It’s a long way to the top.
It starts with a five-hour flight to Los Angeles.
Penn State sits at what feels like a rock bottom – even when this team is nowhere as pitiful and awful as rock bottom could be – far from those 38,000 feet expectations anyone has over the last eight or so months.
It’s a long way to the top.
It starts with a football game on the West Coast, thousands of miles from home.
There is an anxious concern about the future of this Penn State football season. It felt like rock bottom was already here by the time Penn State took the ball over, trailing 17-3 in the fourth quarter last weekend. Only for Penn State to climb its way back to oh-so-close to the top, to force overtime against Oregon, to get a win everyone has been searching for. All before Drew Allar let a pass go that he should have never let go.
It’s a long way to the top.
It starts with a must-win against UCLA.
By no means is this Penn State football season as over as you thought it was within the first few seconds, first few hours and first few days after Oregon’s Dillon Thieneman snagged the pass in the northern end of Beaver Stadium.
The wretched feeling the throw and the moment – with everything that was baked into it in the years, weeks, months, days, moments and plays prior – felt like conceivably the most painful point that Penn State football has had under James Franklin.
But that’s only because of all the “everything” that came with it.
There are still eight football games left in this regular season. There is still time for Penn State to turn this season around.
It’s a long way to the top.
By no means, though, does Penn State seem to have all of the answers to turn it around.
Putrid, pitiful and poor: All words to describe the way this offense has played at moments this season. Of the 16 quarters of football Penn State has played this season, it’s played consistently well in only five – even in the most liberal of estimates.
In the offseason, Franklin described this offensive line as potentially the best that’s suited up in his 12 years as head football coach at Penn State, offering praise before a singular down of football, let alone a competitive down of football was played.
Yet around it, Penn State found little success for much of the first three quarters against Oregon, picking up just 109 yards of offense. It spurred the run game to a middling eighth-best – or 10th-worst – in the conference, picking up an average of 180 yards through the first four games.
Through the same number of games last season, Penn State rushed for an average 251 yards per game.
That’s far from any elevated, let alone elite, standard.
Concerningly, Nicholas Singleton’s anemic drop-off from last year’s first four games is even more stunning. Through four games in 2024, the former Big Ten Freshman of the Year rushed for an average of 7.7 yards per carry. In 2025’s first four contests, that pace has cratered to 3.9.
What’s added to the confusion: Singleton carried the ball 53 times in 2024’s first four games. In 2025, he has carried the ball 52 times. And on Saturday night against the Ducks, he effectively split carries with Kaytron Allen, who has, in nearly every facet, looked like the better running back for Penn State’s offense.
It’s that type of mind-numbing frustration that is the undercurrent to many of the repeated offenses by Penn State’s offense, slowly developing into a cornerstone of Franklin’s coaching tenure.
Those rushing woes have caused Penn State to force Allar to provide more important throws – but even as Penn State’s most accurate passer in school history – the third-year starter looks like even a shell of his first-year self.
Since last year’s regular season finale, Allar has only had a completion percentage of above 60 percent once, coming in Penn State’s opener against Nevada. But the Wolfpack rank 130th in the country in completion percentage in 2025.
During last year’s playoff run, Penn State largely relied on its run game, which effectively won the game against Boise State. Of course, its passing game failed in the Orange Bowl and a late-game interception by Allar caused the run to come to a screeching halt.
Optimism was high, however, that Allar would be able to build on 2024, where he showed a new attitude under Andy Kotelnicki’s offense. That year-over-year connection would only get better.
But Allar’s inconsistency has been found not just game-to-game, but from throw-to-throw. Against Oregon, Allar couldn’t push the offense down the field with his arm for those first three quarters. It later clicked in spectacular fashion when he found Devonte Ross on arguably his best throw of the season on the way to a feverish comeback that injected life into the season.
Then it all crashed back down once again on the game’s final play – just when it looked like Penn State turned the corner.
This season, however, is not over. In fact, it’s far from over. While it’s been a painful search for optimism this week in Happy Valley, it’s a valid point of view that Jim Knowles brought to Penn State – regarding what happened to Ohio State.
One loss, especially in this new era of college football, doesn’t define a season.
There is still ample time for Penn State to snap out of whatever it’s been in, and the reasonable suspicion to believe that one loss may have loosened the tension that came with all of those expectations into this season.
Penn State will have to work its way through UCLA to start. It’s a match-up that could allow for a “where was that last weekend” effort, which may be what this team needs.
That’s how this could start — even from here — what’s felt like a low point this week, even when compared to what the other sideline is facing, this looks like the penthouse.
There’s still time to get this figured out. There’s still an opportunity for Penn State to fix what it’s already messed – even when that search for optimism this week has felt fruitless.
A month away or eight games away – or even 12 more games away — it’s a long way to the top.
It starts at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday.
at 
Time: 3:30 p.m. (ET)
TV: CBS
Announcers: Brad Nessler, Gary Danielson and Jenny Dell
Radio: Penn State Sports Network
Announcers: Steve Jones, Jack Ham, Brian Tripp
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