When James Franklin came to Penn State from Vanderbilt in early 2014, he brought along eight of his nine assistant coaches and a management philosophy for letting his coaches coach and his coordinators coordinate.
He concentrated on all the other stuff.
“James is the leader of our program, so he’s going to insert himself in every position, to be quite honest with you,” Ricky Rahne told me in February 2014. “Early on at Vanderbilt he did that. After he was confident that everything was being taught the way he wanted, he stood back.”
Rahne coached the quarterbacks at Vandy from 2011-13, as he did at Penn State in 2014-15, then again in 2018-19. The latter two years Rahne was also the Nittany Lions’ offensive coordinator.
“There are a lot of responsibilities as a head coach,” said Rahne, who is now a head coach himself at Old Dominion. “It’s not the way it used to be. The media, the alumni, the board of trustees – all those sorts of things keep him busy. He has a lot of things on his plate.
“So that’s why he hires guys who he trusts who are going to do things the way he thinks needs to be done,” Rahne added. “If he has time, he’ll pop his head in there (quarterbacks meeting room) every once in awhile and drop some knowledge on us. I love having that because he’s been a very successful coach. That’s how he got to this point. Anything I can get from him will help us be better.”
At Penn State, Franklin has a strong history of turning over his offense and defense to his coordinators, both day-to-day and in-game. Two previous PSU O-coordinators have told me that Franklin mostly let the play-calling to them, but CJF would make suggestions, ala “let’s run the ball a bit more here” or “let’s a try a deep shot.”
Penn State’s offense ran best when it was strongly controlled by Joe Moorhead, who had a very key role in guiding the Nittany Lions to a 22-5 mark in 2016-17. (Having Saquon, Trace, Gesicki, Godwin, et al didn’t hurt.) The offense was clearly his. Same for defense. First, under Bob Shoop, in 2014-15, And then for the past six years under Brent Pry.
Now, following in the footsteps of Shoop and Pry, it is Manny Diaz’s turn.
(Small plot twist: Ironically, Shoop and Diaz are close. Shoop left his old boss, Franklin, and Penn State on less-than-good terms and, when it came time to pay PSU a buyout a year later, Shoop balked. Penn State sued. Shoop countersued. The two parties settled out of court, but my sense is that Shoop paid little if any of the nearly $1 million that Penn State was seeking.)
Franklin is known as CEO coach. That’s not news. It’s taking care of the big picture and harping on the smallest of items. James is perfectionist and a nit-picker, usually with good results. He’s known for seemingly working 24/7, to which I can attest. Two summers ago, at 11:56 p.m. on a Thursday, I got a text from Franklin – it was meant for a senior staffer and mistakenly sent my way; the text was about me and not intended for me. TMOT: I’ve heard from several staffers that such a late-night MSG is SOP for CJF.
Eight years, five offensive coordinators, three O-coordinators, two special teams coordinators and a 67-33 record into his tenure at Penn State, the 49-year-old Franklin doubled down on that CEO mentality a few weeks ago, when he said he was looking for “a head coach of the defense.” His words.
FRANKLIN FOUND HIS MAN(NY)
Franklin found that man in Diaz, hired Dec. 10 as Penn State’s latest defensive coordinator and linebackers coach. PSU is Diaz’s fifth stop as the D-coordinator in his 24 years of coaching. He was the head coach of Miami (Fla.) the past three seasons, and in 2021 he also did the defensive play-calling. He was the Miami DC from 2016-18 under Mark Rich before being named the Hurricanes’ head coach after a whirlwind 18-day stint as head coach at Temple.
Diaz, as well as those close to the program, see Diaz immediately fitting into the role of HC of The D.
Former Penn State and NFL quarterback Matt McGloin, who is an analyst for the Big Ten Network and Sirius these days, shoots it straight on the super-insightful “Paydirt” podcast that he does with former fellow PSU alum and veteran sports broadcaster Tom Hannifan.
In a recent episode, No. 25 — listen to it by clicking here – McGloin spells out what he sees as the delineation of Diaz’s duties:
“Diaz is a head coach going back to being a coordinator,” McGloin said. “But the James Franklin we all know is more of a CEO. He’s not that guy who’s really going to be coaching every single day. Again, all we can do is sit here and speculate. From the looks of it, Mike Yurcich is in charge of the offense. He’s running that show.
“You have Manny Diaz as the defensive coordinator,” McGloin continued. “He’s running that show. Both of them are in charge of their respective groups, whereas James Franklin is probably just overseeing everything. Obviously, Franklin is making some big decisions on game day. But I still feel like in a way Manny Diaz is going to be a head coach, a head coach of that defense.”
Diaz was fired as Miami’s head coach despite producing a 21-15 record, and going 12-5 in the ACC the past two seasons. (Franklin is 22-12 over his last three seasons.) Diaz is the newest new guy on a staff where — counting him — seven of the 10 current fulltime assistants are in their first or second year as PSU assistant coaches.
Still, more than anyone on Franklin’s staff these days, Diaz understands the pressures and responsibilities that come with being a head coach at an upper echelon, name brand Power 5 school with a successful history and (very) high expectations. Like The U. Like LBU.
A FULL PLATE: THEN AND NOW
Diaz admits that his goal is to help Franklin in as many ways as possible. Like Rahne did in 2014, Diaz in 2021 makes reference to everything that is on Franklin’s blue and white plate.
”I think what you know, what you want to realize, is there‘s so much on a head coach‘s plate,” Diaz said on Friday. ”There are so many things that come at you in a 24-hour day. And what you ultimately want to add to your staff is, you know, is as low maintenance (people) as possible — whether that‘s him knowing that we got everything handled in terms of what we‘re organized on our side of the football (or) in terms of how our guys are behaving off the field.
“You know…there are only so many decisions that one man can make any day. And ideally, as a head coach, you want to hire really, really talented people. No different than a coordinator. You want to work with a really talented staff. So that everyone can sort of do their part. And if everyone does their part, the wheel just turns so much easier and faster.
“So,“ said Diaz, displaying some hard-earned empathy for his new boss, “I think that‘s one of the things that I wanted to bring to him and how we can make each other‘s lives easier.“
After I sat through Diaz‘s introductory press conference on Zoom Friday, I can tell you this: He won the presser. He went 1-0. The guy sure sounds like a head coach, and not just for the defense. And I‘m not the only one who thinks so.
Diaz has already had the opportunity to address the Nittany Lions‘ defense and observe a few practices. The Penn State have comne away #107% impressed.
Edge/linebacker Jesse Luketa: “The attitude, that chip on his shoulder, that swagger — he has it. That’s something that really caught my attention.”
Safety Ji-Ayir NBrown: “You can feel his confidence as he’s speaking to us. From that moment, I was like, ‘This guy’s the real deal.’”
ON THE OFFENSIVE
And what of Franklin’s other head coach?
That would be offensive coordinator, Mike Yurcich, who is a dozen games and 345 days into his third O-coordinator job at three schools in three seasons. (His wife will tell that they moved twice during the pandemic.)
The 2021 season was Yurcich’s first season at Penn State after spending 2019 at Ohio State ad 2020 at Texas. (Diaz was at Texas in 2011-12, and was fired two games into the 2013 season.) Yurcich was hired on Jan. 8, 2021, the same day Franklin fired the previous PSU O-coordinator, Kirk Ciarrocca. That was 20 days after the 2020 season ended on Dec. 19 with a 56-21 win over Illinois and 39 points in a win over Michigan State the week before.
In 2021, discounting non-Power 5 opponents Ball State (44 points) and Villanova (38), Penn State scored more than 28 points only once – 31 against Maryland, and seven of those came via a pick-six by the aforementioned Brown. Penn State had eight common opponents on its 2020 and 2021 schedules; in six of the rematches, the Nittany Lions scored fewer points this year.
Overall, compared to last season, under Yurcich the Nittany Lions scored fewer points (26.25 per game to 29.78), averaged fewer yards per play (5.3 to 5.5) and fewer yards per run (3.1 to 3.9). An injured QB in Sean Clifford, gamely playing despite not being 100%, had a huge impact on those stats.
On Friday – 20 days after Penn State’s last game of the 2021 regular season – veteran reporter Rich Scarcella asked Franklin to assess Yurcich “after most of his first season as coordinator.”
Franklin, mostly, declined, saying he was too busy to do a deep dive on the Penn State offense of 2021. Franklin said he hasn’t “really at this point gone back and literally broke it all down and studied the data. Obviously, you know, obviously we would have loved to put more points on the board and been more explosive and been more consistent.”
I get the data. But Franklin – plus you, me and Yurcich – have already seen plenty of the Penn State offense, which was on the field for 860 plays and 5 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds in 2021. That’s a pretty good sample size without digging into the numbers. In some cases, we’ve seen more than enough.
Yurcich, for one, didn’t like a lot of what he saw from the 7-5 Nittany Lions. On Friday he adroitly fielded and responded to question that was similar to Scarcella’s for Franklin. It came from Audrey Snyder of The Athletic. How would he assess the offense in 2021?
“Not good enough. A lot of room to improve,” Yurcich replied. “We didn’t execute at the level we to need to execute at. I take the blame. It solely falls on my shoulders. And we’ll get better. I’ll get better.”
You gotta respect an answer – and a coordinator – like that. He sounds like a head coach should.
