Why Joel Klatt believes Penn State enters the 2025 season as CFB's top team

Only four programs have entered the season as the No. 1 team in the AP Poll over the past 10 years: Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Ohio State. However, FOX Sports' lead college football analyst Joel Klatt believes a new team should join that distinguished group in 2025: the Penn State Nittany Lions.

In his post-spring top 25, Klatt ranked Penn State as the No. 1 team in the nation, with Texas, Ohio State, Oregon and Clemson rounding out the top five. Penn State's ranking at the top might come as a bit of a surprise to some. James Franklin's team currently has the fifth-best odds to win the title (+800) and made it to the College Football Playoff for the first time in 2024.

However, Klatt thinks Penn State has something that no other program in the nation has heading into the 2025 campaign.

"They're following the blueprint of the teams that have just won the national championship," Klatt said of Penn State. "You look at what Michigan did in 2023. You look at what Ohio State in 2024. Both of those teams had a core group of veteran players stay. They stayed and they won a championship. Both of these teams had veterans at quarterback. They had veterans on both sides of the ball. They were excellent at the line of scrimmage. They had chips on their shoulders from the way they were bounced in the postseason in years prior.

"All of that is true about Penn State. They're returning their quarterback, both running backs (Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen) and four players on the offensive line."

In addition to the return of Drew Allar, Singleton and Allen, Penn State will also bring back defensive end Dani Dennis-Sutton (8.5 sacks in 2024), third-team All-Big Ten cornerback A.J. Harris, defensive tackle Zane Durant and highly productive safety Zakee Wheatley (96 total tackles in 2024). Sure, the Nittany Lions lost first-round talents in tight end Tyler Warren and linebacker Abdul Carter. But sophomore tight end Luke Reynolds was the top-ranked player at his position as a recruit in the Class of 2024, while Dennis-Sutton, Durant and the arrival of four-star freshman linebacker LaVar Arrington Jr. could conceivably make up for the missing production.

Michigan and Ohio State also showed that they could withstand losing elite talent ahead of their national championship-winning seasons over the last two years. The Wolverines saw defensive tackle Mazi Smith go into the NFL Draft in 2023 and the Buckeyes said goodbye to wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. in 2024.

As Klatt believes that the Nittany Lions have the veteran infrastructure in place to withstand the departures of Warren and Carter, he has an on-field concern surrounding Penn State, but he thinks the team addressed that hole in the offseason.

"My only question was at wide receiver for James Franklin," Klatt said. "We saw how bad it was at wide receiver last year. In the loss to Notre Dame [in the Orange Bowl], they got zero catches from their wide receivers. Zero. Zero catches. That's incredible. So, they brought in three wide receivers: Kyron Hudson, a redshirt senior from USC; Trebor Pena from Syracuse, an All-ACC wide receiver; and Devonte Ross, an All-Sun Belt receiver from Troy. Reinforcements, I think they're going to be better at wide receiver."

In terms of sheer production, two of those wide receivers (Pena and Ross) outperformed Penn State's top-performing receiver in 2024, Harrison Wallace III. Of course, Pena and Ross arguably played against lower-level competition and, in the case of Pena, he had the nation's leading passer throwing to him last year.

Entering his third season as a starter, Allar has shown flashes of promise and potential, throwing for 3,327 yards, 24 touchdowns and eight interceptions to go with six rushing touchdowns last season. But there have been some questions about whether he can reach his top-end potential as he's struggled in big games, throwing for only 135 yards in the CFP semifinal loss to Notre Dame last season.

Klatt doesn't have those concerns with Allar, though. He recently ranked the Penn State gunslinger as his ninth-best prospect in the 2026 NFL Draft, believing that he'll have a really good year in 2025.

Penn State will need a good year from Allar if it wants to break the trend it's had in big games under Franklin. J.J. McCarthy emerged as a first-round talent for Michigan in 2023, while Will Howard played lights out for Ohio State in its CFP run this past season.

Allar did total three touchdowns in a one-score loss to Oregon in the Big Ten Championship Game and got Penn State within a few yards of at least tying the game in the fourth quarter against Ohio State last season.

Considering how close all three of Penn State's losses to top-five opponents were in 2024, Klatt thinks it's just a matter of time before Franklin gets over the hump against a top opponent, as he's 1-15 against AP top-five opponents in his time at Penn State.

"What we haven't seen from Penn State is them rise up and win the game that I would call a matchup game, where they're looking across and the talent is [equal] or they're a bit of an underdog. Can they win that game? Up until this point, they haven't," Klatt said. "Can they? I think so. They beat SMU. They beat Boise State. But then they lose to Notre Dame. We see this in the Big Ten schedule, where they haven't been able to beat the Michigans or Ohio States of the world. They were close.

"That's the next step. I believe they will take the next step. I believe Penn State is ready to take the next step with their veterans and Drew Allar ready to lead the charge."

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