James Franklin on Oregon: "Tremendous Challenge, Tremendous Opportunity"

On Monday Penn State head coach James Franklin met with media to discuss his next opponent. Unless you live under a rock, you know Oregon heads to Penn State for a ‘Whiteout special’ that will draw eyeballs from all over the country.

These two teams met last season in the Big Ten championship so this will be their first regular season game as conference opponents.

Here are his top remarks from his 40-minute long press conference Monday.

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Opening Remarks about Oregon”

“Obviously, getting into Oregon and coach Lanning got a tremendous amount of respect for for what he’s been able to do and for the Oregon football program and university as a whole. You know it’s been impressive to actually watch what they’ve been able to do in a short period of time number of different coaches and with tremendous support so it’s been impressive. Obviously Dan’s got a defensive background with his time as the defensive coordinator at Georgia. A small school guy that’s worked his way up which which I got a ton of respect for.

You know we were able to get some film, obviously, Montana State, Oklahoma State, Northwestern, and Oregon State. I know kind of being on the road, me and Danny O’Brien were just talking about, we were hoping that Oregon State game was as competitive for as long as possible so that we would have as much film to watch. So that turned out to be a positive as well.

We talk about these guys specifically on the offensive side of the ball. Coach Will Stein has done a really good job. It’s interesting. I didn’t realize he was from Louisville. For some reason I thought he had a Texas background, was a Texas high school coach, very successful, was at the University of Texas. Obviously got hired from University of Texas San Antonio and done a really good job. They’re multiple is the best way I would describe. You know, multiple personnel groups, multiple tempos, multiple schemes. You know, they’re able to run the ball with power. They’re able to spread you out as well. Obviously they got a bunch of talented players. I think the tight end really makes them go. Obviously with what we were able to do with Tyler Warren last year, they’re getting that out of their tight end position. He’s a matchup problem in the pass game. He’s physical in the run game, extremely explosive.

Mainly 11 personnel team, but they’ll go 12 personnel too. Dante Moore, a young man that we recruited the heck out of out of Detroit, Michigan, was a five-star recruit. I think he was the number one quarterback in the country. Went to UCLA, transferred there, sat behind last year, and now is playing really good football, no surprise there.

Their running back, number 27, very productive, very physical, been impressed with him, and then, number one, their wide receiver, Dakorien Moore, who obviously we’re very aware of, true freshmen, playing at a high level, quick, explosive, very, very good ball skills.

And then on defense, obviously we talked about, you know, Coach Lanning, their running system that he’s familiar with from his Alabama days, but Tosh Lupoi as well. Tosh has got also similar background that Dan has. He’s got some NFL experience, been a defensive coordinator at Alabama, been an assistant at Alabama, and obviously those two guys are hand-in-hand. Multiple base front, four down, three down, a little bit of five down. Primary coverage, they’ll mix up between middle of the field open, middle of the field close, quarters. You know, cover one and some two robber. They’re playing a little bit of the three safety stuff. That obviously, you know, Coach Knowles has done a really good job with over his time we’ve been impressed with their outside linebacker number 10 defensive lineman number 52 outside linebacker number 44 the transfer safety DB number 31 from Purdue and then inside linebacker number 28 who’s got a a great story, local kid, Burlesworth Trophy winner, and kind of seems to be the heartbeat of their defense.

So that’s going to be a tremendous challenge. And then on special teams, a guy that knows us very well, my guy Joe Lorig. Joe was with us here for three years so he knows our coaching staff he knows our personnel he knows our team very well was also give him a shout out my old roommate at Idaho State in Pocatello Idaho. We had a heck of an apartment there but Joe does a really good job, he’s an experienced coordinator, also works on the defensive side of the ball with the Nickel’s, which is a similar role that he had here with us. Is from Oregon, this was an opportunity for him to get back home so I’m happy for him and his family he’s doing a nice job.

They got two punt returners number two and number one Dakorien we already talked about, but also Gary Bryant. Those two guys have been explosive. Their punter is a Boise State transfer. He’s another Australian who’s doing a really nice job. He had a fake punt. I don’t know if it was necessarily a fake or not. A lot of these Australian punters, they will roll and they will watch the rush so that the coverage team can get down as far as possible and they’ll hold on to the ball as long as possible. And I don’t know if it was a called fake or just he has the ability to take off and it’s there. But basically no one was in his way from running, so he took off and made a big play for them. But he’s an experienced vet. And then also their place kicker is a transfer from Oregon State, number 36, and has done a nice job. He’s 5 for 6 on field goals and 18 for 18 on PATs and really doing a nice job.

So tremendous challenge, tremendous opportunity. You know, obviously we need this place rocking, need to have a distinct home field advantage. We always do. But I’m expecting this to be an environment like no one has ever seen.

Urban Meyer always has kind of discussions and debates on what’s the hardest place to play in college football. I think he usually says, between Penn State whiteout at night and LSU night game. So we want to make it clearly obvious to everybody what is the most challenging and difficult environment to play in all of sports, let alone college football. I know a good portion of our fans like to sit down except for third downs and red zone and what they consider critical times of the game. But I’m challenging everybody. This is a four-quarter, one play at a time, first, second down, third down, fourth down, punts, kickoff coverage that we need to be on our feet, screaming a collective battle cry in the stadium. So we’re going to need everybody’s help.”

On Differences in offense w/ Dante:

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s a whole lot different. You know, he’s a throw-first guy, is very accurate, can extend plays, obviously has a ton of playmakers around him. They both had the ability to extend plays, obviously has a ton of playmakers around him. They both had the ability to extend plays. I would say that Dante runs a little bit more, runs a little bit more than maybe they had in the past. But the other guy was a really good athlete as well. So I think it’s still very similar. And I think, you know, that guy sitting, Dante sitting behind that guy for a year, Gabriel, was really valuable for his development.

I think it also shows a tremendous maturity of that kid, right? He’s a five-star recruit, could have went anywhere, could have went a bunch of places where he would have pretty much been the starting quarterback today. Stepped on campus and chose UCLA, didn’t redshirt his freshman year, so that became his redshirt year, and, you know, it’s been a real positive for him and them, so I think very similar.

They still function in a similar way than what we saw on film last year.”

On DC Jim Knowles Preparing for Oregon:

“Defense did last year against that kind of challenge yeah so you know again when you have multiple wide receivers that can hurt you in a game you know can go the distance it it changes how defensive coordinators approach the game. And and then same thing at tight end and same thing at running back and same thing at quarterback. When you have multiple weapons, it becomes very difficult. And then obviously what our offensive coordinator is trying to do, they’re trying to motion and shift to create confusion and to mess with your rules and try to get guys in favorable matchups.
guys in favorable matchups.

I do think that’s one of the advantages of going against our offense for him every single day in training camp because I think we do as much of that as anybody. So I do think there’s some value in that. Again, our offense and defense going against each other.

And I think last year, in terms of your question about the matchup, I think we didn’t have enough tools in our tool belt. And what I mean by that is we were strictly, strictly is probably not the best word, but majority a man coverage team. And sometimes they were able to get matchups that were in their favor. And if we’re not able to solve that issue with a sack or pressure, then we had some challenges. So I think, you know, being able to play man as definitely one of our weapons, but also being able to have zones and zone pressures and a lot of those different things that we’re now doing more of, I think is valuable.

And as you know, we’ve done it a bunch of different ways with Bob Shoup and Brent Prye, we were predominantly a quarter, quarter, half, cover six team. Then when, obviously, we went with Manny Diaz, we became more of a man team, and that continued a little bit with Tom. So being able to have more of a mix that we can challenge people with man coverage.

And when you do play zone, you know, I think Jim does a really good job of emphasizing, we’ve always talked about situational football, but I think there’s been times where we’ve been in zone coverage, but it’s third and four and third and five, and we’re not challenging routes as much. We’re too soft in our zones and things like that. So it’s been good. It’s been good. He’s an experienced defensive coordinator.

There’s a lot going on up there. And I think, you know, each week goes on where he’s got a better idea of who we are. I think that’s a big part in all this as well that Andy Kotelnicki went through last year. Like what are the strengths of our people? What are the challenges or some weaknesses in our guys at this point in the season? And how do you call a game to play to those strengths and maybe limit some of those deficiencies, or maybe match-up issues?

On ‘Saving’ the playbook:

“Yeah, I think that’s like one of them long-term kind of questions, right? Are you saving things? Yeah, I think you’re always – I don’t know if saving is the idea, but you’ve done some off season studies where there’s certain things that you worked on during training camp that you’re planning on using. Based, you know, using against certain opponents. And there’s some things, could you have used early in the season, but you didn’t feel like you needed to? Yeah. I think that’s always the case, but it’s not like offensive coordinators, defensive coordinators, head coaches, you’re going into a game saying we’re going to be conservative in this game. It’s not that or vanilla. It’s ok, this is what we need to do in this game to to win, to win, to score points, to to stop people scoring. And it’s all about the matchup and the opponent that you have there.

But I guess it just depends on your lens lens do you do you call everything in every game? No you don’t, obviously it’s impossible to do. So there are packages and things that you’re going to see in the Oregon game that you didn’t see in the Villanova game. There’s some things you probably saw in the Villanova game that you didn’t see in the FIU game, in Nevada and so on and so forth.

So I guess the answer is a little bit of both, right? But it’s not because we’re taking the approach to be vanilla or conservative. It’s just based on what you think you have to do in that game to be successful.”