James Franklin opens up on comfort level with Penn State's defense amid coordinator change

Ahead of the Peach Bowl, Penn State defensive coordinator Manny Diaz left to become the head coach at Duke. For Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin, this offers a major challenge going into bowl season while trying to recruit at a high level.

Franklin knows that there are challenges with this change, but he’s also comfortable taking on those challenges.

“I think there’s challenges,” James Franklin said. “I think whenever you’re gonna make a decision in leadership, whether it’s a head coaching position, whether it’s an offensive position, defensive position, special teams.”

One hope for James Franklin is that there won’t be much drop-off with Manny Diaz leaving because of the impact that Penn State’s position coaches have on the team.

“But even you guys have heard me talk about [how] I look at even my position coaches of being the head coach of their position. I mean, you think about football, it’s unique, right?” Franklin continued. “Some of my position coaches are coaching more players than other sports have on their entire team. So, whenever you’re making decisions on leadership of a group of young people, it’s very important. And, obviously, what led to that also creates some challenges and issues. Some are positive. Some create some challenges and some adversity, there’s no doubt about it, but, obviously, this is an attractive position.”

Ultimately, when it comes to replacing Manny Diaz, James Franklin is confident that there will be a long list of coaches who are interested in the position.

“Not just based on what Manny has done but I’ve been fortunate. I’ve had three defensive coordinators in my time as a head coach over 13 years and they’ve all had top 10 defenses consistently,” Franklin said. “Then you go back before that, me and Terry were talking about this last night, Penn State has played really good defense for a long time. For a long time.

“So, between the school’s history on that side of the ball and then our short time playing defense around here. This is an attractive job to a lot of coaches for all the reasons we just discussed.”

James Franklin shares how Penn State will handle defensive coordinator spot in bowl game

This isn’t the first time this season that James Franklin has needed to replace a coordinator at Penn State and, ahead of the Peach Bowl, he shared that he will handle the missing defensive coordinator in a similar way.

“Obviously, a tremendous opportunity and we’re very, very happy for Manny Diaz and his family. Did a great job for us, has accepted the head coaching position at Duke,” Franklin said. “So, we will handle it internally very similar to how we’ve handled it on offense for the last few games of the season. And, obviously, trying to also balance that while also interviewing and trying to decide what we’re going to do moving forward with our defensive coordinator position, whether it’s an internal candidate or an external candidate.

“We’re working through that right now, but we’ll handle it like we have on offense to last the last few games of the season, and I’ll get into more specifics as we get together again.”