Beau Pribula is back in the transfer portal. A year after the former Penn State quarterback departed the team amid its first-ever College Football Playoff run, he’s heading back onto the open market when the portal opens officially on January 2.
While it seems obvious to connect the dots between Pribula and Penn State, after his one-year stint at Missouri, we may need to pump the brakes on his potential return to Happy Valley with new head coach Matt Campbell in place.
Beau Pribula won’t be a fit for Penn State offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser’s system
When the redshirt junior got off to a hot start at Missouri as a first-time starting QB, plenty of Penn State fans who wanted to keep Pribula over Drew Allar were shouting I told you so. Against Kansas in Week 2, Pribula threw for 334 yards and three touchdowns on 30 of 39 passing. However, that would prove to be his high-water mark for the year. Once the Tigers got into SEC play, things changed dramatically.
At Penn State, Pribula was primarily a gadget player, utilized for his athleticism with a heavy-dose of run-pass options. As a starting quarterback, though, you need to have a few more arrows in the quiver, and Pribula did not. As a dropback passer, Pribula was seriously lacking, which allowed teams to load up the box against him and Missouri’s excellent running back, Ahmad Hardy.
As a one-dimensional offense, the Tigers stalled in SEC play, as Pribula struggled to threaten teams vertically. On throws 10-19 yards downfield, Pribula’s 8.3 yards per attempt ranked 115th among 145 FBS quarterbacks with at least 28 such attempts. His 12.1 yards per attempt on throws over 20 yards downfield ranked 86th.
A quarterback like Pribula can still be useful as a Power 4 starter. He creates enough of a run-pass conflict for a play-caller to build a proficient offense around. However, that’s not how new Penn State OC Taylor Mouser likes to build his offenses.
Under Campbell and Mouser, Iowa State ran a pro-style system, which asks a lot of its quarterbacks as dropback passers. Rocco Becht and Brock Purdy, before him, were both asked to read through their full-field progressions from the pocket to distribute the ball.
That’s just not Pribula’s game. He’s a decent RPO dart thrower and likes to get outside of the pocket on boot legs or sprint outs, which create a half-field read for the quarterback. Mouser isn’t going to build an offense that way. While that creates easier decisions for the quarterback, often also easier to defend, especially in obvious passing situations when play-action has less of an effect.
Pribula doesn’t fit in Mouser’s system, and he’s not a good enough player to justify asking Mouser to cater an offense to his strengths. Even when Drinkwitz and Kirby Moore did that, it was only good enough for the 38th-best offense in the country by adjusted EPA/play and 20.5 points a game against SEC opponents.