Joel Klatt defends Drew Allar as top-five quarterback in college football

Penn State QB Drew Allar decided to come back for one final season of college football. With that, he’ll enter it as one of the top quarterbacks in the entire country, specifically a top-five one for Joel Klatt.

Klatt rated Allar at No. 5 in his Top-10 QBs for ’25 during the latest episode of his show on Monday. He thought about slotting him higher but, to not get ahead of himself, he had him just rounding out his top-five.

“I tried to pace myself on this one because I’m very high on this team. I think this team is going to be an excellent team. They’re following the blueprint of a team that can go and actually win a national championship,” said Klatt. “I wanted to pace myself on this one because he’s got to take a next step, in his development, in his leadership, and in what the team has accomplished. Drew Allar at Penn State.”

Klatt has been a fan of Allar since the start of his career back in ’22. He has since seen him develop over this three years, the past two as their starter, especially as a junior last year under the new offense for the Nittany Lions where he posted career-bests with 66.5% completion and 3,327 yards to go with 24 touchdowns, 30 in total with six more on the ground, and eight interceptions.

“I’ve loved Drew Allar since the moment I saw him when he was a true freshman warming up in a game that he wasn’t even going to play in, as a true freshman before Penn State opened at Purdue a few years ago. And, I’ve seen the growth,” said Klatt. “Now, this is what’s tough. This is what’s really tough is that – I’m hesitating here because it’s going to sound like I’m talking down to people and I don’t want to. I just think that there’s a difference between people that just view for statistics or results and not for, like, a guy playing the position and how he plays the position, how he grows in the position, how he’s developed whether it’s his pocket presence, his accuracy down the field, his decision-making. I felt like Drew Allar, last year, played excellent football. I really did.”

“Allar is actually very good. He’s got incredible skill levels. He has shown the ability to run and is willing to run for first downs, even though it’s not like he’s going to go tear the world up running the football. He can do it. He can do it as well as Will Howard did it at Ohio State last year. He’s got an excellent arm,” continued Klatt. “They pushed the ball down the field more so last year than they had in years prior. I thought he took a step forward with Andy Kotelnicki and now they’re going to have better wide receivers on the outside. He’s going to be in year two with Kotelnicki. That’s going to be, I think, huge for them.”

There’s room for improvement for, though, with Allar. That’s obvious considering he did choose to not enter his name into the 2025 NFL Draft in hopes of improving his stock for 2026. However, as much as he may develop himself, Klatt expects him to be better if for no other reason than their receiver additions this offseason, namely Trebor Pena (Syracuse), Kyron Hudson (USC), and Devonte Ross (Troy), to give him better targets in the pass game.

“Now, there’s things that he can get better at. There’s no doubt,” said Klatt. “He was playing with a wide receiver corps that was below average. There’s no other way to say it and it’s not shading. I’m not trying to shade the wide receivers but, listen. You can’t play a playoff game and go out there and have zero catches from your wide receiver corps and think that your quarterback is just going to bail you out because, what, he has a tight end in Tyler Warren? So, I think that Drew Allar has gotten a bad rap from a lot of people, including some Penn State fans, you know, thinking like, ‘Oh, you know, Allar is no good!'”

“Like, I think this is going to be a really good team,” Klatt said. “Part of that is is that they’ve replenished their wide receiver corps. They’ve got guys on the outside that I think are going to be very good and will improve Allar as he continues to improve.”

Again, Klatt had to slow himself from putting Allar any higher than fifth. Still, based on what he thinks about him and his team this fall, they should be right near the top of both lists over next year.

“I didn’t want to go way too high with Allar and make the mistake that I did last year with Carson Beck. And so, I put him at five,” said Klatt. “This is just, like, a patient deal where I think he can play higher than this. I wouldn’t be shocked if Drew Allar was actually in Heisman conversations during the course of the middle or even the second half of the season.”

“The tools are there and so Allar has just got to go out there and prove it,” said Klatt. “So does Penn State, so does James Franklin. So we’ll see if they can do that.”