Penn State football quarterback Drew Allar returned to Happy Valley with unfinished business, like many other Nittany Lions (3-3, 0-3 Big Ten) from 2024. With a College Football Playoff championship on his mind, he and the rest of the Penn State squad thought too far ahead and got caught up in the whirlwind of expectations.
It brings up the question of if they could have saved the start of their NFL careers if they entered the 2025 NFL Draft. For Allar, it's clear that he passed up on his optimal opportunity to get drafted early in April.
On Saturday, Allar was ruled out for the rest of the 2025 regular season due to a lower left leg injury he sustained in the fourth quarter against Northwestern. Before then, he was not putting together an impressive senior campaign.
His best performance came in Week 1 against Nevada, one of the three cupcake non-conference teams the Nittany Lions shceduled to start the season. He had an 84.6 completion percentage, throwing for 217 yards and one touchdown on 22 completions. Allar only got relatively close to that in Week 6 against UCLA when his team was upset by an unranked, winless team. He had a 73.1 completion percentage on 19 passes for 200 yards and two touchdowns. Against the Wildcats, he was on track to finish with his third best completion rate of the season before he was injured at the end of the fourth quarter. Allar limped off the field with a 65 completion percentage to cap off his collegiate career.
In other words, Allar underwhelmed in a season with high expectations. He was a Heisman Trophy favorite in the preseason and soon proved doubters correct that he had a lot of work to get done before he earned that hype. He never showed full confidence in himself and often brought his offense down. Even in the non-conference slate, the Nittany Lions offense was slow to start and lagged.
Allar didn't end his junior season on a high note. He threw late picks that sealed Penn State's demise in the 2024 Big Ten Championship Game against Oregon and CFP Semifinals Game against Notre Dame. However, he didn't show any growth from 2024. Allar's footwork remained sloppy and even with a new group of wide receivers, he didn't have any consistency in terms of NFL-worthy passing. He threw an interception in double overtime against the Ducks in Week 5, a script that Penn State is all too familiar with from the Medina, Ohio native. The only element to his game that earned approval in 2025 was his ability to scramble and his vision on the field while doing so; but even that ended his season in heartbreaking fashion.
Allar was projected to be a high first-round draft pick in the preseason and some even toyed with the possibility of him going No. 1 overall. Now, he doesn't even have the opportunity to redeem himself and get back into first-round selection conversation. After his performance against the Bruins, his draft stock plummeted. Sustaining an injury in Week 7 turned his season and NFL potential from bad to worse — potentially the worst. Allar should have capitalized on his potential when he had the chance, but he took a huge gamble that came back to bite him and his team.