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The 2024 Nittany Lions were Penn State’s best football team since the days of Joe Paterno. They also lost three times, and while all three losses were close, Penn State was outplayed in each. Even against Notre Dame, whom Penn State bullied physically in the first half last Thursday, the Nittany Lions were outplayed in the end. Bill Connelly’s postgame win probability says Penn State only gave itself a 23% chance to win, lower than their chance in the Big Ten Championship. Connelly’s system, SP+, has not been sympathetic towards this year’s Fighting Irish.
Was Penn State better than every SEC team? We would argue yes, but considering the variety of options available (Alabama and Mississippi finished the year rated comparably to Georgia and Texas), it’s an impossible debate. What we will say is that Penn State had a better season than every SEC team. Penn State had a better season, in fact, than every team except for the exact three who beat them. If we were ranking seasons, Penn State’s would rank fourth, with Oregon third and the national championship contestants first and second.
This is a landmark achievement for James Franklin, and a heartening showing for a program many justifiably thought was already hitting its ceiling. Penn State showed it can put together a top-five season. Penn State showed it can construct a top-five team.
The achievement’s even more impressive when accounting for the talent this Penn State roster possessed. Penn State had two all-world players, but it was not a roster loaded with five-stars. We talk a lot about Notre Dame’s relatively poor standing in the 247 Talent Composite. This year, Penn State’s was narrowly worse. Penn State hung with three separate teams who were all more talented than itself. Most importantly, it hung with Ohio State, one of the most talented teams in the country and probably the best.
With a lot of this year’s roster returning, optimism is high for Penn State in 2025. Today I even saw a credible Penn State beat writer call the Nittany Lions the new Big Ten favorites. Could this be true? Let’s find out. Four questions for Penn State in 2025, with one big answer at the bottom:
1. How Do You Replace Tyler Warren and Abdul Carter?
If there was any doubting the abilities of Tyler Warren and Abdul Carter heading into last week’s Orange Bowl, those doubts were silenced by halftime. Each was a one-man wrecking crew, and Carter was a one-armed wrecking crew, adding to the awe. Carter did fade a little in the second half (Notre Dame did a better job of choosing which gaps to run in), and he failed to recover the Steve Angeli fumble which could have fatally twisted the knife on the Fighting Irish. But Tyler Warren and Abdul Carter were the two best players on the field, and again, Carter did it with one arm.
The issue for Penn State is that at Penn State, players like Tyler Warren and Abdul Carter are irreplaceable. Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, and Texas will probably contribute ten first-round picks to this April’s NFL Draft. In 2026, they’ll probably contribute even more. That’s what those programs do. Penn State also produces first-round picks, but not with the frequency of the most talented programs in the country. Even the most favorable sample, starting in 2021 and including expectations for 2025, shows the Nittany Lions producing 1.4 first-rounders per year.
Among national championship hopefuls, it’s hard to find anyone more indispensable this season than Warren and Carter were in Happy Valley. Warren was a one-man offense at times Penn State needed one. Carter was arguably more impactful defensively than even Travis Hunter. Without Warren and Carter, Penn State loses that USC game, and Penn State loses to Minnesota, and we’re talking about Franklin’s status on the hot seat, not the possibility of Penn State breaking through.
Penn State’s returning a high quantity of players. It’s not returning the two most responsible for making the whole thing work.
2. Do You Need Good Wide Receivers to Win?
This question is not rhetorical. I’m not sure the answer is yes. Notre Dame had one of the weaker receiver rooms in the playoff field, and the Irish offense is still probably the third-best of the twelve teams who made it, better than Texas’s and Georgia’s and PSU’s. Penn State returns three of its starters on the offensive line. It returns two dynamite running backs. We’ll talk about its quarterback next, but he has the tools to be the best QB in the country next year. There’s enthusiasm around offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki. Does Penn State really need talent out wide?
Whether they do or not, they’re bringing in two solid pickups through the portal. Kyron Hudson was only USC’s fourth receiver this year, but USC used a committee approach, and its receiver room was strong. Devonte Ross was a thousand-yard guy at Troy, and doing that in the Sun Belt’s a bigger deal than is commonly acknowledged. Penn State doesn’t need Jeremiah Smith in order to develop an adult passing game. Two guys who know how to play the position should make a big difference. There might be more on the way, too.
3. How’s Drew Allar’s Psyche?
Those two guys should make a difference, that is, if Drew Allar can get them the ball.
I’m not out on Allar, and I don’t think many will be out on him come September. He still has those tools, and he made significant improvements this year in a revamped offensive situation. If he improves further, he should be the best quarterback in the 2025 Big Ten. That all said, I don’t remember the last time we saw one quarterback take this much heat for a bad playoff performance. Allar only technically threw one interception, but the nature of that interception combined with the bad pass to Nick Singleton, the two picks that were called back, and Franklin’s failure to develop a single serviceable receiver to, altogether, make Allar the primary goat of the first ever twelve-team CFP. Maybe J.J. McCarthy took this kind of heat after the TCU loss at the end of 2022. If he did, I’ve forgotten it.
We’ve seen a lot of NFL quarterbacks take this kind of criticism and respond positively. But we’ve seen plenty of high-skill quarterbacks fold. We try not to use the word “trauma” lightly, but Drew Allar’s 2025 Orange Bowl was a legitimately traumatic experience. He cost his team the biggest football game it’s played in thirty years, and there’s been no shortage of people letting him know.
Drew Allar should be an asset for Penn State in 2025. But the minute he looks shaky in a big game, a lot of heads around the country will turn towards the same place. It’s essential for Penn State that Allar’s head stays on his shoulders.
4. Who’s the New Defensive Coordinator?
That’s a pretty rosy outlook for Penn State offensively. Yes, they lost their biggest weapon, but the run game should be good, the passing game should probably take a step forward, and there isn’t a lot to offense besides the run game and the passing game.
Defensively? I don’t know how encouraged Penn State should be. Dani Dennis-Sutton is a great player and should do a lot to fill the hole Carter leaves. High retention among the secondary and linebackers should go a long way. Penn State should have solid personnel, and it’s possible they bring in a great new DC and the unit doesn’t miss a beat. But without a stud like Carter anchoring the operation, there’s a lot of pressure on Franklin to make the right hire, and there’s a lot of pressure on that hire to work perfectly right away.
Is this finally the job that gets Jim Leonhard back into the Big Ten? Does Franklin pluck Aaron Henry away from Bret Bielema? Those are two of the realistic names being thrown around. Each has upside, but neither is Manny Diaz. Penn State doesn’t need Diaz—Tom Allen did just fine until he ran into Oregon and then Mike Denbrock—but Penn State does need to make things seamless for a unit which will have its third different coach of the last three years.
The Answer
I don’t think you can call Penn State the Big Ten favorites with a straight face, but I understand how you could get there on paper. If you assume Ohio State will struggle after major roster turnover and that Dante Moore’s not going to be effective at Oregon, then sure, I guess you get Penn State in the driver’s seat. College teams always turn over, though. What we know is that Ohio State will be vastly more talented than Penn State, that Oregon will be more talented than Penn State, that Michigan might catch Penn State in talent, and that even teams like USC and Indiana are lurking around, capable of competing.
Penn State opted to not play any football teams in the 2025 nonconference slate (Nevada, FIU, Villanova), but they only get four conference home games. Of those four home games, three come against teams expected to spend a lot of time ranked. Most notably, Oregon visits at the end of September. Then, in November, Penn State has to go to Columbus, where they’ll face one of the three or four most talented teams in the country after that team’s had two months to figure itself out. Making matters worse, this is Penn State, where allegations of single-game failures are only growing louder. For all the improvements Kotelnicki made, his obsession with pre-snap choreography looked unserious against Ohio State and Notre Dame. He out-thought himself.
If Ohio State does self-combust a little. If Moore is an active problem for Oregon. If Michigan doesn’t get it together quickly, and if Curt Cignetti’s a paper tiger, and if Notre Dame gets worse and none of those four SEC programs figures it out, then yes, maybe Penn State contends for a national championship. But this program’s in a place where it could make more progress and still go 10–2. Penn State is not the Big Ten favorite. It’s a contender, and there’s a viable path to at least a Big Ten title, but within its conference, Penn State is third in the pecking order, and outside it’s conference, there’s a good chance multiple SEC programs step back in front of the Nittany Lions.
We talked last week about Notre Dame showing Penn State it’s possible to win without a ton of five-stars. That doesn’t mean it will happen automatically. The program can raise its ceiling again, but unless James Franklin does a transcendent job with a medium amount of talent, Penn State still isn’t going to break through. The reason this program doesn’t win big games is that in those big games, it’s never the better team.
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If you missed it yesterday, we did this exercise for Texas too, naturally engaging in a lot of Arch Manning talk in the process. Our current plan is to discuss Oregon tomorrow, then Georgia on Thursday. That’s subject to change in the event, say, Deion Sanders takes the Cowboys job.
Will Deion Sanders take the Cowboys job? It’s possible. Jerry Jones is a showman at heart, and while there’s no clear way to install Shedeur Sanders as the quarterback in Dallas, there’s also nothing inseverable tying Coach Prime to Boulder. Jones and Sanders did discuss the job, per Sanders.
A better question, I think, is where Deion Sanders will go when he does, eventually, leave Boulder. Is this going to be his last head coaching job? Would he be interested in Florida State if the position were to come open? Would he want to try his hand in the SEC? The NFL?
The legitimization of Deion Sanders as a head coach was one of the biggest college football developments of 2024. This is odd to say regarding Sanders, but I’m not sure it’s gotten the attention it deserves. There was no indication in August that Sanders was capable of being an effective college head coach, going off of his first-year performance at Colorado and the underwhelming job he did at Jackson State, where his team underperformed its talent and failed to capture the HBCU national championship as a favorite. Now? He just made Colorado a playoff contender, his best player won the Heisman, and his quarterback’s probably going to be a top-five pick. Travis Hunter is a transcendent talent, and Shedeur Sanders’s success doesn’t directly correlate with his father’s head coaching acumen, but the elder Sanders got out of his own way this fall, and the Buffs exceeded all reasonable expectations.
With Hunter and the younger Sanders gone, the job changes. Still, we have reason to believe Deion Sanders can coach football successfully at the Power Four level. That’s a new thing, and it’s noteworthy in a landscape where the two biggest national powers (Alabama and Georgia) stand on shaky ground.
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