James Franklin is out at Penn State because, some of the insiders there are saying, he couldn’t develop a passing game with former five-star QB recruit Drew Allar.
How much of that is on the shoulders of Marques Hagans, the former UVA Football star and 11-year Virginia assistant, who was hired by Franklin in the 2022-2023 offseason to be his wide-receivers coach and offensive recruiting coordinator?
ICYMI
I dunno, but I mean, the talk about the demise of the Franklin era is focused on the failure of the Franklin staff to develop Allar, and the key there, from what the folks who cover Penn State on a day-in, day-out basis, seems to be, the lack of dynamism in the wide-receivers room.
Franklin addressed that at the Big Ten media days event back in the summer, conceding that Allar, who passed for 3,325 yards and 24 TDs as a junior in 2024, “needs more playmaking around him.”
To that point, his go-to guy last year was 6’5, 256-pound tight end Tyler Warren, who Allar targeted on 135 of his 422 pass attempts last year – for context, he targeted his wideouts a total of 171 times in 2024.
With Warren, a first-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, now playing on Sundays, Allar – who was injured in the fourth quarter of Penn State’s 22-21 loss to Northwestern on Saturday, and is out for the season – was trying to make do with a trio of transfer wideouts and a talented, but young, sophomore tight end.
Kyron Hudson (Southern Cal) was a four-star prep recruit in the Class of 2021, but never did find his footing at USC, putting up 72 catches on 109 targets in parts of four seasons.
Hudson, through six games as a grad senior at Penn State, has 19 catches on 34 targets for 218 yards and two TDs, and a middling 59.9 grade from Pro Football Focus.
Trebor Pena had 84 catches, 932 yards and nine TDs in a breakout season at Syracuse in 2024, but he’s been underwhelming to date in his sixth year of college football – Pena redshirted as a true freshman in 2020, and had two medical-redshirt years, in 2021 and 2023 – with 20 catches on 28 targets, 202 yards and a lone TD.
Similar story with Devonte Ross, who had 75 catches at Troy as a junior in 2024, but has only gotten 19 targets in six games at Penn State, with 16 catches, 240 yards and three TDs.
The promising tight end, Luke Reynolds, a Class of 2024 five-star, is growing into his role – 18 catches on 25 targets, 197 yards.
Hagans didn’t get the job at Penn State until the final week of January in 2023, so, the output in the Class of 2023 isn’t on him.
The 2024 and 2025 classes, though, are all on Hagans, who has a reputation as an ace recruiter dating back to his days at Virginia.
Aside from Reynolds, the 2024 five-star, the prep recruiting didn’t give Allar any weapons – not a single even four-star at wideout in 2024, just one in 2025, in Matt Outten, who played his high-school ball in Portsmouth, and hasn’t seen the field this season.
The transfer portal hasn’t been kind, either – Penn State lost its leading receiver from 2023, Hagans’ first year as the wideouts coach in Happy Valley, KeAndre Lambert-Smith, to Auburn, where he put up nice numbers (50 catches, 981 yards, eight TDs, 78.6 PFF grade) in 2024; and Harrison Wallace III, who led the Penn State wideouts in 2024 with 46 catches and 723 yards, left in the offseason for Ole Miss, where he’s averaging 21.2 yards per catch and has two TDs in 2025.
Support AFP
Share
Chris Graham
