Penn State coach James Franklin did not push back on the notion Tuesday afternoon that he and his staff should be judged in part for their success — or lack thereof — against Ohio State and Michigan.
“I think it’s more than fair to judge me and my staff for all of it, right?” Franklin said during his weekly press conference. “I mean, that’s what it’s about. The good, the bad, the consistency, the lack of success in that game, all of it. That’s totally fair to be judged by all of those things. I also think it’s important to judge the entire body of work, all of it, which I don’t need to get into right now because I don’t want it to come off the wrong way. I think it’s totally fair to be judged based on all those things, the whole body of work, the good and the bad.”
In many regards Franklin’s comments encapsulate where Penn State has ended up as a program under his watch. A reasonable projection of Penn State’s remaining schedule lends itself to the Nittany Lions ending the year with another double-digit win total for the fifth time in seven non-COVID impacted seasons. Its numeric success is rivaled by few moments in the program’s history and few programs presently. At the same time, Franklin and his staff have been unable to consistently generate success against Ohio State and Michigan, creating an environment in which Penn State is able to post objectively respectable records while also coming up short in the most consequential games of the regular season.
As a result, Franklin is right to take pride in the overarching consistency he has created at Penn State while also acknowledging what has become his program’s annual so-close-yet-so-far shortcomings against the two pace-settling programs in the Big Ten. In some ways, Franklin’s admission was one of the rare instances in which he has broken away from his frontward facing “every game is the same” 1-0 mentality and publicly acknowledged why games against Ohio State and Michigan are ultimately more consequential.
From a messaging perspective, Franklin is a smart and charismatic communicator but has rarely, if ever, been proactive in publicly shouldering token blame for Penn State’s shortcomings in those moments. The need to do so might be superfluous, but as Franklin’s time at Penn State stretches toward its second decade and a philanthropy-heavy $700 million Beaver Stadium project, the occasional mea culpa might serve him well in the eyes of many — even if some consequential mistakes in those pivotal games do, to some extent, truly fall outside of his control. At the end of the day, even if Penn State’s failures are to some degree not inherently Franklin’s fault, everything falls under his watch. If nothing else, if Penn State is going to trot a tearful quarterback Drew Allar out in front of cameras, the least his coach can do is take some of the blame too, even if he isn’t the one throwing the passes.
Prompted during the very last question of his press conference on Tuesday, Franklin took the opportunity to shoulder some of the blame.
“Ultimately it’s always on me when things don’t go well,” Franklin said. “When things do go well, trust me, I had all the things — when I talk about our process of being prepared for that game and literally what I was going to say in the press conference after getting that win, it was going to be obviously to praise the players. What was the difference this year in being able to get that win? It was going to be about the players and some other things that I wanted to talk about, but that didn’t happen.
“When it doesn’t happen, it is ultimately on me and my responsibility. There’s no doubt about that. There’s no gray area about that whatsoever. Is it nuanced, and is there a lot of things that go into that ultimately no one really cares about at that time? Yes. There’s no doubt about it. At the end of the day, the most important thing is for me to take responsibility and do everything within my power to get it fixed. There’s no doubt about it.”
Franklin’s comments here are a bit open for interpretation but ring out as his most straightforward admission of culpability to date, regardless of how much you think he buys into them. One might postulate his words may have carried more weight had they come unprompted; in theory, Franklin was prepared to never shoulder that token blame publicly if he hadn’t been asked about it. As StateCollege.com colleague Mike Poorman noted, between Saturday and Tuesday, Franklin had spoken to the media about the outcome of the Ohio State game for nearly an hour before ever getting around to something he could have very well started off with.
In addition, intentionally or not, Franklin also took a subtle dig at the things around him by noting he would have praised his players for their play following a win; the inverse an indirect admission his players — not him — weren’t good enough in the end-to-end process of beating Ohio State. This rang true on Saturday as he noted Penn State receivers couldn’t get open, Penn State’s offensive line didn’t block well and quarterback Drew Allar was often off the mark. These things were all true and none of them are Franklin’s doing in the moment, but all roads lead to Rome.
To some extent, if fans are simply looking for a coach to go through the performative motions of an apology following a loss it doesn’t really matter how genuine they are. Then again many are just looking for a win, not an apology. To be determined when that’s coming.
