Anyway, Here's Drew Allar

In the name of due diligence, masochism and clickbait, Too Deep Zone will devote a handful of features over the next few weeks to searching for a QB2 in the 2026 draft.

Penn State quarterback Drew Allar does not remind me of the young Joe Flacco. He reminds me of the 33-year old Flacco, the one in the process of losing his franchise starter role and transitioning into the Infinite Testaverde stage of his career.

Allar is big, lumbery, and stumbly. He can distribute throws all over the field, with velocity and touch, from a stationary pocket platform. He can scramble for productive yardage if he gets a long enough onramp to shift through all of his lower gears. But he sometimes backpedals like he staggered off a curb into traffic. He hitches and hesitates in the pocket, sometimes delivering the ball after the defense has converged. When pressured, he’ll either sling an off-balance pass or lower his eyes, flick on his hazard lights and hope the defense allows him to merge from the shoulder into the middle lane.

To back up a bit: Allar was Penn State’s starter from 2023 through October 11th of last year, when he fractured his left ankle late in the fourth quarter of a loss to Northwestern. The Northwestern loss dropped the Nittany Lions, a highly-ranked team entering the season, to 0-3 in the B1G; James Franklin lost his job as a result.

Allar looked like a potential early-round prospect for much of 2023-24 but was not playing well before the injury last year. One of the backbreaking plays in the Northwestern loss was a red-zone interception where Allar double-clutched before throwing to a well-covered receiver. He got injured failing to scramble for a first down while trailing in the fourth quarter.

Aller is 6-foot-5 and a robust 228 pounds. He was healthy enough to throw at his Pro Day. He has the general scouting profile of a typical broad-shouldered, strong-armed, experienced, clear-eyed major-program oak tree.

Now, back to the skepticism.

Allar Under Pressure

Allar was pressured 94 times in 2024, his last fully-healthy season, producing an Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt rate under pressure of 4.0. That’s a poor figure, though not a catastrophic one. Here is how that figure stacks up against other noteworthy 2024 quarterbacks:

Dillon Gabriel, Oregon: 95 pressures, 55.8% completion rate, 6.9 ANY/A

Jaxson Dart, Ole Miss: 88 pressures, 43.5% completion rate, 6.0 ANY/A

Tyler Shough, Louisville: 116 pressures, 44.8% completion rate, 5.0 ANY/A

Shedeur Sanders, Colorado: 137 pressures, 56.9% completion rate, 5.0 ANY/A

Cam Ward, Miami: 104 pressures, 51.0% completion rate, 4.7 ANY/A

Drew Allar, Penn State: 94 pressures,46.8% completion rate, 4.0 ANY/A

Jalen Milroe, Alabama: 89 pressures, 42.7% completion rate, 2.7 ANY/A

Quinn Ewers, Texas: 103 pressures, 48.5% completion rate, 1.6 ANY/A

Allar’s 2025 ANY/A rate under pressure was 2.0. His 2025 sample size of 26 dropbacks under pressure is tiny, but it also includes dropbacks against Villanova and Florida International. Allar, quarterbacking a team that was ranked #2 at the time, struggled with pressure against Florida International, taking an ugly sack in the red zone just before halftime at a point when the game was still competitive. His timing and accuracy weren’t great in that game, either, but the Nittany Lions defense pitched a shutout.

So why are we talking about Allar at all? The answer can be found in the ANY/A rates under pressure for this year’s quarterbacks:

Fernando Mendoza, Indiana: 85 pressures, 49.4% completion rate, 3.8 ANY/A

Garrett Nussmeier, LSU: 67 pressures, 52.2% completion rate, 3.7 ANY/A

Ty Simpson, Alabama: 131 pressures, 47.3% completion rate, 3.0 ANY/A

Carson Beck, Miami: 63 pressures, 49.2% completion rate, 1.9 ANY/A

Taylen Green, Arkansas: 87 pressures, 37.9% completion rate, 1.2 ANY/A

Statistically, all of this year’s quarterback prospects, even Mendoza, look worse than all of last year’s top prospects. Remember: 2024 was not a banner year for quarterbacks.

The 2024 version of Allar, for all of the hitches in his delivery, late-and-off-balance throws and Timber! scrambles/sacks, handled himself under pressure in 2024 better than Simpson did last year. (Mendoza, at least, has tons of big-game clutchsauce to flavor his chicken-tender scouting report.) Allar’s tape from Penn State’s 2024 playoff run is better than Simpson’s tape from Alabama’s 2025 playoff run.

Allar may be higher than Simpson on some NFL draft boards. He could well be the second quarterback taken in the 2026 draft.

The Malfunctioning Hype Machine

There is no QB2 in the 2026 draft. There will inevitably be a second quarterback taken, probably Simpson or Allar, but that’s not the same thing. The “QB2” is supposed to be a potential franchise savior, a challenger to QB1, catnip for the contrarians who reflexively declare the QB1 “overrated.” The QB2 is a key figure in the predraft content model that fuels media outlets from ESPN down to Too Deep Zone.

Dan Orlovsky did his best to pound the table for Ty Simpson on ESPN in a recent segment. Poor Orlovsky, however, sounded like the character in the horror movie tasked with offering the unconvincing reasons why everyone shouldn’t hop in the SUV and drive away from the haunted cabin beside Ax Murder Lake.

Orlovsky’s argument for Simpson boiled down to “he looked good for a while, then looked bad, and we don’t have any previous experience to draw from, so a team like the Jets should just assume that he’s good.” His attempt to cast Simpson as the second-overall pick reminded me of Bart trying to turn the F’s on his report card into A’s. Lisa chides him, noting how easy it is to turn an F into a realistic-looking B. Try framing Ty Simpson as a mid-to-late first-round developmental pick, Dan, and you might sound a little more believable. (And yes, I regret conflating Ty, Bart and Lisa Simpson into the same pop-culture reference, but also regret nothing.)

I don’t want to rip Orlovsky too hard for his long flight down a logical staircase; NFL coaches and GMs can wishcast themselves into similar bad decisions, and there’s much more at stake for them than a silly take on a talk show.

The point here is that generating Simpson hype is almost impossible. Orlovsky’s attempt to pump up Simpson two weeks ago sounded as forced and flat as Pat McAfee’s Will Howard fixation last year. No one is falling for it.

The Jets, meanwhile, met with Carson Beck before Miami’s Pro Day, per ESPN’s Rich Cimini. Or, as the headline at Heavy put it: “Jets Meeting With 6-Foot-5, 2-Time National Champion QB.” There are no lies in that headline; Beck was indeed a “two-time champion” as Stetson Bennett’s backup at Georgia in the late 1990s 2021-22. It’s reality itself that’s playing tricks upon us.

My comp for Beck is Benjamin Button. Beck’s career makes more sense if you assume he’s aging backwards, was a strapping adult in 2023 and regressed back to adolescence last year. If he stayed in college two more years, he would end up winning seven games for McNeese State in 2027. He’ll be a gurgling baby by age 33.

(An aside: I never saw the 2008 Brad Pitt film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but I love the F. Scott Fitzgerald story. In the book, Button stars for the Harvard football team when he appears to be 20 years old, but then ages backwards and cannot make the team as an apparent 18-year old. I would argue that an 18-year old with decades of life/military experience and access to the college training table would have no trouble maintaining varsity status in any era. Fitzgerald would have made a lousy draftnik. Anyway, there’s no football in the movie, I am told.)

Beck represents all that is great and terrible about the early NIL era. He realized that he could maximize his earning potential by staying in college two extra years, dropping from Georgia to Miami (yes, that’s still a drop) in the process, rather than entering the NFL. Beck told the football world that he was a career minor leaguer who would leave the NCAA when it kicked him out. We should probably listen to him.

I could not find anyone suggesting that the Jets might take Beck with the second overall pick. That’s mildly surprising, because on the modern slop-driven Internet it isn’t hard to find “someone” (possibly a hologram of an anime princess) suggesting that the Jets should select a wombat with the second overall pick.

Pro Football Talk picked up the Jets-Beck story, however, even though it was based off little more than a stray remark in a Cimini tweet. Beck’s a well-known player thanks to his 94 years of collegiate experience. There’s nothing else to talk about in this draft cycle. Why not put a little mustard on the tale of a huge-market team kicking the tires on a (chortle) two-time champion?

The Jets are now reportedly setting up a private workout with Simpson. Skepticism and wisecracks aside, it makes sense for a team with the second overall pick (and the 16th!) to do extra homework on several of the draftable quarterbacks, even if “draftable” is carrying a heavy load.

While the Jets chatted up the oldest grad student at the frat mixer and Orlovsky bluffed with a pair of deuces on ESPN, Allar performed well at Penn State’s Pro Day. Matt Lombardo of Between the Hashmarks was there, and called it “the full four-year Drew Allar experience summed up in 20 minutes:” guarded praise, perhaps, but Matt noted Allar’s well-honed leadership chops and comfort with directing the event.

The fact that Allar was able to perform at all was great news: he’s back from the broken ankle and can resume football activities. The fact that he performed well should not be surprising. Pro Days were designed for quarterbacks like Allar: well-built dudes who can loft fireworks all across the sky while working out with longtime teammates in the familiar environs of the practice facility.

Allar also drew quite a crowd at the Combine last month. He grew up near Cleveland, and the Browns media floats around the Combine like a little armada searching for stories that will make their audience happy. In other words: stories that have little to do with the Browns. Arizona State receiver Jordyn Tyson, whose brother plays for the Cavaliers, also attracted the Cleveland armada. But Allar’s crowd included at-large reporters searching for anyone remotely resembling a QB2.

Allar’s Combine press conference was non-noteworthy. He talked about the injury, his recovery, his “arm talent” (his words), his motivation to get better, his childhood of Browns season tickets and attending school wearing Joe Thomas or Charlie Frye jerseys. The best thing a second-tier quarterback prospect can do at his Combine podium is lull reporters to sleep. Allar succeeded, despite the Weapons-like jump scare of a small boy in a Charlie Frye jersey.

So Allar is arguably building draft “momentum.” Yes, that’s often a media echo chamber creating a feedback loop. But again: healthy is important and good. There’s no groundswell of enthusiasm for Simpson. No serious darkhorse candidates are emerging. Allar remains in the “conversation” about the second-best quarterback in this class, obligatory as that conversation may be.

Bottom Line

If my team needed quarterback help right away, and my choices were Allar, Simpson or Beck, I would sign Flacco.

Since Flacco is now unavailable (Bengals), I might try Jeff Driskel, or trading for Tanner McKee.

If none of those options were available, I might fake a heart attack so I could bury myself in hospital blankets rather than making a decision.

But if the EMTs told the team’s owner that my blood pressure was normal (as if) and I could return to work, I would finally choose Allar.

Allar’s something of a dying breed: the industrial-sized pocket passer who spends his entire career at a major program. Top quarterback prospects are much more mobile now, in every sense of the word. Watching Allar operate in his offense full of running backs and tight ends was a little like watching Tony Sacca. No wonder the closest NFL comparison I could think of was 41 years old.

There’s a reason pocket statues are now dinosaurs. A modern NFL quarterback needs some solution to pressure, whether it’s scrambling, quick processing or a lightning release. A prospect with none of these attributes is likely to struggle in the power conferences, let alone the NFL. Allar didn’t struggle that much … until he lumbered into heavy traffic on a failed third-and-four scramble and broke his leg in an October loss to a conference also-ran.

My final comp for Allar is Davis Mills, who started for the Texans when they were being run by a Christian comedian and game-managed a few wins in 2025 by avoiding mistakes while his defense went on seek-and-destroy missions. Mills is a decent backup. Allar could be, too. Just don’t build your franchise or stake your reputation on him.