One of the storylines coming out of the first preseason game was just how good Drew Allar looked in his debut. The rookie quarterback looked like a man among boys and is now all the rage for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect him to look that good so early on.
I get that it was preseason, but for a player who was mechanically inconsistent and made some poor choices in school, those weren’t on display when the lights came on. Frankly, he looked like a guy who could develop into a legitimate starter.
Naturally, after a strong performance, Steelers fans have been quick to throw some overreactions his way. One such comparison is Allar to Josh Allen. While it sounds ludicrous, there could be some actual smoke to that thought.
The Steelers could have their next franchise quarterback in Drew Allar
When Allen came out of Wyoming, he was a massive question mark. Like Allar, he had the natural arm strength and accuracy deep to make some wow plays. Throwing shorter was always a problem; mechanically, he was a wreck, and his decision-making was questionable at best.
Just look back at Lance Zierlein’s report on him before the draft. He calls him the biggest boom-or-bust in this class and highlights his natural traits as a positive but his completion rate and mechanics as negatives.
It wasn’t instantaneous, but the Bill gave Allen a good quarterback coach to work on the finer details and surrounded him with weapons to make his job easier initially. It has obviously paid off.
The Allar-to-Allen comparison isn’t completely flawed. While expecting Allar to become one of the top franchise quarterbacks is still a stretch, he has a toolset similar to Allen's with some of the same issues early in his career. If those can be ironed out, you could have a legitimately good starter on your hands.
These two aren’t a one-for-one comp. Allen is the better athlete, and I would argue his arm strength is straight-up better. As college prospects, though, they are similar beasts.
The biggest difference is the scheme they played in. Penn State was more conservative, while Wyoming was much more open. Allar needs to show that he can rise to the big occasions, which didn’t always happen in school.
Given the progress that has already been made mechanically, I think Allar is on track to exceed some expectations. It won’t always be sunshine and roses—quarterbacks like this tend to give a lot of bad with the good, but if there are enough wow moments, it won’t matter long-term.
Is Allar going to be an identical clone of Allen? Of course not.
That said, if the Steelers can replicate what the Bills did, you can certainly get a good starter out of Allar. The team has him on the right track mechanically; it will now be a matter of him getting out of his own head and Pittsburgh ultimately trusting him to take the reins at some point.
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