James Franklin addresses Penn State's offensive identity

Coming into this season, there were high hopes for the Penn State offense. However, after a poor performance against Ohio State, new questions have risen for head coach James Franklin to answer about the team’s offensive identity.

Franklin explained that he feels Penn State’s identity this season has been to consistently stay on schedule, but the Nittany Lions weren’t able to do that against Ohio State.

“Yeah, a couple of things,” James Franklin said. “I thought our identity was staying on schedule, converting on third downs, and then either converting on third downs or going for it on fourth down situations. I felt like that had been our identity for the season. We had a lot of respect for their short-yardage defense, and how they were defending it. But, we did not do that. We did not either convert on third downs like we’ve been doing or getting in the situation of fourth in short to go for it.”

James Franklin gave the example of a fourth down attempt in the 1st quarter that Penn State wasn’t able to convert after calling a timeout to avoid a penalty. It’s mistakes like that against the Buckeyes that took the offense out of its rhythm.

“I think one of the questions that you guys had, and I don’t know if I answered this clearly after the game or not, but the fourth-and-one that we were going for and I thought was one of the significant players of the game, to me, in those types of games, there’s about four to six plays a game on either side of the ball that are significant. We were going for it on that fourth and one. We had 12 guys on the field. If I don’t call the timeout there, we’re going to get a penalty,” Franklin said.

“And then after that, you kind of lose the momentum and a little bit of a surprise sort of going for it. And then in my conversations with Manny [Diaz], we’re playing good on defense. We felt like it was the right thing to do to punt there after losing the momentum and the sense of urgency running out and going for it on fourth down. I liked our call. But again, we had 12 guys in the huddle and the official was about to throw a penalty on it for us right there.”

Ultimately, Penn State was only able to score 12 points and 240 total yards. In the process, Penn State converted just 1 of 16 third downs and 1 of 3 fourth downs over the course of the game. Along the way, that poor offensive effort wasted an excellent defensive effort.

“So yeah, I think to me, I guess what I’m saying is, our lack of success on third down really kind of changed the game. We just didn’t have enough opportunities. We couldn’t get into a flow, get enough touches for people. When you have the lack of success that we had on third down, it’s hard to get anything going,” Franklin said.

“Obviously, for the most part, our defense was able to do that to them as well. And what they did a good job obviously, number 18 [Marvin Harrison Jr] was it was a difference maker in the game.”

James Franklin takes responsibility for Penn State’s loss to Ohio State

At the end of the day, the buck stops with the head coach and James Franklin took the responsibility for Penn State’s loss to Ohio State.

“It’s always on me when things don’t go well,” Franklin said. “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.”