Column: Though losses sting, Lions not off course

James Franklin’s message came as a surprise Saturday night.

Following his Nittany Lions’ 27-24 loss at Michigan State, a field goal ending a seven-hour marathon at Spartan Stadium delayed by lightning, Franklin entered the visiting media room with talking points in mind.

Acknowledging from the onset the bizarre circumstances of a 3 hour, 22 minute delay midway through the second quarter, Franklin immediately put to bed any notion of using it as an excuse. After all, both teams had been forced to perform under the same set of circumstances.

Moving into the primary factors that he believed determined the game's outcome, Franklin asserted losing the field-position and turnover battles as being “the story of the game.” His Nittany Lions, intercepted three times and losing a possession on downs Saturday night, simply could not finish their offensive opportunities or on defense, allowing five converted third downs of double-digit yardage.

Up front and honest in his assessments on how and why the game’s outcome was what it was, per usual, Franklin pivoted into giving Michigan State credit, the work his Nittany Lions had to do, and a final, unforeseen point.

“One of the things that we're going to make sure if there is any gray area whatsoever with our coaches, with our players and with anybody else, we're going to get back to what got us here, which is focusing on being 1-0 and not worrying about anything else whatsoever,” said Franklin. “You focus on being 1-0 and you achieve that each week then everything else will take care of itself. I'm going to make sure everybody in our building is crystal clear on that.

“We’re going to get back to what I know works, our formula. We're not talking about anything else than about handling our business, about being 1-0, about respecting our opponent and getting better every single day at practice and not worrying about anything else besides that.”

Seemingly trying to provide a deeper meaning behind the two-game slide that had brought his program crashing from it’s No. 2-ranked perch, the comments, though well-intentioned, betrayed the very notion Franklin was trying to convey. Establishing himself as a rock of consistency for the Penn State football program, refusing any and all of the mighty swings in perception that accompany success and failure, the comments had the aroma of an unnecessary reaction.

For at its core, Penn State football, with its two losses and all, is not on the verge of impending catastrophe nor has the suggestion of fundamental problems.

And Franklin’s constant training of consistency for the entire program is precisely why it occurred in the first place.

Suffering back-to-back losses on the road is in no way an indictment on the methods that revived the program from stagnancy, to a fight for relevancy, into the one that stunned many by winning the Big Ten and earning a trip to the Rose Bowl last season. That Franklin’s team went unbeaten through seven games before dropping a 1-point game at Ohio State and a 3-point game at Michigan State, continued that trajectory.

The bottom line for the Nittany Lions this season is fairly straightforward:

At 38 points per game, they have one of the nation’s top scoring offenses. At 14.8 points per game allowed through nine games, the Lions also maintain one of the nation’s top scoring defenses.

The major deficiency of the 2016 season, slow starts on both sides of the ball, has been wholly reversed. In 540 minutes of football, the Nittany Lions have trailed their opponents for only 15 minutes, 50 seconds this season. They continue to be among the most explosive offensive teams in the country, and were again Saturday even in a monsoon.

Deficiencies exist, no doubt, and the program will need to work to fix them as it has done previously, this season and beyond.

As Franklin expressed after the game, the Nittany Lions must be able to transition from a purely finesse offense into one that can at least moonlight into one that can beat a team physically when conditions demand it. Certainly, limiting tackles for loss and sacks would be part and parcel with an improved ground game, which has suffered with quarterback Trace McSorley’s lack of success breaking the pocket to pick up easy first downs.

Defensively, the Lions have lost the disruption up front that proved to be the catalyst to its success the first seven games due to injury. Whether or not the personnel exists to reverse that course the rest of the season remains to be seen, but issues in Penn State’s secondary are a direct reflection of that inability.

Tasked with creatively adjusting to those areas of concern, the program’s future success boils down to finding an ability among its coaches, players, and personnel, to flip an average 2-point deficit in road games against the conference's best competition in their favor.

At 18-5 the past two seasons, commonalities exist in each of the program’s five losses that must change in order to do so. An unbeaten 12-0 at Beaver Stadium the past two seasons, losses have only occurred for this program outside of that space. And, apart from the anomaly of a 49-10 blowout loss at Michigan, the Lions’ four other losses have come against opponents with winning records, by a combined 10 points. In each of those games, at Pittsburgh, at the Rose Bowl, at Ohio State and at Michigan State, the Nittany Lions had prime fourth quarter opportunities to win but ultimately could not finish.

As running back Saquon Barkley explained afterward they’re issues that, though unique to each game, can and should be addressed with the same vigor that the program attacked its slow starts last offseason.

“The biggest thing that I'd say is we didn't finish. These two weeks we lost by 4 points. That's obviously football but we didn't finish,” he said. “We have to find ways to make plays, starting with me and trickling down to the offense and the rest of the leaders. When situations come you have to make the plays and we didn't do that the last two weeks. We scored 24 points of offense and 38 points last week but at the end of the day the object of the game is to score more points than the other team and that's what they did. When it came down to it in the fourth quarter, we didn't finish.”

Now needing to find security in the process that brought the program to this point, not overreact to unfavorable results by scrambling to address problems that don’t exist, the Nittany Lions’ collective response Saturday night suggested they’ll do exactly that moving forward.

Whether by Barkley detailing his message to a teammate while walking off the field, saying to keep his head up while focusing on the work to do offensively, defensively and on special teams, or Grant Haley reiterating the message of going 1-0 each week, or McSorley stressing a continuation of the players’ mentality toward inviting hard work, the Lions have not veered off course.

“The way we continue to move forward is do what we do best. Come in the next day and come to work. It starts in the weight room and obviously it starts on the practice field. Learn from mistakes and move on,” said Barkley. “We felt like as leaders we were doing a good job, but when you're Coach Franklin and those guys, they've been doing it for so much longer than we've been playing football. When they challenge you, you've got accept that challenge. That starts with the leaders. We have to get ourselves back to who we are and stay true to ourselves.”

Rather, by continuing to filter out the noise and embracing the atmosphere that has generated its success thus far, the program must simply stay on its intended path now more than ever.