'll also have the best running back duo in the country returning in Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen, while having a top-of-the-line offensive line protecting him and a tight end room that, despite missing Tyler Warren, remains deep in talent.

Ultimately, there are no excuses this season for Drew Allar. The physical tools have always been there, and now he has a full supporting cast at his disposal. If Allar can make that leap from very good to elite this season, Penn State, an already legitimate national title contender, could finally break through the long-standing barrier of going from great to elite. But if the same flaws resurface for Allar, especially his inconsistencies in decision-making, accuracy, and mechanics in big games, the Nittany Lions' path to college football immortality will become much tougher.

Penn State's title hopes may rest on more than just Drew Allar, but there is no denying that No. 15 is the most integral part of the puzzle in the Nittany Lions' pursuit of greatness in 2025.