James Franklin addresses Drew Allar returning to Penn State in 2025

One of the bigger quarterback dominoes to fall ahead of the 2025 NFL Draft and college football season was Penn State’s Drew Allar deciding to return to school. And it’s a move that head coach James Franklin is thoroughly excited about it.

While there are inevitable knock-on consequences, getting back a quarterback who appears to have blossomed in the last few months of the season for another year of college should be a boon for Penn State. Thusly, Franklin and Co. are excited to get more time with Allar and the chance to tap in to even more potential.

“Again, Drew has been phenomenal,” Franklin said. “Mom and Dad have been phenomenal. Had a ton of conversations. Had a ton of conversations. Obviously he’s doing a ton of really good things and he’s developing and he’s getting better and he’s playing great and he’s leading and I think there’s a lot of excitement because I think they believe and we believe there’s still a lot of room for growth and development. And we want to be a part of that and I think they trust us in that and obviously it’s been a ton of conversations with NFL GMs and scouts to be able to provide NFL reports and information to our players of where they’re at and what their strengths are and what their weaknesses are and how do we take that information, make a decision and then spend, once the season is over, time attacking those things that people consider weaknesses.”

Allar is in his third season at Penn State and second as the full-time starter. In the past two seasons, he’s made 26 starts. He made a big step forward in 2024, completing 69.1% of his passes for 2894 yards and 21 touchdowns with seven interceptions. In 2023, he completed 59.9% of his passes, but did throw for 25 touchdowns.

The catch, it seems, for Penn State is that Allar’s return seems to have spurred backup quarterback Beau Pribula to enter the NCAA Transfer Portal shortly before the Nittany Lions host SMU in the College Football Playoff.

That entire ordeal is something Franklin addressed as he discussed Allar’s return on Tuesday, Dec. 17. But by Wednesday, days before playing SMU, Franklin said he’d be done addressing that specific topic for the time being.

“Obviously Drew announcing he’s coming back is an awesome and we couldn’t be more excited about that. And then as you could imagine, that also factored in to the decision,” Franklin said of Pribula transferring. “So again, you ask a great question but it’s hard because I’d love to give both topics and both people the respect and appreciation they deserve. But literally this could’ve been the entire press conference, talking about these two topics.”