Penn State Football: 5 key position battles to watch throughout spring practice

Who will be Sean Clifford’s backup to begin the season?

In 2022, Penn State Football will have the best and deepest quarterback room that they have had in a very long time.

With true freshmen Drew Allar and Beau Pribula enrolling early to join Sean Clifford and Christian Veilleux, the quarterback competition will be fascinating to watch this spring.

Clifford is the returning starter, and it would take a lot for one of the other three quarterbacks to prove, in practice, that they are a better option on Saturdays. So, the competition is more so to determine which young quarterback will be the backup, and who will be behind them as the third string.

However, the competition at quarterback could also determine how short of a leash Clifford might be on to begin the season. If one of the other three quarterbacks really performs well this spring and throughout the summer, significantly closing the gap on the sixth-year quarterback with 33 starts under his belt, he could have very little room for error to begin the season.

Veilleux finished last season as the backup, so that will presumably be his job to lose. While he doesn’t have a ton of it to speak of, the redshirt freshman does have experience on his side going into this competition.

He appeared in just two games as a true freshman last season, but in those two games, Veilleux completed 16 passes on 26 attempts for 238 yards, three touchdowns, and no interceptions. Although 26 passes is a small sample size, it is still 26 more passes than Drew Allar and Beau Pribula have combined.

As for the freshmen, Allar was obviously a much higher rated prospect, so a betting man would put money on him to beat out Pribula, but once a prospect steps on campus, stars and ratings go out the window. Two-quarterback classes are not common in college football, making the quarterback competition all that more intriguing.

So, expecting Clifford to get a bulk of the first team reps at quarterback, keep an eye on which quarterbacks are getting the most work with the second team.

James Franklin will likely keep as quiet as possible about the quarterback reps and depth chart (outside of Clifford) throughout the five-week spring session, so we probably won’t know too much until we see them take the field for the Blue-White game.

The best we will probably get until that point will be some very cliche and ‘coach-speak’ answers about each of their performances during practice.

As for the Blue-White game, it would be shocking to see Clifford get more than two drives, as Franklin will try to maximize game-like experience and reps for his younger signal callers.

Watching to see which team each quarterback suits up for, as well as which ones play earlier and more often, will give Penn State Football fans a good indication of where the quarterback depth chart stands coming out of spring practice and heading into the summer.