Everything Penn State coach James Franklin said following the Blue-White Game
Penn State head coach James Franklin met with the media Saturday following the annual Blue-White Game. Nittany Lion fans can read everything he had to say following the spring game below.
Opening Statement: First of all, like always, I want to thank you guys for coming out and covering Penn State football. We don’t take that for granted. I thought we had a really big crowd. I’m not sure what the numbers were like, but I thought it was a really good crowd. Weather held up really good for us. That was really the first time for us to get in Beaver Stadium this spring which is unusual. We usually get in at least three times in five weeks throughout the spring ball calendar. But I thought for the most part, our guys handled it well. Overall, it’s hard for me to say. Probably watch the tape. It’s different when you’re watching one team. I’m trying to watch both teams and kind of manage it all in my mind. I did think we made too many pre snap penalties on offense. You know, I know it wasn’t extremely loud, but we hadn’t done any noise during spring ball. I think some of the young players got affected by that on the offensive line. We had too many of those.
I think the Banner was pretty cool story for us. I think he’s going to have a huge year for us. And he’s a guy that in my opinion, that’s done it the right way. It hasn’t always been easy for him or us. His journey has been challenging at times. And he’s really stuck it out and just got better and better and better and better. I think he’s going to have a really good year. Really proud of what he’s done. I think he should be a lion splash today. He’s a guy that’s got a bright future. You guys saw some examples of that last year. I think we’ll continue to see that. I thought we had 15 really physical competitive practices. I thought today was good. Got a lot of work in and got a bunch of situations covered. At the end of the game there, you guys don’t know this, but we’re talking on the headset and say okay, let’s treat this two minute situation like we need a field goal to win the game or let’s treat this two minute situation like we need a touchdown to win the game. So we’re operating. I called a timeout, which I think was probably confusing. When the offense was on, maybe like seven-yard line coming out in two minute situation, that was actually a timeout for the defense, which confused the quarterbacks because the board was still showing two timeouts.
But I thought it was really good. It was a physical 15th practice. We were able to stay healthy today, which I thought was really good. A couple other notes that we kind of wrote down. I want to make sure that I cover with you. Didn’t think we started fast enough on offense. We start the game with a true freshman offensive linemen jumping offsides. We got to start better on offense and we’re able to get into a rhythm and get ahead of the sticks. We were able to use the iPads today for the first time. Wasn’t perfect, but there’s value in getting some reps of that in Beaver Stadium before the season. We’ll do the same thing during training camp. We had the headset technology all spring. Not what we’ll have for next year. We only had one on defense and two on offense is how we chose to use the three units that we got. I thought that was valuable today. Had some issues with glare on the screen, so we’re going to have to look at how we can adjust those things. Too many third and longs. Like I said, we got off schedule.
Overall, I thought really good. We laid a foundation to go into summer camp with really good competition. Really next on the schedule is all the players will meet with their position coaches Monday. All day Monday, all day Tuesday then half of the day on Wednesday. Then the coaches will hit the road and travel Wednesday night to go recruit. I’ll start my meetings once they’re done in meetings with their coaches. I’ll be with every player on the roster. Usually takes about three weeks to knock that out, half hour per player. That will be valuable as well. As we know with what’s going on with college football, this could be an interesting couple of weeks for everybody in college football. We just had a discussion about that in the locker room as well. But I’m pleased. I’m pleased with where we’re at. We got some work to do obviously between now in summer camp, and West Virginia. I like the foundation that we laid this spring. I know that was long, but I do open it up the questions.
Q: By way of housekeeping, can you give us an update on Keandre’s (Lambert-Smith) status with the program given some of the reports that are out there? We saw he was on a roster, but he wasn’t here.
Franklin: Yeah, I’m really happy to talk about any of the guys that played in the game today and are in the locker room. Besides that, I don’t have a whole lot.
Q: James, what have you seen this spring that would make you very comfortable going into the the season with this group of wide receivers?
Franklin: Well, I think like you saw today, a bunch of guys touched the ball and made plays. We were able to distribute the football around. I’ve had all the faith in the world in our wide receivers in terms of talent and ability. We got to take the next step and I saw them take a step this spring. We’re going to be taking another step this summer. The positive thing is you can really improve defensively and offensively in the passing game over the summer. It’s hard to do that in the run game. I think we’re going to be very specific on the things we’re working on and how we’re training and developing. We have the talent in the room. The reality is we got to take this next step and we got to do it on a consistent basis. And we got to make plays against all the people on our schedule. All those guys are in the locker room for a reason. We have belief in those guys. We believe they’re ready to take the next step. I think Trey (Harrison Wallace III) was a good example today. Him getting hurt last year was was significant. So having a healthy Trey back has helped.
Q: Quinton Martin, couple touchdowns today. Limited carries, but he made the most of them. Just curious how you would kind of describe his first semester, first spring ball experience with you guys and kind of what it means for moving forward into the summer?
Franklin: You guys don’t get to see this all the time, but he has some bumps and bruises so he missed a decent amount of time this spring so I don’t have a true evaluation. What I will tell you is he’s an awesome kid. He’s learned the offense really well. I do think he’s got really good vision. But I think between now and West Virginia, he’s got a lot of work to do and I think he’ll do it. I think he’ll have a chance to be competing to be in that rotation in training camp. Cam (Wallace) I thought had a really good spring as well and was out there more to be evaluated. That’s one of these things that all of our guys got to understand. The number one ability in football is availability. They got to be out there to to be developed every single day and they got to be out there to be evaluated every single day. So, I would’ve liked to see more out of him, but I do think there was a foundation that’s been laid with him that will allow him to make significant progress this summer and be able to go into training camp and legitimately compete.
Q: Kind of take us through the decision not to have Nick (Singleton) and Kaytron (Allen) out there today.
Franklin: So, one of those guys, like a number of guys on our roster, we make decisions no different than we did with Olu Fashanu last year. So Nick, that was that decision. And then Kaytron has some bumps and bruises that didn’t really allow him. I think if you had came to spring practice, I’m not sure if you’ve been at the weekly press conferences and out at practice, but Kaytron didn’t go this spring. Nothing that is going to be a problem this summer for summer training. Nothing that’s going to be a problem for next year. I don’t think it’s probably a surprise to really anybody in here because I don’t think you guys saw him at any of the practices you came to either. Nick, we made modifications. He got a little banged up this week in practice, but we were going to modify him.
Spring ball for a lot of guys is an opportunity to move up and be evaluated but also guys that we feel like have established themselves, especially when we got to figure out who the third back is going to be for next year. That was really kind of the main focus. So we’re strategic about that every single year where guys are at in the program and how established they are and even when they take reps we modify some of those guys reps to get the other guys. To be honest with you, you guys know Drew Shelton didn’t go this spring. Well, that was like really valuable for (Nolan) Rucci and J’ven (Williams). They got 1000 reps this spring, which was great. So some of it is strategic and some of it’s just how things played out.
Q: James, how comfortable are you with the wide receivers in general?
Franklin: I love our wide receivers. They have a bunch of talent in the room. I think they got a chance to take the next step. I believe they’re going to take the next step. I think Maques (Hagans) has done a really good job this spring. This summer is going to be really important. The positive thing is in college football you can improve in the passing game in the summer. We’re going to do those things. We believe in them.
Q: Coach, you mentioned the portal in your opening statement. From an incoming perspective, are there any positions or sides of the ball you think you might want to look at and then from an outgoing side, just what’s your comfort level and where things are on your roster right now?
Franklin: So when I say interesting couple weeks in college football. There’s a lot of a lot of reasons why that that’s interesting. For me, that’s what these meetings are going to be about. The individual meetings with our position coaches. The meetings with me. We’ve had some conversations with some guys already. But at the end of the day, you never really know until it happens. I think we got pretty good relationships where guys, for the most part, have been very transparent and honest with us and we do the same thing with them. One of the things that I think is really important is I’m still a big believer in transformational relationships, and college football being transformational. I’m worried that college football is becoming more and more transactional. That has to be in both directions. That’s something that I’ve talked to our guys all the time about. To be honest with you, 99% of the time, what’s good for the individual is good for the team, and vice versa.
So that’s the good thing that I feel good about as head coach. I can have these conversations and be honest, because the reality is more times than not, maybe not in the short term, maybe not at the time that they want it to be in their schedule in their mind, more times than not it is. We’ll include our leadership council in that process. We did that last week. We’ll ask them what they think we need and have them take ownership in those decisions as well and be comfortable with those decisions as well. You guys have heard me say this a ton of times over the last 10 years. For me to make the best decisions for our program, I want to hear from all the players and staff and coaches and that’s including decisions like this. But it’s a challenging time in college football. It’s challenging time for head coaches to make these types of decisions and the impact that has on on your roster and a lot of different ways and a lot of different implications.
Q: You have six teams on your schedule this year that you either haven’t really played in West Virginia, and then just a bunch of teams that you haven’t played. How does that impact the scout of everyone that’s on there moving forward when it’s really kind of twice as large as it normally is. Can you even look into some of these programs considering some of the changes?
Franklin: Yeah, I think that’s that’s a fair question. I think a couple of things and I think you guys know this, I’m very much focused on the task at hand. Be present, be where your feet are, 1-0 mentality. You guys heard that to the point where you don’t really want to hear it again after 10 years. I do think there’s an aspect to your point, that you want to look at these things and have an understanding and awareness but the challenge is, there’s so much turnover in college football with coaches, that it’s kind of hard to make predictions and really get an idea this time of year, who and what you’re going to face.
Not only that, the roster could look so different in both directions back to what you were talking about. So you got to do some work on that. But we’ll pretty much do our four game study that we normally do on our first four games to get ahead on that. To your point, some games on the schedule and the teams that were not as familiar with we haven’t played before. We will do some of that. But if you’re not careful, you got to spend so much time chasing these ghosts that may not present themselves in week eight that you mess up week one.
I know trust me, I hear from you guys. I hear from the fans. I’m very aware of what we need to do. But I also say there’s a lot of programs that find ways to win games like that and then lose games that they’re not supposed to. It’s a fine line of balance of the amount of respect that you got to pay to both and the challenge and the difficulty of being consistent week in and week out and then add material on top and find their way to win those couple where you’re not favored. We’ll probably keep our approach similar to what it’s done in the past. But we’ll do some digging on travel plans, obviously to get the West Coast travel which is going to be a big part of our studies. Then just get a general feel for who these programs have been. Then get back to focusing on Penn State and our first couple games.
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