As norms return, Franklin pushes program to exceed pre-pandemic benchmarks

The question regarded the transition of Penn State’s new coaching staff into the program.

In 2020, the Nittany Lions welcomed offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca, defensive line coach John Scott Jr., receivers coach Taylor Stubblefield, and offensive line assistant Phil Trautwein to the staff. But, due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, those staff additions weren’t allowed to provide in-person instruction to their players until July.

This offseason, meanwhile, Penn State head coach James Franklin replaced Ciarrocca with new OC Mike Yurcich, brought in Anthony Poindexter to coach safeties upon the departure of Tim Banks, and promoted Ty Howle from an analysts role to tight ends coach when Tyler Bowen moved to the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Given the broad staff turnover, seven of 10 positions rotating through coaches in the “pandemic era,” Franklin was asked if the staff had reached a level of cohesion unavailable to it in 2020.

His response turned toward a decidedly different path, illuminating a philosophy that is running through the program this offseason from the coaching staff through players and personnel.

“I think it's hard to say. Right now, you've got to be careful because you're comparing everything to last year, and I don't know if that's fair or right to do,” Franklin told BWI.

A year unlike any in Penn State’s history, critically impacting the months of training leading into the season let alone the games themselves, which had been amended, canceled, and amended again before finally playing an October-December schedule, the circumstances stood in stark contrast to the norm. Even upon returning to team activities in late June following a three-month quarantine, the day-to-day operations of a team divvied into separated groups as precautions against COVID’s spread, few pieces of the process resembled a typical routine.

Able to steadily and progressively resume the activities once viewed as simple, practicing and meeting again as a team in person, Franklin said he’s eager to focus not on comparisons to 2020, but rather those of years prior.

“I brought the Leadership Council in the other day and I talked to them, and they think we're in this unbelievable place right now. I feel good about that, and I'm glad they feel that way,” Franklin said. “But I said, just make sure that we're comparing the lifting, the meeting, the workouts - don't compare them to last year, because that's not the standard. You better be comparing them to the 11-win seasons, the 10-win season. You need to be comparing it to that.

“I think that was a good message for them to hear and for all of us to hear because, although I do think we're in a good spot, last year was just so challenging from so many different perspectives. We just got to make sure that that's not the standard that we're comparing to.”

Looping back to his coaching staff, Franklin offered his critique of the circumstances new members were thrust into from the standpoint of the sport’s governing body.

Still disappointed at the NCAA’s inability to provide equity in the face of wildly disparate situations nationally, the reality of the 2021 offseason’s return to some sense of “normal” gives the staff its opportunity to hit its stride.

“Some of the changes that happened last year, in some of their defense, there are aspects of it that were outside of their control and not fair in some ways. But life isn't always fair,” Franklin said. “But the fact that you have a new offensive coordinator and there are some things that we need to get installed in spring ball to lay a foundation, and you have no spring ball.

“What you'd like the NCAA to do with most things, which is the NCAA and the college football I grew up with, is let's try to make this as much of a level playing field as we possibly can so that everybody has an opportunity. If you lost spring ball, then you should have gained those 15 practices in summer camp. For one team across the country, or even specifically in the Big Ten, to get nine spring ball practices and we get zero, another team to get 15 and we get zero, that makes it challenging. But there's less of that right now in college athletics.

“It used to be all about, how do we level the playing field as much as we possibly can so there are no built-in advantages or disadvantages? So, in some of the coaches' defense, they were put in a tough spot.”

For a group anxious to reverse the fortunes of the program’s disappointing 2020 season, it’s a climate more amenable to those aims.

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