When the 2022 recruiting class signed at Penn State, it was clear that it was going to be the class that would change Penn State football forever.
Many thought it would be the class that would get Penn State over the national championship hump it had been stuck at for 36 years by the time it signed.
It almost did. It almost became the greatest class of this era of Penn State football. It almost clicked. It almost got Penn State to the place so many had wanted it to get to.
It almost did.
It will always be the class of almost.
Saturday night, Penn State will say goodbye to the 2022 signing class – maybe its most complicated recruiting class ever — as it plays its final game inside Beaver Stadium.
Back in the winter of 2021, when the class signed, it was not improbable to think that it would be the class that would make or break James Franklin’s tenure at Penn State. The class, which was ranked eighth nationally, achieved the second-highest ranking according to 247Sports during Franklin’s tenure. It had the quarterback. It had the running backs. It had the defensive players. It had all of the pieces that Franklin needed. No class offered the promise in the same way the 2022 recruits did, maybe in all of Penn State’s history.
Yet Franklin never led it to the place so many thought he could.
While Franklin’s failings, particularly in 2025, are ultimately what failed the class, much of the 2022 signees will always be remembered for what could have been and what almost was.
Drew Allar, the top recruit of the class, was never fully maximized to his potential. During his time at Penn State, he was under the tutelage of two different offensive coordinators. The first one, Mike Yurcich, rarely put him into a position to succeed and the second, Andy Kotelnicki, never allowed the quarterback to find a rhythm.
And that class – which featured several four-star pass-catching options – hardly aided Allar’s progress. Of the six pass catchers in that class, only one – Omari Evans – contributed at a starter level.
Yet Allar led Penn State within one drive of going to the national championship game in 2024. But he will be remembered as the quarterback who almost led Penn State to a national championship as he let a throw go into coverage against Notre Dame in the College Football Playoffs semifinal.
It will be a legacy that often was put in a tricky position to both deliver on massive expectations that hadn’t been seen for a quarterback at Penn State, maybe ever – and then having it almost come to fruition.
As Allar pledged to return for 2025 in the hopes of finally making good on the promise he never made but offered, there were high hopes for what could be.
Yet the same problems – frustrating play-calling and a lack of consistent production from the wide receiving corps – never could be resolved.
And when Allar – far more mature than when he first stepped onto campus and the most accurate quarterback in Penn State history– tried to lead a furious comeback against Oregon, another interception cost his team another signature game. With it – and an unsuspecting loss against UCLA a week later – Penn State never recovered.
By the time the Nittany Lions returned home with Franklin’s tenure on the line against Northwestern, an ankle injury late in the game sealed both Allar’s time at Penn State and the fate of the Franklin era.
A panicked Franklin even broke his protocol and announced the season-ending injury immediately after the game. It was a stark moment – as the two were bound in an end that was so far from how so many envisioned it.
“That was one of the, honestly, probably one of the worst weekends of my life,” Allar said this week.
It just never clicked the way that so many anticipated it would.
But it wasn’t just the failings of unlocking Allar that cost Franklin his job at Penn State and the 2022 signing class a chance at glory in 2025. The 2025 regression for Nicholas Singleton – the No. 1 running back in the country in that class and Penn State’s 2024 top running back — mixed with the curious decision-making to not hand Kaytron Allen, the other top back in that class, the ball to make up for it never jump-started Penn State’s offense this season.
Only recently, after Franklin’s firing, has the running back duo – which to their credit stayed for another season in the transfer portal and NIL era – found their 2022, 2023 and 2024-like consistency again.
And certainly, Dani Dennis-Sutton, who now ranks inside the top 10 of career sacks at Penn State, has first-round potential and Abdul Carter was already drafted in the first round of the 2024 NFL Draft. But with Carter already in the NFL and Dennis-Sutton – while still playing at a heightened level – playing on a team that has won just one conference game so far, it feels like, as has been the theme of this season, an exercise in what could have been.
When Penn State’s 2022 signing class is recognized on Saturday prior to the game, it will – and should – be applauded. It was one of the winningest classes in school history. But it will also be the class tied to the end of the Franklin era at Penn State.
And it’s just hard to ignore the air of almost surrounding it.
Of what almost was. What almost could have been.
vs 
Time: 7 p.m.
TV: NBC
Announcers: Noah Eagle, Todd Blackledge and Kathryn Tappen
Radio: Penn State Sports Network
Announcers: Steve Jones, Jack Ham, Brian Tripp
