I'll say it again. Drew Allar is a perfectionist who wears his emotions on his sleeve. He fears failure and overthinks the situation at times when given plenty of protection. When he has to just get out there and sling it, he does quite well. Beyond that, right now I'd have a hard time picking Penn State to win against any of the teams in the top ten except maybe Illinois. Something(s) is/are wrong
Ignoring your comments about who we'd beat, I somewhat agree about Allar. I do think Allar is a perfectionist and holds himself to a very high standard. That can be good, or bad. The good is I imagine Allar works his *** off in practice and preparation for games. But when he makes an error, I think he's hard on himself, probably even moreso than the coaches and more rational fans are. I think that results in him lacking the swagger many are looking for, like McSorley had. He's overthinking because he wants to be as perfect as possible and play to the level of his abilities, which is very high. He shows emotion when he makes an error, directed at himself. I'm thinking that's just Drew's personality, which is fine. What I'd like to see him improve on is being a bit less hard on himself for errors as no QB in history has ever had a perfect game, there will always be some mistakes. But expecting him to fully change his personality isn't going to work, we have to learn to work within it and the coaches need to set him up for as much success as possible.
I think the way the coaches are trying to encourage him could be better. For example, I think they asked him to make some deep throws in these first couple of games even when it wasn't the perfect time for it based on down, distance, coverage, etc., in an effort to get him comfortable with more risk. We took shots on some strange down and distance situations yesterday. I think that's only going to lead to less likelihood of a successful play and even less confidence for Drew as he will get frustrated with the negative play result, especially if it results in a turnover on downs. I'd like to see AK draw up some plays to maximize opportunity for medium and deep routes where a WR can get open with room for YAC, to encourage Drew to attempt some medium and deep balls that hit a WR in stride instead of the back shoulder and intentionally underthrown stuff we seem to ask of him most often.
Franklin keeps saying he's ok with Drew making mistakes but then postgame yesterday one of the first things out of his mouth in his opening comments was that the one INT "drives me crazy." You can't say things like that if you are trying to encourage your perfectionist, emotional QB to take more risks. Someone with Drew's personality is going to hear that comment and allow it to frustrate himself and he will work to not do it again rather than make the risky throw.
I guess the time for that has passed since now we have a real opponent coming up and we aren't going to use Oregon as an extended practice like we did these first 3 games. Maybe the answer is to run a 2 minute offense more often as Drew seems to do well in it, as he probably has less time to think and just plays ball using his incredible talent.