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Penn State head coach James Franklin press conference: UCLA Wednesday

Headshot 5x7 reduced qualityby: Thomas Frank Carr9 hours agoThomasFrankCarr

The Penn State Nittany Lions Football team opened up practice on Wednesday evening before the team’s West Coast road trip to face UCLA on Saturday afternoon. Before the team takes off on Thursday, head coach James Franklin addressed the media after practice to discuss the team’s progress this week. Of course, the most critical topic this evening was the long-term injury of starting linebacker Tony Rojas. Blue White Illustrated broke the news this afternoon that Rojas will be out for the foreseeable future.

If you missed that news, you can check it out here.

You can hear Franklin’s complete comments on the Blue White Illustrated YouTube Channel, or embedded below. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to every Franklin press conference, along with breaking news reaction videos, postgame content, and more.

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Penn State head coach James Franklin

As we mentioned earlier, the roughly ten-minute interview with Franklin centered around the team losing its starting linebacker and one of its most athletic defenders. As usual, Franklin did not go into any specifics of the injury. However, Franklin said that both freshmen Alex Tatsch and Cam Smith are getting looks.

“What’s helpful is that we’ve had these Sunday scrimmages so we’ve to evaluate those guys each week. Early on Tatsch was getting a little bi more time with the varsity. We’re giving Cam an opportunity now, bouncing those guys between the D-Squad and varsity.”

Lions on the road tomorrow

Penn State heads out to Los Angeles early this week in hopes of adjusting to the West Coast time zone. We’ll have more coverage of the team coming up this week. We’ll discuss the recruiting fallout from the White Out and what is next for the team now that it’s into the meat of its road schedule for October. We’ll also have game day coverage starting at 12:30, with the Penn State Football Tailgate Show.