Penn State quarterback Drew Allar had a nightmarish performance in his team’s 27-24 loss to Notre Dame in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Orange Bowl on Thursday night. However, his struggles weren’t his alone.
Penn State’s wide receivers failed to catch a single pass in the game, finishing shut out on five targets, two to Omari Evans and three to Harrison Wallace III. Days after that dreadful outing, on the final day of the Nittany Lion’s five-day transfer portal window following their exit from the CFP, both Evans and Wallace announced their intentions to leave Happy Valley.
In his redshirt junior season, after battling injuries for much of his career, Wallace emerged as the No. 1 wide receiver and No. 2 target in the offense behind tight end Tyler Warren. Wallace finished the year with 46 catches for 723 yards and four touchdowns while Evans, who usurped Ohio State transfer Julian Fleming as WR2 for offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki, added 415 yards and five touchdowns on 21 grabs.
Wallace will have one year of eligibility remaining and Evans two, as both search for a fresh start after underwhelming results in starting roles for one of college football’s four semifinalists.
Head coach James Franklin was looking for a boost in the passing game when he replaced offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich with Kotelnicki, and that translated to a breakout season for Allar and one of the more explosive passing games in the country. However, much of that production came in spite of the talent at wide receiver after 2023 WR1 KeAndre Lambert-Smith transferred to Auburn last offseason.
In Penn State’s biggest games, like the Orange Bowl, its wide receivers could not get any separation which made Allar’s life as difficult as possible. While it would be disastrous for almost any team in the country to lose its top two wide receivers to the portal in the same offseason, the Nittany Lions may already have upgraded with Kyron Hudson and Devonte Ross. Franklin added Hudson from USC and Ross from Troy this offseason, both with only one season of eligibility, and both almost certainly expecting a starting role.
If Franklin is going to lead his team, which has plenty of returning production with Allar and the backfield duo of Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen all returning, he’ll need to get the wide receiver position right. The loss of Warren to the NFL only exacerbates that problem. Still, just because Wallace and Evans were the best that Penn State had, it doesn’t mean that they’re good.
Had Penn State beaten Notre Dame, the Nittany Lions would have met Ohio State in a rematch with a Big Ten rival. Wallace, Penn State’s No. 1 wide receiver, finished the year 22nd in the conference in yards per route run (arguably the best efficiency metric for pass-catching production), tied with Carnell Tate, Ohio State’s WR3 at 1.93. Ohio State’s star freshman wideout Jeremiah Smith ranked first at 3.13 and WR2 Emeka Egbuka was seventh at 2.51.
The Buckeyes are substantially better at one of the most important positions and the same goes for Oregon which had Tez Johnson (5th, 2.60) and Traeshaun Holden (19th, 1.99) ahead of Wallace. Evans ranked 27th.
While these departures aren’t monumental, they do put a significant amount of pressure on Hudson and Ross to acclimate to a new system and a new quarterback quickly, and they leave Penn State without much depth on the outside (though there wasn’t a ton in 2024 either). Unless Kotelnicki and Franklin are comfortable running out young players like rising redshirt freshman Tyseer Denmark or any of the four incoming freshmen from the 2025 recruiting class, they may need to dip back into the portal, and NIL dollars could be running low considering what it likely cost to retain so much of their draft-eligible talent.