There is big message in Franklin’s new hire
Penn State coach James Franklin spoke to reporters Monday for the first time since defeating Illinois and opting out of a possible bowl game in December.
The Nittany Lions overcame a historically awful 0-5 start to win their final four games in 2020. Wins over Michigan, Rutgers, Michigan State, and the Illini provided a bit of a salve to a miserable season. Getting some confidence was a positive for the program.
While the victories helped ease a worried fanbase, they weren’t enough to mask an offense mired with deficiencies. Quarterbacks
Sean Clifford and Will Levis struggled with fumbles and interceptions, and the offense finished the season scoring 29.8 points per game, putting the Nittany Lions 54th of the 127 Football Bowl Subdivision teams in scoring for the 2020
campaign. Franklin assessed the situation and determined that he would replace Kirk Ciarrocca with Mike Yurcich as offensive coordinator.
“At the end of the day, it was a tough decision,” Franklin said about replacing Ciarrocca with the former Texas offensive coordinator. “Philosophically, I felt like it was the right thing for us to do and play a style of offense that I think is going to be important for us to play,”
It’s hard to determine how much of the Nittany Lions’ minus-8 turnover margin was on Ciarrocca or the inept play of Levis and Clifford. Penn State was 12th out of 14 Big Ten teams in turnovers. One could argue it’s a miracle the Nittany Lions won a game at all, much less rallying to win four.
If this were the NFL, perhaps the onus would fall on the players, but the athletes don’t get paid, so it falls on somebody on the payroll.
“I think the thing that I stated earlier, about an emphasis on explosive plays, an emphasis on [limiting] turnovers, and an emphasis on scoring points,” Franklin said about his offense that only scored over 40 points once (the 56-21 win against Illinois) in 2020. “They’re the three most important things that you have to do on offense and, specifically, in current college football. The way this thing is trending, there’s going to be games where you’re going to have to score 40 points.”
Buying out Franklin isn’t a wise option financially, nor is it smart based on performance. All of the scuttlebutt among fans about Franklin being on the hot seat was lunacy. But when you’re chasing what might be an impossible dream, somebody has to go. It wasn’t going to be Franklin, and it probably shouldn’t have been Ciarrocca either. “You better be able to protect the football and create explosive plays. Those are two areas that we were not successful at this past season,” Franklin said. “It was a very tough, tough decision, but something that I felt like was the right thing for us to do moving forward long term.”
Now we’ll see who Yurcich is as a coach. If the 45year-old from a Cleveland suburb follows his success from Oklahoma State, Ohio State and one season at Texas, he’ll likely become a head coach someday. If he doesn’t meet expectations, it could get ugly for a Nittany Lion program desperately trying to get on par with the likes of Ohio State.
Franklin exuded confidence in Yurcich’s ability to get the offense back where fans and the coach expect it to be.
“It’s going to be back to who we were the previous three or four years. It’s going to be spread. It’s going to be tempo. There’s going to be an emphasis on explosive plays,” Franklin said. “Obviously, we’re still working through all those types of things, but me and Mike have been talking for a long time, and we’re on the same page in what we want to do and how we want to do it. And Mike has lived in that world.”
It will be a while before anyone knows if Franklin made the right choice. We did learn a bit more about what the coach heading into this eighth year the helm wants for the Nittany Lions: He wants to win, even if it means hurting feelings. Right or wrong, that is what it takes under the current climate in college football.