Apologize for bringing up Allar in the Allar thread, but here is a great Allar article from my Apple News feed (wsj.). This is the best i can do copy and pasted. The link won’t be enough if you do not pay for the premium service:
COLLEGE FOOTBALL
The Big Ten Quarterback Who Can’t Win the Big One
Drew Allar arrived at Penn State as a five-star recruit and aimed to bring the Nittany Lions their first national title since 1986. Now, the pressure is on.
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Drew Allar looks like a Penn State quarterback created by AI. He was a five-star recruit in high school. He stands 6-foot-5. His arm packs such power that, according to one NFL draft analyst, his throws can reach “nearly every blade of grass on the field on any given play.”
But as Allar approaches his most daunting challenge of the season so far, when the No. 3 Nittany Lions host No. 6 Oregon on Saturday, a sense of gloom hangs over Happy Valley.
Just as Allar’s development and experience are supposed to be peaking for his senior year, he has instead looked distressingly mediocre this season. Coupled with his persistent struggles against ranked opponents, it’s raising doubts about whether the quarterback who was supposed to end Penn State’s 39-year national championship drought will ever deliver on that promise.
“This is the biggest game of his career,” ESPN college football host Paul Finebaum said. “Some will say that’s hyperbolic, but a poor performance and a loss will make the pressure on him insufferable and suffocating.”
For his part, Allar hasn’t complained about feeling the pressure. But in recent weeks, he’s looked a lot like a 21-year-old with the expectations of 100,000 fans weighing on his right shoulder. In a Sept. 6 win over Florida International, Allar completed just 58% of his passes. One week later, against lower-division Villanova, he connected on just 55% and tossed an interception in an otherwise easy win.
“I’m just overthinking it,” Allar said of his display against FIU, in which he mistimed throws and whiffed on a gimme pass to his running back. “So, it’s just going out there and shutting my brain and going and playing.”
It’s possible that Allar is simply taking time to gel with a new cast of receivers and the Penn State offense will pick up steam. But as he enters the defining stretch of his final season in college football, it’s possible Allar is also experiencing a heightened feeling that the passage of time is working against him.
“There tends to be, in many people, an increased sense of pressure when there’s this feeling that time is running out,” said Brad Stulberg, author of several books on performance and success.
Allar wouldn’t be the first quarterback to struggle with the realization that after four years on campus, his college career has reached the now-or-never stage.
“As you get older, I think sometimes you start to recognize, ‘Man, my time is running out,’” said former Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy. “I think that becomes very challenging in itself to deal with. If I hadn’t won the national title my junior year, my senior year would have been the most pressure-packed year ever.”
Few quarterbacks have faced the kind of pressure that has accompanied Allar ever since he arrived at Penn State in 2022 amid a fanfare of hype and a belief that he would become the program’s first signal-caller to be selected in the opening round of the NFL Draft since Kerry Collins in 1995.
Penn State’s fan base looks at the team’s solid defense and two 1,000-yard rushers and sees Allar as the key to getting over the hump.
Larry Laird, Allar’s football coach at Medina (Ohio) High School, dismissed the idea that the pressure is getting to Allar. He said Allar just needs to trust himself.
“When I texted him last week after he had made those [overthinking] comments, I was like, ‘Hey, just go back to what we talked about when you were in high school: SFT. See it, feel it, trust it,’” Laird said. “For him, it’s definitely a feel.”
Penn State does have wellness and therapy services for athletes, but an athletics official wouldn’t say whether Allar has used them. Allar works with a private quarterbacks coach, but on throwing mechanics, not on mental training.
What’s certain is that Allar won’t face many more daunting situations than the one he confronts on Saturday. In his career, Allar has a 5-7 record against top-25 opponents. And Penn State hasn’t defeated a top-10 team at home in nine years.
Allar knows he won’t have many more chances to end that streak. But Stulberg, the author on success, has advice for people in similar circumstances: Acknowledge that what you’re trying to do is against the odds, then say to yourself, “‘F—it. Someone’s got to do it,’” he said, “‘so I’m going to go for it.’”
Write to Rachel Bachman at
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