Who is to blame for Penn State football’s loss vs. Ohio State? Look beyond QB Drew Allar
Drew Allar sat at the front of the visiting media room with tears in his eyes as he answered questions. The voice of the Penn State quarterback, the face of the program, cracked as he took accountability for how the offense performed in Saturday’s 20-12 loss to Ohio State.
He was asked how he played and responded succinctly.
“Sucked.”
It would be easy to side with Allar. He completed only 18-of-42 passing attempts for 191 yards and a touchdown pass to Kaden Saunders that came with the team in desperation near the end of the game. But the problems run higher up.
Offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich did not put his young quarterback, and the rest of the offense, in position to succeed against the Buckeyes.
There is no doubt that Yurcich, who was not made available to the media after the game, was facing a difficult task. He was taking on an Ohio State defense that is one of the best in the country and coached by someone who knows him well — defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, who held the same position at Oklahoma State when Yurcich was the offensive coordinator there in 2018.
But he did not have to be a modern-day Bill Walsh for the Nittany Lions to earn only their second victory over Ohio State under head coach James Franklin. He just had to be average.
The numbers will tell you he fell miserably short.
Penn State converted only 1 of its 16 third-down attempts. It finished with 49 rushing yards — with 50 in the first quarter and minus-1 in the final three. It managed to put only six points on the board until Ohio State began playing it safe defensively when up two scores with fewer than three minutes left in the game.
Yes, the Nittany Lions did not turn the ball over and they only gave up four sacks, but that only magnifies the issue at hand.
The players were not careless with the ball, nor was the offensive line falling apart. They just could not move the ball.
Odds are the failure is then on the quarterback or the play caller. And when asked about how Allar played, Franklin did not foist the blame on him.
“I think, all year long, we have called the game and managed the game to put him in the best situation to be successful,” Franklin said. “And we weren’t able to do that today, for a number of reasons.”
He did not directly place the blame on Yurcich either, but kicked the can down the road when asked about him.
“I think we were at a one-possession game, so I feel like we could have ran the ball a little more,” Franklin said. “But we’ll evaluate all of those things on Sunday.”
It’s not as if the offense didn’t have its opportunities. The Penn State defense was nothing short of dominant, getting the ball back to the offense time and time again. The Buckeyes only found the end zone twice. Once after a fumble recovery for a touchdown by Curtis Jacobs was called back by a defensive holding, giving the Buckeyes some momentum against a deflated defense. And once near the end of the game when Marvin Harrison Jr. — arguably the best college football player in the country — made a big play for Ohio State on a crossing route.
Outside of those scores, Penn State’s defense stymied an offense that has been able to score consistently most of the season, even stuffing it on a fourth and goal late in the third quarter to give the offense a chance. There was not much more the defense could do to earn the team a win, but players on that side of the ball still took accountability.
“We tried to do our best to have the offense and special teams’ back,” PSU defensive end Adisa Isaac said. “Obviously it’s a team game, you can’t do it alone. We feel like we played a hard game against a great opponent. We just probably, we didn’t do enough on defense.”
Still, some may not care about who bears responsibility. After all, this is now nine losses in 10 attempts for James Franklin against Ohio State. It’s easy to heap blame on the head coach whose teams have not won in the biggest games. But this was not the usual failure. Those games have predominantly been caused by either a talent disparity or the team failing to close things out when it had a lead.
This game was instead about an offense that failed and a coordinator who, through two seasons, failed to put together a top-25 offense according to ESPN’s SP+, a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. Through six games this season that group was No. 24 in the country — better, but still well short of the level a team with College Football Playoff aspirations should have. The matchup with Ohio State did nothing to alleviate those concerns.
But the even greater problem is a lack of identity. Through six games this was a ball-control team that wanted to grind down its opponents with a strong running game and offensive line. Against the Buckeyes it was the opposite. The Nittany Lions consistently tried to pass the ball and got away from the running game early despite its success in the first quarter.
Yurcich’s offenses in the past have relied on the passing game to open things up on the ground, and he seemed to shift closer to that in this game. That’s a difficult ask when it’s not how the Nittany Lions have won all year.
Maybe that was why the group, which had scored 30-plus points all season, was unable to muster a single touchdown until the game’s dying moments.
Or maybe it was the offensive coordinator that did not put the players in a position to succeed.
