Written By Francis Mizner
In the 2022 season, the Nittany Lions rolled with starter Sean Clifford and Freshman Drew Allar as his backup. With the departure of Clifford, the Medina, Ohio native Allar will take the reigns as QB1.
However, over the course of winter and spring training, freshman Beau Pribula has shown that his speed and athleticism can be unique traits that may be utilized in the Nittany Lions offense.
During an open workout session in early March, we were able to see Pribula display his strength, with Assistant AD for Performance Enhancement Chuck Losey commenting on Pribula’s fierce speed and ability to extend the play.
Losey did say that Allar was able to “close the gap” in terms of speed and strength and gained good weight.
Between Allar’s exceptional throwing ability and Pribula’s speed the two could make for a very dynamic QB duo.
During spring training, Head Coach James Franklin had this to say about his plan to cycle the reps among the quarterbacks.
“So right now, starting even reps across the board for all three of them, and then obviously specific to Beau and Drew making sure that we protect those two guys’ reps as much as we possibly can.
There could be some situations where Beau gets more reps by the end of spring because I think there are some things that we may want to do with Beau to take advantage of his skill set and maybe create an opportunity for him to get some more experience, not only during spring ball but in games next year as well. So we’ll see how that all plays out.”
It appears that Pribula has impressed so much that he may have earned himself reps in a game.
Franklin also mentioned that there was more of a true competition again and that Pribula had desirable traits.
“I do think there’s a little bit of a different dynamic based on, I would say Sean [Clifford] and Drew’s skill sets were probably more similar. They were different, but they were probably more similar, where I think maybe the differences between Drew and Beau may be a little bit more dramatic in terms of their skill sets.”
Heading into the annual Blue-White spring game, both players exchanged reps and put their talents on display.
Allar went 19-30 throwing 202 yards and a touchdown. Pribula went 10-27 for 92 yards while being able to show off the speed with multiple rollout passes.
When asked of his performance, Pribula said, “It felt good throwing the ball, you know like all those fans, just to put on the uniform and everything it’s a good experience.”
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