James Franklin is in a bit of a pickle.
His offensive line isn’t particularly good right now. if nothing else, it doesn’t appear to be trending in a positive direction. It’s safe to assume most everyone would agree that giving up 10 sacks in a single game is not helpful.
But your particular feelings for Herb Hand and Franklin’s most recent performance aside, they face a difficult reality of simply not having many options. That’s not a point of debate, that’s simply a fact. It’s not hard to argue that things could be going better, but it’s hard to say with any certainty what ‘better’ can actually look like. ‘Returning starter’ is a statistic and not an automatic sign of near automatic success. You can be returning to continue to be bad.
In the opening week the objective and the hope was clear. Penn State needed Paris Palmer to be serviceable. If he could do that, Penn State would be able to avoid a massive shake up on the line. It’s one thing to have a single player learning the ropes, it’s something else to have an entire line getting comfortable in a new role. Even if Franklin knew that Palmer was going to struggle, it was a lower risk situation. It seems to have backfired, but it’s hard to blame them for trying.
Then again, 23-percent of Penn State’s offensive snaps in the second half ended in a sack.
So now Franklin has no choice.
He has to try something. Even if it may not work any better.
“I don’t know if you’re necessarily going to see a bunch of new starters,” Franklin said on Tuesday. “I think you’re going to possibly see some guys move around, things like that. Wendy (Laurent) he’s a guy that can figure in for us as well. Chance Sorrell is a guy that can possibly figure in for us as well.”
As you can see, even moving parts is really just trying to mask the issue at hand. It’s hoping that maybe this configuration works better than something else. Figuring out how to make your weakest link a little less so. Or maybe hiding it somewhere else on the line. If that’s even possible. Laurent allegedly had a strong summer, but then again so did the offensive line. If nothing else a patchwork offensive front might kickstart it back to where it was against Boston College. Not fantastic, but Penn State fans aren’t going to turn down any offense that can score 30+ points in a game after last weekend.
“But I think more than anything you’re going to see some moving parts, but, again, we had a walk-through on Sunday, we gotta go out and practice on Tuesday through Friday and determine some of those things. Obviously we spent a lot of time in the off-season trying to figure out who our best five were going to be. We had some question marks. Again, felt like we would play better than we did on Saturday, but we’re going to have to figure that out throughout this week.”
And nobody hopes they figure it out more than Franklin.
Except maybe that Hackenberg kid.
