Big Ten Football Coaches Assess Penn State in Anonymous Survey

Penn State has been laboring to reach the College Football Playoff since 2016. Had the expanded playoff been in place last year, for instance, the Nittany Lions would have visited Ohio State for a first-round game. Instead, they went to the Peach Bowl, suffered from opt-outs and lost to Ole Miss. Coach James Franklin referred to that game as a casualty of “moving parts.”

Has Penn State solved the “moving parts” issue entering the 2024 season? We’ll begin to find out Aug. 31, when the Nittany Lions visit West Virginia for the opener. With three new coordinators, the parts will continue to move, particularly in an opening-day hostile environment where the Nittany Lions haven’t played in 32 years. Evidently, some fellow Big Ten coaches are curious about those moving parts as well.

Every year, media organizations conduct anonymous surveys giving college football coaches an opportunity to discuss their opponents strengths and weaknesses in a freer forum. Athlon Sports recently released an anonymous survey of Big Ten football coaches, in which members of the conference’s 18 staffs evaluated the expanded pool of conference talent. There’s some dishiness to this survey, which accompanies anonymity, but it’s also instructive in gauging 2024 potential. The coaches who discussed Penn State, for instance, seemed focused on that potential.

The survey contains three quotes regarding the 2024 Nittany Lions. Let’s look at each in context.

Expectations for Penn State

“They’ve been the definition of the best-of-the-good programs for a while now,” one anonymous coach told Athlon. “They’re never great. They would’ve made a 12-team playoff last year, but they were so noticeably behind Ohio State and Michigan that it didn’t really matter. The expectation is to compete with those schools, and they’ve almost always trailed them under James Franklin.”

This gets to the essence of Penn State under Franklin since 2016. The Nittany Lions have produced five 10-win regular seasons, including the past two years, but couldn’t surmount Ohio State and/or Michigan into the four-team College Football Playoff. The 2023 and ’24 seasons were sequels: beat every team on the schedule but Ohio State and Michigan. The Nittany Lions are 0-6 against those two teams over the past three seasons.

Michigan isn’t on the 2024 schedule, but Penn State still confronts a grueling five-week stretch midseason stretch that includes visits to USC and Wisconsin and home games against Ohio State and Washington. To make the CFP this year, Penn State needs at least a split of those four games while sweeping the rest.

RELATED: The Penn State Football 2024 Forecast series: Are the Nittany Lions playoff contenders?

Expectations for Drew Allar

“The season is on Allar and how he develops with another new OC.”

That’s a fair assessment, although Andy Kotelnicki is only the Penn State quarterback’s second offensive coordinator. Allar faced a sizable shift this past offseason, moving from Mike Yurcich (who recruited him to Penn State) to Kotelnicki, the former Kansas offensive coordinator who brings a live-wire approach to the Nittany Lions.

Allar and Kotelnicki have meshed pretty quickly, at least according to Allar, who loves the coordinators usage of offensive motions and shifts. Their primary mission will be to increase Penn State’s success rate downfield. The big-play passing game went inert for much of 2023. Kotelnicki and Allar want to revive it.

RELATED: Penn State’s offensive shows signs of spring growth

Expectations for the offense around Allar

“They haven’t scared elite programs with their offensive skill position guys since the Saquon Barkley and Trace McSorley days,” one coach told Athlon. “You can talk about a million other things, but that’s the real difference between them and the conference leaders. OSU and Michigan scare you with their talent. They have to hit that next level as an offense.”

Nailed it. The Lions certainly have had some gifted skill players since (notably Pat Freiermuth and Jahan Dotson), and running backs Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen deserve attention. But the offense hasn’t stood up to Ohio State and Michigan’s elite talent the past three years. This year? Penn State enters another season with lingering questions at wide receiver that Kotelnicki must change or work around. Just as Yurcich had to last year, which ultimately cost him is job.

For more anonymous coaching commentary, check out the Athlon Sports Big Ten coaches survey.

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AllPennState is the place for Penn State news, opinion and perspective on the SI.com network. Publisher Mark Wogenrich has covered Penn State for more than 20 years, tracking three coaching staffs, three Big Ten titles and a catalog of great stories. Follow him on Twitter @MarkWogenrich.