The 5 biggest reasons, aside from Drew Allar’s interception, that Penn State lost the Orange Bowl

If you had to distill Penn State’s gut-wrenching 27-24 Orange Bowl College Football Playoff semifinal loss down to just one play, it’s no hard to land on junior quarterback Drew Allar’s last-minute interception that set up Notre Dame’s game-winning field goal drive. While the narrative about “Big Game James” Franklin continues as the 11th-year head coach of the Nittany Lions falls to 1-15 against AP top 5 teams in his tenure, his 20-year-old quarterback is shouldering much of the blame for the loss, and rightfully so. 

That single play was so decisive that it will cloud our collective memory of the rest of the game. It swung the win probably by 55% in Notre Dame’s direction and was worth -3.2 expected points added in a three-point Penn State loss. It’s the type of play that gets a nickname for shorthand reference two decades from now, and if the Fighting Irish go on to win the championship, it will live on forever in college football lore. So, consider this a historical document detailing everything else that went wrong for the Nittany Lions as they were two wins away from a national championship. 

Aside from Allar’s costly interception, here are the 5 biggest reasons that Penn State blew what felt like a commanding 10-0 second-quarter lead. 

1. 10-0 wasn’t big enough

After the first of two Riley Leonard interceptions in the game, Penn State marched down the field to set up 1st-and-goal from the Notre Dame four-yard line: Kaytron Allen three-yard run, Kaytron Allen run for a loss of two yards, Drew Allar incomplete pass to Nicholas Singelton, field goal. Penn State blew its chance to draw real blood. 

You can question Franklin’s decision to settle for the field goal instead of going for it on fourth down, and you can question the lack of Tyler Warren touches, the same puzzling decision made by offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki on the goalline in the regular season against Ohio State in the fourth quarter, but for me, those arguments fall on deaf ears. Singleton was wide open, Allar delivered a poor throw, low and behind him, and the star running back dropped it. Both have equal culpability for not converting a walk-in touchdown. It was a four-point swing in a three-point loss. 

2. A Penn State wide receiver shutout

Every time Penn State has faced high-quality competition over the past two seasons, there has been a recurring theme, its wide receivers cannot get open. Against Ohio State in Week 10, Harrison Wallace III and Julian Fleming were the only two Penn State wide receivers to catch passes, combining to haul in three passes for 49 yards. A dismal performance from their entire receiver room in a massive game, but it was 49 more yards than that group had on Thursday night in Miami. 

Allar’s poor performance was a problem, as it was against Ohio State this year and last, as it was against Michigan last season, and as it was against Ole Miss in the 2023 Peach Bowl. However, in some ways, his disappointing outings have been a symptom, not always the cause. Even with Jerry Rice out there, you shouldn’t make the throw Allar did to decide the Orange Bowl, but the total lack of separation by his targets on the outside makes it impossible to get into a rhythm and forces Kotelnicki to live and die with designer play-calls featuring plenty of misdirection to get tight ends and running backs open, which just aren’t feasible in a two-minute drill. 

3. No deep shots

For my money, Penn State did not have a single wide receiver who would be a starter on any of the other three teams remaining in the CFP. That staggering lack of wide receiver talent meant that Penn State couldn’t generate explosives in the passing game, which is a huge part of Kotelnicki’s offense and his unit’s viability as a whole. The run game is nice and Singleton and Allen might be the best backfield in the country, but once Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden keyed in on the run game in the second half and lived with his cornerbacks on an island, everything was shut down. 

Penn State ran the ball for 141 yards in the first half and just 61 in the second half. The Nittany Lions generated five explosive runs, but zero explosive passes, even with a few big plays to Tyler Warren that nearly qualified. For the season, Penn State had a 10.5% explosive pass rate, 74th percentile in the country nearly four percent better than Notre Dame, which generated four explosive passes. 

If you can never burn a defense deep, it can creep closer and closer to the line of scrimmage with no consequences, and that may have cost 

4. Nickel corner was never solved

When Tom Allen took over as Penn State’s defensive coordinator after Manny Diaz left to become the head coach at Duke, he had a great plan for the secondary. He would play three safeties with Jaylen Reed in the nickel and Kevin Winston Jr. and Zakee Wheatley deep. It worked perfectly against West Virginia and then Winston went down for the season with a knee injury and Reed had to move back to a traditional safety spot. Since that time, Allen has never solved his nickel corner problem. 

Like Penn State, Notre Dame has lacked playmakers at wide receiver this season, though not quite as desperately. Yet, in the Orange Bowl, Jaden Greathouse, who took 85% of his snaps in the slot, torched nickel corners Cam Miller and Zion Tracy to the tune of seven catches for 105 yards and a touchdown. On the season, the sophomore had made just 36 catches for 464 yards and his previous career-high was 71 yards on three catches in a blowout win over Wake Forest in 2023. 

For the game, Miller allowed three catches on four targets for 76 yards and a touchdown and Tracy gave up two completions on two targets for 27 yards. One of those three catches that Miller surrendered, tied the game up at 24 late in the fourth. 

5. Mike Denbrock owned Tom Allen in the second half

A year ago, current (and also former) Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock coached Jayden Daniels to a Heisman trophy under Brian Kelly at LSU. But he returned to South Bend and this year has had to solve a whole different set of problems with an offense led by Leonard, not the future second-overall pick in the NFL draft with two first-round wide receivers. Despite the downgrade in weaponry, Denbrock has been masterful. 

After a sluggish first half, Denbrock found his mismatches and identified the best ways to take advantage of them. The Irish were having trouble running the ball against Penn State’s loaded fronts, so instead Denbrock and Leonard hunted linebacker Kobe King in the pass game to much success. 

Empty formations helped Notre Dame spread Penn State’s defense horizontally while still presenting the threat of the run with Leonard’s athleticism. On top of attacking his advantage against Penn State’s nickel cornerbacks, King was targetted five times and gave up five catches for 66 yards, along with a pass interference penalty in the end zone that set up a Jeremiyah Love two-yard touchdown run. 

Allen had no answers for Denbrock’s creativity, just as he had no answers for Oregon slot receiver Tez Johnson in the Big Ten championship game. Penn State’s talent provided an impressive baseline of success, but the country’s best playcallers have bullied Allen all season long.