If Trey Wallace and Liam Clifford are the main targets, Penn State's offense is in trouble

Penn State's offense will look very different under Andy Kotelnicki in 2024. This season brings not only a fresh new scheme from an innovative playmaker, but also a new cast of characters, especially at the wide receiver position.

KeAndre Lambert-Smith and Dante Cephas left the program after their roles diminished in the Peach Bowl loss to Ole Miss. James Franklin responded by signing former Ohio State receiver Julian Fleming, the top recruit in Pennsylvania in 2020. However, reports coming out of fall camp all pointed to Harrison Wallace III and Liam Clifford as the top outside targets.

“If you asked him, I'm sure he'd say, 'Gosh, I started kind of slow,'” Kotelnicki recently told reporters about Fleming, the most experienced player in Penn State's wide receiver room, before noting that “he's done a great job in the later stages of fall camp.”

After starting 11 games last season at Ohio State with a much larger receiver room than Penn State, Fleming was expected to have his breakout season in 2024.

Without superstars like Marvin Harrison Jr., Emeka Egbuka, Garrett Wilson, Jaxon Smith-Ngjiba, Chris Olave and others in his path, the former five-star finally had a chance to reach his potential. Now, that doesn't seem to be the case, and that's a big problem for the Nittany Lions.

Instead, Kotelnicki will rely on Wallace and Clifford, who have a combined 94 faceoffs in five seasons at Penn State, 31 fewer than Fleming's total in four years in Columbus. Wallace's season was marred by an injury suffered in Week 9 against Indiana that kept him out of action until the bowl game. That injury limited his faceoffs to just 291, but Clifford played even fewer faceoffs simply because he didn't make the starting lineup.

With 19 catches for 225 yards and a touchdown, Wallace was Penn State's sixth-most productive receiver last season in the nation's 79th-ranked passing offense. By a more efficiency-based metric, yards per route run, Wallace's 1.41 yards per route run ranked fifth among Nittany Lions targeted at least five times in 2023 and ranked 34th among the 50 wide receivers in the Big Ten targeted at least 25 times.

Cephas, who was a huge disappointment in his only season in Happy Valley after transferring from Kent State, finished 36th in the same sample with a 1.31, while Lambert-Smith's 1.92 was 12th, one spot behind Ohio State's Egbuka. Fleming's 0.91 was 46th, and Clifford's 1.02 would have put him 45th had he seen enough targets to qualify.

Penn State fans were more than ready to part ways with Lambert-Smith and Cephas after their disastrous offensive performance last season, especially in key games, but they and the Penn State coaching staff may regret holding the door open for them as they leave town.

Yards per route run essentially shows how many targets a player can get by getting free when he has the opportunity to run a route and the damage he does with those targets. Wallace caught 73.1% of his 26 targets, but only 11.8 yards per catch and he caught just one throw over 20 yards on downfield.

It's hard to make a statistical case for the redshirt junior as the WR1 in the Big Ten, even after he made four catches for 67 yards in the Peach Bowl. With Wallace and Clifford both auditioning for their primary roles, Allar wasn't able to complete a pass to the wide receiver until the fourth quarter, when he finally got to Clifford. By that point, Ole Miss had built a comfortable lead and was willing to allow Allar fewer pass completions.

This season, Penn State's offense needs more than just completions, it needs explosive plays. Last year, the Nittany Lions ranked 97th with just 47 plays of 20 yards or more. A comeback from Nick Singleton out of the backfield would help, but Allar needs weapons to help him stretch the field vertically or Kotelnicki's offense will have to compete against Big Ten defenses, which is a much tougher task than scoring points in Kansas in the Big 12. Wallace hasn't offered that verticality in his career, and Clifford has been even less effective.

Liam, the younger brother of former quarterback Sean Clifford, caught just 13 balls for 130 yards in 2023. His biggest play came late in the first half against Illinois, when he put the Nittany Lions within field goal range.

The mood in fall camp has been consistently positive, but that won't matter until it's reflected on the field, and Penn State will have a real challenge in Week 1 against West Virginia. Last season, Wallace managed 72 yards on seven pass catches against the Mountaineers. A start like that in 2024 is almost necessary to prove he's up to the task as a WR1, and Clifford's performance could be even more crucial. The redshirt junior has even less evidence he can function as a P5 receiver, from the slot or from the outside.

In three wide receiver sets, Penn State will likely use Wallace and Fleming on the outside and Clifford in the slot. Even with Tyler Warren, one of the best pass-catching tight ends in the country, a deep offensive line and an elite backfield, this offense will be in big trouble if Allar can't improve the play of his mediocre pass-catching arms, and that could cost Penn State a spot in the College Football Playoff.

Fleming's slowed development as a 23-year-old fifth-year senior allowed Wallace and Clifford to become Allar's top targets. It's promising that they were able to take the reins in the wide receiver room, and it will be refreshing to see a re-formed group in 2024, but just because it's different doesn't mean it will be better.