Four-star true freshman Ethan Grunkemeyer has not taken a collegiate snap, and now he’s one snap away from making his Penn State debut in the College Football Playoff. Heading into Penn State’s first-round matchup with SMU at Beaver Stadium on Saturday, and in the wake of Beau Pribula’s controversial decision to enter the transfer portal and depart from the program, James Franklin named Grunkemeyer as QB2.
“Ethan will be the backup quarterback in the game,” Franklin told reporters in his final press conference before the start of the CFP. “Grunk’s done a really good job, and put himself in a position that we have a lot of confidence, and he was getting a ton of reps this week.”
Pribula isn’t the only backup QB on a playoff team to enter the portal, but he was the only one to leave his program early. Ohio State’s Devin Brown is in the portal but will remain in Columbus as QB2 to Will Howard throughout the Buckeye’s postseason run, and SMU QB Preston Stone, who began the year as the starter before losing his job to Kevin Jennings, also intends to transfer but will be on the other sideline at Beaver Stadium on Saturday.
For many Penn State fans and neutral analysts, the loss of Pribula was alarming because of his involvement in the offense on a week-to-week basis, but that’s not where Penn State is going to feel it most. Despite not starting once, the redshirt sophomore played 187 snaps this year. Offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki routinely featured him in gadget packages to take advantage of his athleticism, often with two quarterbacks on the field. His most important role, however, was as a safety net, and now the Nittany Lions are walking a tightrope without one, and just hoping they don’t have to look down.
Pribula has largely been an effective player in his limited reps, but frankly, most of those snaps could be seen as an attempt to placate a talented backup in hopes of keeping him out of the portal this offseason. As fun as they may be, the Pribula snaps are simply not as valuable as ones with Allar behind center by nearly every metric, Allar is either equal or better, and that’s with most of Pribula’s reps coming with bespoke play calls or in garbage time against backups.
2024 | Drew Allar | Beau Pribula |
|---|---|---|
Yards/DB | 8.41 | 7.47 |
EPA/DB | 0.28 | 0.32 |
DB success rate | 52% | 53% |
Yards/rush | 5.93 | 6.70 |
EPA/rush | 0.47 | 0.25 |
Rushing success rate | 63% | 65% |
When you exclude garbage time reps, there’s an even bigger discrepancy between the two QBs who arrived in Happy Valley together in the 2022 recruiting class, with Allar’s EPA/play at 0.467 and Pribula’s at 0.306.
In the biggest games of the year, Franklin and Kotelnicki agree. Pribula played just five offensive snaps against Oregon and only five against Ohio State, and on three of those 10 snaps, he handed the ball off. As a gadget player, his value is marginal at best and can easily be replaced by Tyler Warren, a more effective runner with a 74% rushing success rate and nearly as many snaps as a wildcat quarterback as Pribula. What can’t be replaced is what Pribula did in Madison in Week 9.
Down 10-7, Allar left the game just before halftime with an injury and did not return. Defensive turnovers played a big part, but Pribula led the Nittany Lions to a 28-13 win going 11/13 passing for 98 yards and a touchdown with another 28 yards on the ground. He calmly dispatched an inferior opponent in a game that could have dashed Penn State’s playoff hopes. Maybe Grunkemeyer is capable of that performance, but we’ve never seen it and the College Football Playoff is a hell of a time to find out.
Allar has largely stayed healthy all year and returned from that injury the very next week. He’s avoided hits in the pocket well and is big enough to absorb contact from linebackers and defensive backs when he scrambles, but all it takes is one awkward fall, one twisted ankle, hand getting stepped on at the bottom of the pile, and suddenly the hopes of Penn State’s first national championship since 1986 rest on the shoulders of a true freshman, and that’s not a comfortable place to be in.
Grunkemeyer could be the future of this Penn State program but with Pribula (understandably) concerned with his future over his now former team’s there’s suddenly an incredibly fine line between the future and right now.