Leading up to a monumental matchup against Oregon, Penn State head coach James Franklin met with the media Monday in Beaver Stadium, the site of the upcoming White Out on Saturday night.
Franklin provided a scouting report on Oregon, talked about a common misconception from fans and made a request to the Nittany Lion faithful ahead of the highly anticipated clash.
Duck watching
Franklin said he and the staff spent the team’s bye week reviewing Oregon tape, including the Ducks’ first four games against Montana State, Oklahoma State, Northwestern and Oregon State. He said the staff was hoping to see the Beavers keep the game competitive as long as possible to put more of Oregon’s plays on film.
Franklin provided a long list of Oregon players the staff has been impressed with, including quarterback Dante Moore, who he said isn’t “a whole lot different” than his predecessor Dillon Gabriel, who’s now in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns.
“He’s a throw-first guy, is very accurate, can extend plays, obviously, has a ton of playmakers around him,” Franklin said. “They both had the ability to extend plays. I would say that Dante runs a little bit more than maybe they had in the past. But the other guy (Gabriel) was a really good athlete as well.”
He said the best way to describe the Ducks’ offense is “multiple” given their wide range of personnel sets, tempos and schemes. Franklin described the defense in a similar way, citing their varied usage of three-down, four-down and five-down linemen and usage of both cover one and cover two looks, occasionally adding a third safety as well.
Holding back?
There’s a common misconception among fans and sometimes media members that teams “hold back” play calls against inferior competition before revealing their best schematic wrinkles and looks in big games.
Heading into Saturday’s game, Penn State has won comfortably against Nevada, Florida International and Villanova, but Franklin said coaches typically don’t think about keeping things vanilla.
More often, Franklin explained, coaches alter their gameplan based on the opponent, which may be seen as unveiling new schematics, but it’s not because of the strength of the opponent.
“I don’t know if saving is the idea, but you’ve done some offseason studies where there’s certain things that you worked on during training camp that you’re planning on using against certain opponents,” Franklin said.
And there’s some things you could have used early in the season but you didn’t feel like you needed to … but it’s not like I think offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators, head coaches, you’re going into a game saying ‘we’re going to be conservative in this game.’”
Neither team will likely showcase anything drastically different than what’s been on display through four weeks of the season, but each will include new adjustments in accordance with their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.
Raucous request
The White Out has become synonymous with Penn State for its national appeal, disruptive in-game impact and recruiting power, but Franklin is asking fans to take it to another level against Oregon on Saturday.
“We want to make it clearly obvious to everybody what is the most challenging and difficult environment to play in all of sports, let alone college football,” Franklin said. “I know a good portion of our fans like to sit down, except for third downs and red zone and what they consider critical times of the game, but I’m challenging everybody. This is a four quarter, one play at a time, first, second down, third down, fourth down, punts, kickoff coverage that we need to be on our feet screaming a collective battle cry in the stadium.”
The Nittany Lions’ recent White Outs include No. 16 Michigan in 2019, none in 2020, No. 22 Auburn in 2021, Minnesota in 2022, No. 24 Iowa in 2023 and Washington in 2024, plus a College Football Playoff edition against SMU in 2024. Due to broadcasting rights, several of those games have been played at noon or 3:30 p.m.
With the Ducks coming to town ranked No. 6 for a night game, it’ll be one of the more important White Outs in recent years with the highest ranked visitor since No. 4 Ohio State in 2018, which is also the last time Penn State lost a White Out.
