When the preseason AP Top 25 gets revealed later this summer, it will be headlined by the usual suspects.
Texas. Ohio State. Alabama. Georgia.
But somewhere near the top, perhaps as high as No. 1, the Penn State Nittany Lions will be listed. Fresh off of a final four appearance last season, Penn State is gearing up for arguably its most important season since the end of the Joe Paterno era.
Expectations couldn’t be higher in Happy Valley and the reasons are obvious. A multi-million dollar defensive coordinator, a third-year starter at QB and a roster good enough to rank No. 3 in SP+’s post-spring rankings.
College football predictions: What to expect from Penn State?
Here’s a deep dive into what to expect from Penn State in 2025:
Breaking down Jim Knowles in Year 1
When Penn State lured Jim Knowles away from Ohio State (and Oklahoma and others) after the 2024 season, it was seen as a massive addition. And for good reason — Knowles was the architect of an Ohio State defense that just won the national title and he previously put together excellent stop units at Oklahoma State and Duke.
But there is a small catch: Knowles doesn’t always produce improved results in Year 1. At Duke, it took Knowles 4 seasons to produce a better yards-per-play average than the Blue Devils managed in the year before he arrived. There was a similar pattern at Oklahoma State — the Cowboys went from 57th in yards per play allowed to being outside of the top-80 in Knowles’ first 2 years under Mike Gundy.
Of course, he eventually broke through in both Durham and Stillwater. The Blue Devils finished inside the top 40 in yards per play allowed in 3 of his last 4 seasons, there peaking with a defensive SP+ ranking of 20th in his final campaign in 2017. Oklahoma State got as high as No. 4 in the country in yards per play allowed back in 2021.
At Ohio State, Knowles did improve things in Year 1. But that’s largely because things couldn’t have been much worse considering Ohio State’s level of talent. In 2021, the year before Knowles arrived, Ohio State allowed a maddening 5.23 yards per play, which ranked 41st nationally. Since the turn of the century, Ohio State has only posted a worse yards-per-play average twice. One of those times was in 2020 when Kerry Coombs was also in charge of the defense.
The situation at Penn State is much different than anything Knowles has seen in Year 1. The Nittany Lions lost an excellent defensive coordinator in Tom Allen to Clemson after the 2024 season. Penn State was tied for 6th nationally in yards per play allowed in 2024.
But there’s bad news, too. Penn State only ranks 70th in ESPN’s returning production metric — Abdul Carter wasn’t its only significant loss. Despite losing that level of talent, expectations couldn’t be higher for Knowles’ defense this fall.
Of course, it’s possible Knowles will be able to get Penn State’s defense organized quickly for a run at a CFP berth. He’s a better coach than he was when he first started out at Duke and Oklahoma State. But I have my reservations that Penn State will be as good or better than it was on defense last season, both due to Knowles’ history and the star power that Penn State lost this offseason. If Penn State only has the 15th best defense instead of the 6th best defense, is it still a legit national championship contender?
What to expect from Drew Allar in Year 3
The 2025 season will be Drew Allar’s third as Penn State’s starting quarterback. So far, Allar has largely met the expectations that came with his lofty recruiting ranking. He improved his passer efficiency rating to 153.3 in 2024 and also upped his yards-per-attempt to a career-best 8.4 last season.
Those are good numbers, but they aren’t quite elite. The average power-conference QB with at least 240 attempts posted a passer efficiency rating of 142.7 last season, making Allar comfortably above average. He ranked 8th in that category among 58 qualifiers.
The issue for Allar has been his performance in big games. He’s dominated mediocre competition, particularly last year. But in 10 games against opposition who finished the season ranked in the AP Top 25, Allar has a passer efficiency rating of just 114.4. Over the past 2 seasons, that ranks 80th among power-conference quarterbacks who have thrown at least 25 passes vs. a ranked opponent.
Will Allar’s performance in big games improve? That could be tough to forecast. But there’s certainly some reason for optimism. For one thing, Allar should have his best supporting cast yet. Penn State is 10th in returning production on offense, per ESPN. It’s also Year 2 for new offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki in Happy Valley.
Consider this, too: Allar had one of the best year-over-year improvements from Year 1 to Year 2 that we’ve seen in the CFP era according to dead-end throw rate, which measures how often a quarterback throws an incompletion or completes a pass for 4 yards or less. Allar went from a dead-end throw rate of 53% in 2023 to 46% in 2024. That 7 point improvement ranks 12th among QBs who had at least 240 pass attempts at the same school in back-to-back seasons since 2014.
Why is that important? Your mileage may vary on whether it is, but dead-end throw rate does correlate well with passer efficiency rating. If there’s bad news for Allar, it’s that history shows there’s often not much improvement from Year 2 to Year 3. There’s only one recent example of a qualified quarterback having a 4+ point improvement in DETR from Year 1 to Year 2 and then again from Year 2 to Year 3 at the same school: Jaxson Dart.
Whether or not Allar can buck that trend and go up another level — and establish good performance vs. elite opposition — is perhaps the biggest outstanding question for all of college football entering 2025. It certainly will have an outsized impact on Penn State’s postseason hopes.
What about James Franklin?
Ah, the elephant in the room. Can James Franklin win the big one? Actually, can he win a few big ones? With the College Football Playoff reformatting this offseason, Penn State may need to win multiple games vs. top-5 teams in order to win the national title — and that’s just during the Playoff. The Nittany Lions are also slated to face Big Ten giants Oregon and Ohio State during the regular season plus a potential Big Ten title game opponent.
His record against top-5 opposition is well-documented, but it bears repeating. Since taking over in 2014 he’s just 1-15 against AP top-5 opponents. The only coaches who are worse (min. 10 games) are Tom Allen, Dave Clawson and Mark Stoops. None of those coaches had anywhere near the level of talent available to them that Franklin does.
Here’s the reality: Penn State was significantly undermanned in the vast majority of those 16 games. To only win 1 is a disappointment, but implied probabilities from Vegas money lines suggest Penn State would only have been expected to win about 4.55 of those games. Here’s a chart:
Franklin has fallen below expectations in this area — but I’d argue he’s not as far away as people who tout that 1-15 record tend to believe. If he had met Vegas expectations and gone 4-12 against top-5 teams, would people view Franklin any differently as a coach? Not meaningfully so, I’d argue.
It’s worth noting Franklin has over-performed Vegas expectations as a favorite. BetIQ has money lines listed for 105 games where Franklin’s team was the favorite since 2014. Per implied probabilities from those individual money lines, Franklin was expected to win about 83 games. In reality, he’s won 88 of those games — plus 3 more where money lines were not recorded.
I’m not here to argue that 1-15 against top-5 teams is somehow acceptable. Franklin has underperformed in big games, point blank. But such is life at Penn State when you face the behemoths that are Ohio State and Michigan every year. Penn State was an underdog in 15 of those 16 games vs. top-5 opponents. The only exception was the semifinal vs. Notre Dame when Penn State was favored by a whopping 1-point margin.
What happens if Penn State finally has the requisite roster talent to be a favorite in colossal matchups? I think we’ll find out this fall, one way or the other.
Penn State football predictions
From the outside looking in, Penn State has a golden opportunity. The stars have seemingly aligned for the Nittany Lions to make a serious run at claiming their first national championship since 1986. But in order for that to happen, figures like Franklin and Allar will have to rise to levels they never have before. Knowles must make the necessary adjustments to get the most out of Penn State’s defensive personnel in Year 1.
I’m not a buyer in Penn State’s national championship upside. Compared to general consensus, I think I’m higher on Franklin and maybe a touch lower on Allar due to his poor track record vs. great defenses. With that being said, I do like Penn State at -250 to make the Playoff (via BetMGM) and over 10.5 wins (+135 on DraftKings).
The schedule is extremely manageable with the only obvious stumbling blocks being Oregon (at home) and Ohio State (in Columbus). I think Penn State will get a split of those games and then take care of business, as Franklin almost always does, against the minnows of the Big Ten.
Spenser is a news editor for Saturday Down South and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.
