The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Reviewing Penn State football’s 42-37 loss to UCLA

Penn State’s season took an extreme turn Saturday when the Nittany Lions lost to UCLA on the road 42-37. Now they’re left to pick up the pieces and try to recover the rest of the way.

Let’s get into the good, the bad, and the ugly of the game.

Good

Kaytron Allen: There were only a couple bright spots Saturday afternoon and Allen is an obvious one. The running back was excellent again, carrying the ball eight times for 50 yards and two touchdowns — which only makes it more embarrassing for Penn State that he only got nine touches in the game. It has been obvious to anyone who has watched the Nittany Lions’ first five games that Allen is the team’s best back, but that didn’t stop the coaching staff from giving Nick Singleton more touches against the Bruins. And sure, maybe you can make the argument that it was important to get Singleton on track for this team to achieve its goals. But now it may be too late, and Allen’s lack of touches is going to go down as one of the flaws that helped bury this team over the last two weeks. Credit to him, though. He’s taken advantage of every opportunity he’s had — even if the coaches won’t give him any additional ones.

Drew Allar: This has got to be the most perplexing part about this loss. If someone said Penn State got upset by UCLA, the assumption would be that Allar regressed significantly and had the worst game of his season. But the opposite was true. Allar connected on 19 of his 26 passing attempts with a couple of those incompletions being drops that should’ve been brought in. He played well as a passer and complimented that with 11 carries for 78 yards — many of which came on scrambles where he was decisive and made plays when the offense needed it. Allar led the offense to four touchdowns in the game and it’s hard to blame him for the group’s failures in the biggest moments. Three of the team’s four scoring drives were not his fault — with the blame for two falling on the play-calling and the third coming on a fumble from tight end Luke Reynolds. This has been a disastrous year for Allar, but he was very good on Saturday.

Bad

Effort on special teams and defense: This game changed when UCLA scored on its first drive of the season and then recovered a surprise onside kick — one the Bruins got because the Penn State kick return team completely vacated the area. Those 10 points ultimately decided the game, and were emblematic of what plagued the Nittany Lions all game. They played like a team that was either disinterested or still looking for a reason to try after losing to Oregon in the White Out a week earlier. Whatever the reason was, the game was a mess from the start for the defense and a special teams blocked punt return for a touchdown was one of the only bright spots from those two units all game. The blame falls on both coordinators — Justin Lustig on special teams and Jim Knowles on defense — for how unprepared the players were. Enough so that Knowles’ failures against UCLA has undone any good will he earned for his unit’s performance against Oregon.

Andy Kotelnicki: The offense did a great job of bouncing back after a poor performance against Oregon but that all came undone with a horrendous play call late in the fourth quarter. The Nittany Lions had fourth-and-2 on UCLA’s nine-yard line, with an excellent chance to tie the game up and go to overtime — where the team’s talent should have been able to get the win. Instead, Kotelnicki called an option play, with Allar able to either hand the ball off to wide receiver Trebor Peña on a jet sweep, or keep it and run up the middle. The play was immediately blown up by the UCLA defense, with either the hand off or keeper spelling doom for the offense. Allar kept, lost three yards, and that was essentially the game. The fact that Kotelnicki didn’t give Allar a chance to throw the ball — or even scramble, which is when he was most effective as a runner — is a massive failure and one that may have sunk the entire season.

Ugly

Tony Rojas replacements: This could just be Dom DeLuca, but clearly Penn State does not trust any of its other linebackers to play — which means this is also on them for not stepping up in practice and earning a role with real playing time. Instead, DeLuca earned the majority of the time on the field and was a disaster. He was consistently out of position because he lacked the quickness to get where he needed to be, and was bad in the running game even when he was in position. He’s been a great story as a former walk-on, but clearly does not have the athleticism to play in space and make a difference at linebacker — a necessity with how most modern offenses work. Losing Rojas to a long-term injury was always going to hurt this team, but it became very clear, very quickly, that DeLuca is going to be a target every time he’s on the field for opposing offenses. And if one as bad as UCLA can take advantage of his play, then that doesn’t bode well for matchups with Ohio State and Indiana down the road.

What comes next: Penn State is once again in college football purgatory. The program that should have benefited most from the expanded College Football Playoff is now in line to miss it once again if it drops one more game — likely to the Buckeyes on the road. But what happens if and when they miss the playoff is even more fascinating. The Nittany Lions have been under James Franklin’s leadership for over a decade, and he’s had plenty of success, but it might be best for everyone involved if this is the last year of his tenure. It’s reasonable to think Franklin would want to move on, too, with the animosity among the fan base toward him only building and the program trending closer and closer to apathy as the annual failure to reach the ranks of the elite becomes expected. And with his buyout (currently around $50m+), it will have to be Franklin’s decision on if the divorce ends up happening.

Jon Sauber

Centre Daily Times

(814) 231-6461

Jon Sauber covers Penn State football and men’s basketball for the Centre Daily Times. He earned his B.A. in digital and print journalism from Penn State and his M.A. in sports journalism from IUPUI. His previous stops include jobs at The Indianapolis Star, the NCAA, and Rivals.