James Franklin addresses awkward press conference moment, Drew Allar's growth

Penn State coach James Franklin made headlines last week when he reacted astounded at a question about whether he might just dial up some deep shots regardless of the coverage in an attempt to create more explosive plays. Quarterback Drew Allar simply hasn’t hit many downfield shots this year.

But the Penn State quarterback is playing exactly how Franklin wants him to. In fact, he’s doing it better than many veterans Franklin has had over the years.

“That’s probably why I got so uncomfortable last week, is you spend your whole career trying to get quarterbacks to take checkdowns,” Franklin explained. “Like every quarterback wants to throw the corner route or the go route or the post. I mean who’s throwing checkdowns in their backyard? Right? So that’s why I got so uncomfortable and upset last week, because like it was just so foreign.”

Franklin praised his quarterback for managing the myriad things thrown his way, both on and off the field.

It’s Allar’s veteran approach and mentality that has made him so successful this season and put Penn State in a position to go into a heads-up matchup with Ohio State this weekend with a ton on the line — including an undefeated season for both teams.

“So here we’ve got a young kid who’s starting for the first time,” Franklin said. “And we can call those plays and he’ll take the checkdown. And to me he’s doing a really good job of keeping the main thing the main thing, which is protecting the football, trying to create explosive plays when they’re there but not forcing them, managing the game and when you say manage the game sometimes people look at that as like not a compliment.

“Like the quarterback on every play, whether it’s the run game, whether it’s RPO, whether it’s traditional pass, there’s a lot on that guy’s plate to make sure that we’re not running dead plays. So he’s being graded mentally as well as physically on every single play. And he’s done a really good job and he’s getting more and more comfortable with that every single week.”

So far this season Drew Allar has gone 118-of-181 passing for 1,254 yards and 12 touchdowns, without an interception. He has also run for three scores.

Whether he can do that against an elite opponent in the Buckeyes remains to be seen. But Franklin has seen continued improvement from week to week.

“I think he’s refining his process of how he watches film, how he studies the gameplan,” the Penn State coach said. “So I’m very pleased with him and I want Drew to understand this and I want our team to understand this and that’s what I addressed with them on Sunday: That’s what we have to do this week. If our process is what we say our process is, we just have to take the next step this week and get better again this week, not do anything more than that. Drew doesn’t need to be anything more than what he’s been the previous weeks, he just needs to continue to refine his process.”

The rest will take care of itself. And so far there’s no reason to think Drew Allar won’t be up to the task of taking things one step at a time.

“I think he’s just been steady. And to me when you’re steady and you’re making small gains daily with your mental approach and your emotional approach and your physical approach to the game, you get better and you’ll like where you’ll be at the end of the season,” Franklin said. “That’s what he’s doing and not listening to all the other stuff.”