James Franklin breaks down Drew Allar's bowl game struggles

Penn State suffered a loss in the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl against Ole Miss, going down 38-25 in a game in which quarterback Drew Allar simply wasn’t himself.

Allar finished the game completing less than 50% of his passes for the fourth time on the year. Three of them resulted in losses, with the fourth a sluggish win over Rutgers.

Point being Penn State is going to find wins tough to come by when Allar is off like that. But coach James Franklin certainly didn’t pin all of the blame in the Cotton Bowl on his sophomore gunslinger.

“I think it’s all of it, right?” Franklin said. “We’ve got to stay on schedule like we talked about. We’ve got to make plays for him when we have the opportunity to make plays for him.”

One thing that makes it difficult is when the opponent is going up and down the field with tempo, like Ole Miss was. That puts a certain pressure on Drew Allar as the quarterback to match strike for strike.

He clearly wasn’t quite able to do that.

Allar finished the game 19-of-39 passing for 295 yards. He threw two touchdowns, but he was also picked off once in the game.

“I think there’s some things that he can do and be more consistent as well, but I think the biggest thing, which I think was a question earlier, is we’ve got to be able to scare people and be a threat consistently on the perimeter,” Franklin said. “That’s something I think we’ve shown flashes of at times, but we need to be able to do that on a consistent basis.”

A lack of elite receivers bit Penn State all season long. They had hoped to shore some of that up in the offseason with the addition of Kent State standout Dante Cephas, but he finished the year with only 22 catches for 246 yards receiving.

Penn State’s leading receiver, KeAndre Lambert-Smith, finished with 673 yards. Cephas was next closest in terms of the wideouts.

Bottom line: While Drew Allar needs to play better, he also needs to get more help. Finding help at receiver will be a clear point of emphasis for the program this offseason.

“So it’s a little bit of Drew,” Franklin said. “I think it’s a little bit of the offensive line. I think it’s a little bit of the coaches. I think it’s a little bit of the wide receivers. It’s a piece of all of it.”