If Trey Wallace and Liam Clifford are Drew Allar’s top targets, Penn State’s offense is in trouble

The Penn State offense will look much different under Andy Kotelnicki in 2024. This season won’t just bring a fresh new scheme from an innovative play-caller, but it will present a new cast of characters, especially at wide receiver.

KeAndre Lambert-Smith and Dante Cephas departed the program after seeing their roles dwindle in the Peach Bowl loss to Ole Miss. James Franklin responded by landing former Ohio State receiver Julian Fleming, the top recruit in Pennsylvania in 2020. However, the reports out of fall camp have all pointed to Harrison Wallace III and Liam Clifford as the top targets on the outside. 

“If you asked him, I’d bet he would say, ‘Gosh, I kind of started slow,” Kotelnicki recently told reporters of Fleming, the most experienced player in Penn State’s wide receiver room, before noting that “he’s done a great job” in the later stages of fall camp. 

Having started 11 games at Ohio State last season with a receiver room far superior to Penn State’s, the expectation was that Fleming would have a breakout season in 2024.

Without superstars like Marvin Harrison Jr. Emeka Egbuka, Garrett Wilson, Jaxon Smith-Ngjiba, Chris Olave, and others in his way, the former five-star finally had the chance to make good on his potential. Now it seems that’s not the case, and that’s a big problem for the Nittany Lions.

Instead, Kotelnicki will feature Wallace and Clifford, who have combined for 94 total targets across five total seasons at Penn State, 31 shy of Fleming's four-year total in Columbus. Wallace’s season was derailed by an injury he suffered in Week 9 against Indiana that kept him out until the bowl game. That injury limited his snap count to just 291, but Clifford played even fewer snaps, simply because he couldn’t crack the starting lineup. 

With 19 catches for 225 yards and one touchdown, Wallace was Penn State’s sixth most-productive receiver last season, on the 79th-ranked passing offense in the country. By a more efficiency-based metric, yards per route run, Wallace was fifth among Nittany Lions who saw at least five targets in 2023 at 1.41 and ranked 34th among the 50 wide receivers in the Big Ten who were targeted at least 25 times. 

Cephas, who was a massive disappointment in his lone season in Happy Valley after transferring from Kent State, ranked 36th among that same sample at 1.31 while Lambert-Smith was 12th at 1.92, one spot behind Ohio State’s Egbuka. Fleming ranked 46th at 0.91 and Clifford’s 1.02 would have slotted him in at 45th if he had seen enough targets to qualify. 

Penn State fans were more than ready to move on from Lambert-Smith and Cephas after a disastrous offensive output last season, especially in the biggest games. However, they and Penn State's coaching staff may come to regret holding the door on their way out of town.

Yard per route run essentially shows how many targets a player can earn by getting open when they’re given the opportunity to run a route, and what type of damage they do with those targets. Wallace caught 73.1% of his 26 targets, but for just 11.8 yards per grab and he made just one catch on a throw over 20 yards downfield. 

It’s hard to make any statistical argument for the redshirt junior as a WR1 in the Big Ten even after making four catches for 67 yards in the Peach Bowl. With Wallace and Clifford both auditioning for their starring roles, Allar was unable to complete a pass to wide receiver until the fourth quarter when he finally connected with Clifford. By then, Ole Miss had established a comfortable lead and was willing to give Allar underneath completions. 

This season, Penn State’s offense needs more than just completions, it needs explosive plays. Last year, the Nittany Lions ranked 97th in 20+ yard plays from scrimmage with just 47. A bounce-back from Nick Singleton out of the backfield would help, but Allar needs weapons to help him stretch the field vertically or Kotelnicki’s offense to thrive against Big Ten defenses, a much tougher task than putting up points in the Big 12 at Kansas. Wallace hasn’t provided that verticality in his career, and Clifford has been even less effective. 

The younger brother of former quarterback Sean Clifford, Liam made only 13 catches in 2023 for 130 yards. His biggest play came near the end of the first half against Illinois when he set the Nittany Lions up in field goal range. 

The buzz out of fall camp was all positive, but it won’t matter until it’s translated onto the field, and Penn State will have a real test in Week 1 against West Virginia. Last season, Wallace put up 72 yards on seven receptions against the Mountaineers. That type of start to 2024 is almost necessary to prove he’s up to the task as WR1 and Clifford’s performance could be even more crucial. The redshirt junior has even less proof of concept as a function P5 receiver, from the slot or outside. 

In three wide receiver sets, Penn State will likely feature, Wallace and Fleming on the outside with Clifford in the slot. Even with Tyler Warren, one of the best pass-catching tight ends in the country, a deep offensive line, and an elite backfield, this offense will be in big trouble if Allar can’t elevate the play of his mediocre pass-catching weapons and it could cost Penn State a spot in the College Football Playoff. 

Fleming’s slowed development as a 23-year-old fifth-year allowed for the emergence of Wallace and Clifford as Allar’s top targets. It’s promising that they’ve been able to grab the reins of the wide receiver room and will be refreshing to see a revamped group in 2024, but just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’ll be better.