For many fans who watched Penn State over the past couple of years, it certainly looked as if Drew Allar did not improve at all. In fact, many will even be questioning whether or not he deserved to be drafted after an abysmal final season resulted in injury. However, for interim head coach Terry Smith, perhaps the cold, hard truth of the mattr is that Drew Allar may not have had the proper resources to succeed.
Considering the fact that former offensive coordinator Andy Kotelnicki had his way of thinking when it came to running the offense, Smith may have felt it was not entirely tailored to fit Allar's best traits. When talking on 93.7 The Fan on Monday, Smith bared all about Allar's potential struggles. “I think unfairly to Drew, our system wasn’t built for him. It wasn’t made for him. Some of the decisions were taken out of his control", Smith said of the circumstances surrounding Allar during his Penn State career.
One can certainly get behind that idea because throughout Allar's time with the program, he had multiple offensive coordinators with different mindsets. Both Mike Yurcich and Kotelnicki wanted to run a much more innovative offense with Allar at the helm, but Allar simply is not the guy. In fact, Kotelnicki often turned to former Penn State backup QB Beau Pribula on specialized plays. As a result, because of Allar's pocket passing tendencies, he never thrived in either offensive attack.
However, now in the NFL under one of the better developers of young talent in the league in Mike McCarthy, many expect Allar to fix many of the problems that he faced in college. Surrounded by one of the NFL's most underrated offenses and potentially being mentored by one of the greatest QBs of the modern era, chances are all of Allar's coaches of the past could be proven wrong in the long run.
This article originally appeared on Nittany Lions Wire: Drew Allar's Penn State struggles blamed on 'system'
