For Penn State's Drew Allar, Improved 'Movement' Was an Offseason Goal

Chuck Losey, Penn State's strength coach, details his training approach with the Nittany Lions' quarterback.

Penn State quarterback Drew Allar runs with the ball against the Mississippi Rebels during the second half of the Peach Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. / Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

Though Penn State football coach James Franklin often noted quarterback Drew Allar's underrated athleticism last year, the Nittany Lions didn't make running a priority of Allar's game. Rightfully so. The 6-4 Allar is at his best dissecting defenses from a pocket and throwing to guide an offense. Still, Penn State wants to build a more mobile, or at least agile, quarterback in Allar for 2024.

Franklin said earlier this year that Allar looks like a different quarterback, with a leaner build (even as he's still around 240 pounds) and a changed body composition. As Franklin said, "He's moving better. He looks better. He looks leaner. His weight is still very similar, but I think he's changed his body composition in a lot of ways."

For Chuck Losey, that was an offseason goal of Allar's training. Losey, Penn State's assistant athletic director for performance enhancement, called Allar a "body composition guy." Which means that, over the past two years, Allar has worked diligently to get leaner, develop more agility and improve his movement. Losey said that Allar will bring those traits into the 2024 season.

"He's a body composition guy," Losey said. "For us, it's continuing to get his body-fat percentage down, his lean mass up and then [improving] his movement qualities."

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Allar ran 74 times last season, often in scramble situations and occasional designed quarterback draws. He demonstrated an ability to tuck-and-go situationally and some occasional burst. Could Penn State deploy that more in coordinator Andy Kotelnicki's offense? That's where Losey has been working with Allar.

"You saw it during the spring; he's moving around a lot more, and he's going to have to be able to do that in the game, too," Losey said of Allar. "With any of our guys, we need them to be superior athletes. Movement has always been an area for Drew, when you look at our history and the types of guys we've had back there [at quarterback] with Trace [McSorley] and Sean [Clifford], we've always have some really good movement guys back there. And that's always something that we've been trying to improve on with Drew."

Allar has said often that he feels comfortable in Kotelnicki's offense, which makes different physical and mental demands from its quarterback. Allar must be able to handle the base operations of Kotelnicki's offense while controlling its varied shifts, motions and alignments. Some of that will include being more mobile in the pocket, if not necessarily adding designed runs.

"I think the offense is a really good for for not only me," Allar said. "We're going to run stuff that the receivers like, that I like, that the tight ends like. ... It is different from last year in terms of that. My comfort level has grown."

Kotelnicki said that Allar has brought an "insatiable hunger" to his role in the new offense.

"When you look at college football players, when you look at people that age, having a true hunger and willingness to want to improve and do everything right and do everything to maximize his college football experience, Drew embodies that," Kotelnicki said. "It's not like that for every kid. I've coached long enough now that I can say that with quite a bit of knowledge. So first of all, he's got an insatiable hunger to improve in every area that we've talked about."

Further, Kotelnicki has found Allar eager to improve off the field, notably in the film room and in training.

"He does a great job from the quarterback position of getting on the same page, and [making sure] we're doing things the right way," Kotelnicki said. "That's the first thing to notice. He's always in the quarterback lab looking at extra film. I see him down there trying to do things to improve that way. And then you see the actual work that he's trying to do outside of football, outside the coaches, that are things that are necessary to do."

Penn State opens the 2024 season at West Virginia on Aug. 31. Kickoff is scheduled for noon ET on FOX.

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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 X (or Twitter) @MarkWogenrich.