As Penn State football heads into the 2021 season there are plenty of questions that will need to be answered and plenty of storylines to follow as the Nittany Lions look to bounce back from an underwhelming 2020 campaign.
Of course most of these things will unfold on the field, that’s where the game is played after all. But there are other factors that will influence the outcome of Penn State’s season that won’t be center stage. Take for instance James Franklin’s coaching staff, of his 10 main assistants, six of them are in their first or second year at Penn State, and none of them have been through spring practice at Penn State until now.
And there are challenges that come with that, both from the standpoint of getting the lay of the land, and in terms of getting used to working with Franklin himself. Getting the job is one thing, living it is something else all together.
“I think the biggest thing is [to] communicate, tell the guys some of the ins and outs so they don’t walk into it for the first time. Because it is hard when you don’t know right from left,” Penn State running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider said on Wednesday after practice.
“When you work with James, I mean, he’s 100 miles an hour on everything from a group message to a recruiting message to getting on the phone with a kid. So you just try to tell them what to look out for.”
It’s a testament to the change that has happened around the Lasch Building that Seider – who has been on the staff since 2018 – that he is becoming one of the more tenured members of Franklin’s staff. In total there have been 12 assistant coaching changes since the end of Penn State’s 2017 season, which has meant a lot of “getting to know you” inside a football building that was once the staple of longevity and continuity.
Now one of the more senior members of the staff Seider feels a certain responsibility to pay it forward, making sure all the new faces know where to go, and what to expect.
“I hit the ground running, but also had great friends,” Seider said. “Then I had [former defensive line coach] Sean Spencer here. I had [former offensive coordinator] Ricky Rahne, so I walked into a place where knew guys. So I try to do the same thing [for the new staff members] just to kind of let them know what to be prepared for because I don’t care who you are, you know, adult or kid. When it’s your first time stepping into something new it’s still new.”
“Where do I go? What room is that in? So then somebody guys come in here when everything was shut down. They don’t know which meeting room is what. So it’s been experienced. We all kind of take care of each other like a family does.”
Of course the biggest relationship that any assistant can have is the one with Franklin in his corner office overlooking the practice fields. Franklin has access to every just a few steps outside his home away from home. For a self-described micro-manager like Franklin there’s nothing better than having everyone just a few doors down. Although in an ideal world Franklin’s check-ins will have to happen less and less.
But first he has to make sure – especially coming off a strange 4-5 season – that everything is getting done the way he was.
“I’ve always been pretty upfront that, you know, I am going to have my fingers all over things and be a micromanager early on,” Franklin said. “I don’t want to be once I’m comfortable that those rooms are being run or those areas are being run the way we need them to be run. Then I step away, and, but early on, I want to make sure that I understand what’s going on and, and that they understand my perspective as well. And then also, culturally how we do things here at Penn State.”
“And hopefully through all those conversations and discussions and dialogue, we can speed up the adjustment time and the adjustment process here.”
It’s an interesting change for Franklin as well who had until recent spent most of his head coaching career with the same handful of assistants. That said, while behind-the-scenes operational experts like Andy Frank (Director of Player Personnel) Michael Hazel (Director of Football Operations) and Kevin Threlkel (Chief of Staff) have been with Franklin for ages, only defensive coordinator Brent Pry is the only assistant carry-over from the Vanderbilt years.
In the long run though that’s simply college football these days, and as Franklin continues to watch his staff change – for good reasons and bad – how quickly he can integrate new faces into the Lasch Building, the better off all parties will be.
