Behind the Steel Curtain
Apologies for the short hiatus in this series, as I battled a cold that took my energy following Week 6 of college football. I’m almost back to 100% now, and we have a lot of storylines to touch on that occurred in my absence, so I won’t waste any more time with the preamble. Let’s get right into it.
Allar and Penn State have had a dizzying past few weeks. It doesn’t seem that long ago that Penn State was ranked No. 3 in the nation and took Oregon to double overtime and nearly came away victorious. While I wasn’t high on Allar’s performance up to that point in the season, and he did throw the interception that ended the Oregon game, I couldn’t have predicted what came next.
A loss to an incredibly awful UCLA team sunk the program even further, though it was arguably Allar’s best performance this season — 73.1% completion on 26 attempts for 200 yards, two touchdowns, and 89 rushing yards on 10 attempts.
The wheels finally came off last week, with Penn State trailing a middling Northwestern squad late in the fourth quarter. Allar’s ankle twisted wrong on an attempted scramble when a sprawling defender executed a shoestring tackle. Allar was able to limp off the field, but word quickly spread that the injury was a fractured ankle that would require season-ending surgery.
It’s a disappointing end to his season. We’ll never know how highly he would have been drafted if he had declared after last season’s college football playoffs, but it will loom as one of the biggest “what ifs” in recent memory. It was clear this year that Penn State had not helped him advance as a player, and arguably, he’d regressed. Would a transfer or rolling the dice in the draft have worked out better for his development? We’ll never have concrete answers, but now he’s got a medical red flag to go with a subpar 2025 performance if he were to declare following this season.
Allar’s best route now, at least in my opinion, is to get healthy and to pursue the graduate transfer route. A new environment, with some new coaching and guidance, might allow him to put out some new tape and show some growth in his game that he was unable to show this season. Perform well enough in 2026, and he’s got a chance at rehabilitating his draft stock. As of now, I think he ends up a Day 3 pick if he were to declare.
We wish Allar a speedy and healthy recovery.
One of the more surprising developments as the college football calendar turned to Week 7 was the return of injured Sooner quarterback John Mateer. Mateer had been initially given a longer recovery timeline following an injury to his throwing hand that required surgery, but then word came out that he had responded to the surgery better than expected. Given...
