James Franklin was on a two-school, three-season streak of winning close games.
Very close games.
Then came Penn State’s past three contests.
Before we go any further, you need to know that Franklin has a penchant for close shaves – on the gridiron as well as on his noggin. A full 40% of his 47 games as a head coach have been decided by 7 points – or less.
From a third of the way through the 2012 season at Vanderbilt, all of 2013 at Vandy and Penn State’s first four contests in 2014, Franklin’s teams were 8-1 in games decided by 4 points or less.
It’s an pretty impressive list, too: wins at Missouri (4 points), Auburn (4), at Ole Miss (1), No. 15 Georgia (4), at Tennessee (4), Wake Forest (2), Central Florida in Ireland (2), and at Rutgers (3). The single loss came in 2013, by 39-35 to Mississippi – the team that one year later was inches away from 8-1 and a possible spot in the CFP.
Overall, Franklin is 9-10 in 7-point games, including 0-2 in overtime. That’s largely because of his 1-5 mark in his first season at Vandy and his 2-3 record in 7-point games at Penn State in 2014. At both places he played with undermanned squads as well as with coaches and players who were still getting settled in.
Still, Penn State won those two close games early this season. That’s thanks, mostly, to the quarterback play of Christian Hackenberg, perhaps more than even the coaching. In Penn State’s final possession of those two games combined, Hackenberg drove the Nittany Lions 135 yards in 13 plays and two minutes and 56 seconds, completing 7 of 10 passes for 131 yards. (Makes you want to hurry-up all the time, doesn’t it?)
NITTANY NAIL-BITERS
But that was then and this is now.
Penn State is on a painful, prolonged nail-biting stretch that has seen its record go from 4-1 to 4-4. In its past three games, the line between winning and losing has been razor-thin. PSU lost by 5 to Michigan (18-13), by 7 in double-overtime to Ohio State (31-24) and by 1 to Maryland (20-19) on a Terp field goal with 52 seconds left in the game.
It really doesn’t get any closer than that. One question is whether getting close is the ultimate achievement in and of itself or whether the Nittany Lions have something left in the tank at game’s end and the coaches can’t quite seem to scheme it out of them. With a reduced roster, the rate of injuries speeding up, and a punting game and O-line play that are MIA, Franklin is thinking about changing his SOP.
Drastic times call for more drastic measures.
Whether all of that leads to more gambling on fourth down (although there was that failed fourth-and-11 fake punt on Michigan’s 37) or out-of-the box play-calling or other such chicanery is another story. Penn State’s gone for it 13 times on fourth down, making only four. That’s nearly identical to its opponents’ 3-of-14 against the Lions. Franklin was more of a gambler at Vandy, going for it on fourth down 58 times in his last two seasons there. (Coincidentally, Bill O’Brien also went for it on fourth down 58 times in his two seasons at Penn State.) Speaking of OB, maybe Penn State should just NASCAR it around the field all game long. After all, games against Maryland and auto races both involve heated scuffles these days.
Franklin may be ready for something more draconian.
TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY
On Tuesday, the first-year Penn State head coach said with a grin: “We have a few new wrinkles that we’ll have this week that I know you guys will be excited to talk about post-game. We’re going to be a little bit more creative than we’ve been in the past, to try to manufacture first downs and try to manufacture some points.”
On Wednesday, I asked Franklin: “In a lot of ways you’re playing with one hand behind your back. Do you think about or try doing things unconventionally in a game to kind of even things out?”
Franklin replied: “We do. We talk about it. We’ve done some of those things early in the year. Looking back at it, the four-minute offense the other day (against Maryland at game’s end), after the fact, you’d probably like to do some things that aren’t typical for what you normally would do in a four-minute offense.
“But there are also things that have limited us due to our roster. So maybe you do a different play or a different scheme. But you’re concerned about injuries, because you don’t have a backup at that position.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that you have to. That probably shows up more for us in practice and how we’re able to practice in some of the things we are able to do,” he added, literally shrugged his shoulders. “Schemes. I wish we would do a little bit more of that. We probably need to look at that moving forward.”
THE DRIVE
The four-minute offense Franklin was referencing came last Saturday, when Penn State got the ball at its own 13 with 3:22 left in the game and a 19-17 lead over Maryland. PSU also had a punter averaging 31 yards on his three kicks from inside his own 25, a battered quarterback and a featured running back in Akeel Lynch who ran 12 times for 43 yards in the first half (good) and six times for one yard in the second half (bad), leading up to that fateful drive.
Here’s how that that drive went down:
1-10, PSU 13 – Lynch, run for 4 yards
2-6, PSU 17 – Lynch, run for 0 yards
3-6, PSU 17 – Lynch, run for 3 yards
Penn State then punted for 37 yards, Maryland’s Stefon Diggs returned it 15 yards and Maryland took over on Penn State’s 42 yard-line. Four plays later, Terp place-kicker Brad Craddock made a 43-yard field goal to win the game. (No surprise there: Craddock entered the game 31-of-31 on PATs and 12-of-12 on field goals.)
This is what Franklin had to say about that a few minutes after the loss:
“Yeah, but if we would’ve passed it and left time on the clock, you guys would come in asking me the same thing right there. The book says you go four-minute, you try to run the ball and take as much time off the clock as you possibly can and you go from there. That’s one of those, that’s a tough situation. Obviously after the fact … the right answer would be to throw the ball in that situation, but we were hopeful we would be able to break one and get one out of there. We weren’t able to get it done.”
ANDY THE SPORTS STATS PROF
Here’s the thing. Penn State statistics lecturer Andy Wiesner says he could’ve predicted that would happen. Really. And in real time, as things were happening in Beaver Stadium, he says.
“That’s easy,” he said on Thursday, handing me his game notes scribbled on both sides of a piece of 5×7 ruled yellow paper. “In the press box aren’t you charting all the plays as they happen? You just need to know what to do with that information.”
Andy is a good buddy, perhaps the smartest person about Penn State sports I’ve met since first arriving at University Park in 1979. I have him to class every winter, when he shares his formula for correctly picking the winner of the Super Bowl. He’s 13-0. (I first wrote about Andy in February 2010; read it here.)
With that as a preamble, here is Andy’s breakdown of Penn State’s run of bad luck last Saturday:
“Lynch had runs of 8, 4, 3, 2, 4, 3, 4, 7, 5 minus 2, 2 and 3 in the first half,” Andy said. “In the second half, I don’t know what happened. But something did. Before the penultimate series, he ran for zero, minus 3, 1, zero, 2 and 1 yard. You can track that as you go along and make decisions off of what you have on hand. So, for Lynch to run three times based on his second-half statistics, you would expect him to gain sixth-tenths of a yard per carry – say to the 17-yard line.”
Penn State went into that drive with just six first downs in the second half – five via throwing the ball. And of Penn State’s seven second-half drives before the Lynch trio of carries, only two drives featured a first down.
“Overall, the only drives where a run got a first down was when Hack ran on a fourth-and-1 – I wouldn’t do this at the end of the game – and Hack again while in hurry-up mode on that drive which led to the go-ahead field goal,” Andy explained. “I don’t believe Hack’s 17-yard run in the fourth quarter was designed.”
SING FOR YOUR SUPPER
By now, Andy was ready to deliver his pay-off pitch. I was ready for the bottom-line – of his research and of this story, since I was buying him lunch.
“In the second half, the two drives with first downs were the result of passes or Hack’s scramble,” Andy pointed out. “Based on running the ball via the running back in the second half, I would put the chances of getting a first down running the ball on that penultimate drive at close to 0%. Close, because it’s never zero.”
Easy to say, five days later, I thought. “Talk about the ultimate Monday morning quarterbacking. It’s Thursday,” I said to Andy.
“Hey, I can do it during a game,” Andy replied. “It boils down to one word.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Computer.”
