After starting the season with the second highest odds to win the National Championship, and as the number 3 ranked team via the AP poll, the Penn State Nittany Lions have been officially eliminated from the College Football Playoff, but how did all of this happen?
First things first Penn State had a promising but painful end to the year in 2024. Along with a Big Ten Championship appearance, they were in a tie game in the CFP semifinal against Notre Dame at the Orange Bowl and Drew Allar throws a costly interception to lose the game, as it set Notre Dame up for a game winning field goal. Regardless, it was a promising season for Penn State. Going into 2025 having almost an entire returning offense and almost all of the defensive production returned, so how is it possible that a team that made the Big Ten Championship and was a few moments away from making the National Title game sees their season over after six weeks.
To start Penn State would open the season with three wins in a row as they would beat Nevada, FIU, and Villanova while only conceding 17 points. Now where things began to go downhill was the Week 4 whiteout game where Penn State who was ranked number 3would welcome number 6 Oregon. Penn State would come into the game as a 3.5-point favorite and many people thought this was the day head coach James Franklin could get back over the hump and finally win a top ten game.
Things were not looking good early for Penn State as Oregon would score 17 unanswered points and have a commanding 17-3 lead in the fourth quarter. Drew Allar would lead a 4 play 75-yard drive in just 1:55 capped with a 35-yard touchdown pass to Devonte Ross. A Ducks three and out would set up Allar and Co to go on a 15 play 62 yard drive spanning 6 plus minutes and leaving just 30 seconds on the clock, the game would go to OT where both teams would trade rushing touchdowns. Oregon would score on the first play of 2OT but fail the 2 point conversion. Penn State would get the ball back knowing a TD and 2 point conversion would win it, but on the first play Drew Allar would throw a pick into double coverage and Penn State would fail to win on the big stage again.
The next week they would fall to 7 in the AP poll and things were looking up as they traveled to an 0-4 depleted UCLA team who has just fired its head coach, seems like the Nittany Lions would cruise right? They were down 27-7 at halftime. Now Penn State would mount a comeback as they would get within six twice, but the Bruins kept pulling away and upset Penn State 42-27. The aftermath of this loss would result in Penn State falling out of the AP poll rankings plus even more criticism surrounding Drew Allar and James Franklin.
Last weekend in their homecoming game would happen to be both the un doing of Franklin and Allar. Northwestern would walk into happy valley and pull off another shocking loss for the Nittany Lions. Drew Allar was having a solid game as he ran for a touchdown with 6 minutes remaining to give his team the lead Northwestern would respond and take a 22-21 lead. Drew Allar would scramble left on the opening play of the Penn State final drive and that would be his last play of the season as he would leave the game on a cart. An MRI confirmed on Sunday that Allar would miss the rest of the season with a left leg injury.
Just a few hours later it was announced that Penn State had fired James Franklin and bought out the remainder of his 55-million-dollar contract. Franklin lead Penn State for 12 seasons with a 104-42 record, which doesn’t sound to bad, but the reason his head was being called for was his record versus top ten teams, which was a staggering 4-21. Penn State is now in search of a new coach and is down to a backup quarterback. The most ironic thing about the whole Penn State Quarterback situation is Missouri QB Beau Pbribula has lead the Tigers to a 5-1 record with a single loss to Alabama. Pbribula has been miles better than Allar this season and it begs the question to if he had stayed if he would have beat out Allar for the job.
Penn State will finish out the season with games against three top 25 teams, 1 Ohio State, 3 Indiana, and 25 Nebraska, all of them are away games. They also travel to Iowa this week as well as playing Michigan State and Rutgers. So it really begs the question, how bad can this season get for Penn State, I’m willing to bet pretty bad.
