Inside the Den: James Franklin press conference news & notes
Penn State head coach James Franklin returned to the Beaver Stadium media room Tuesday afternoon, somber in the wake of a 31-26 loss at Minnesota over the weekend, for his weekly press conference.
Let’s get right into the news, notes, and observations to come from Franklin’s press conference, here:
1) Opening with a statement, as he typically does each week, win or lose, Franklin boiled down the Nittany Lions’ first loss of the season in its simplest terms.
“I think the biggest thing that summarizes the game is we did fight extremely hard for four quarters, had a chance to win at the end, but we had turned the ball over five times all year and we turned the ball over three times on the road against an undefeated team in the Big Ten,” Franklin said. “We had as tough of a four-game stretch as probably anybody in the country. Did not play well enough to win. Got to give Minnesota credit, but we did not play well enough to win.”
At that point, he turned the page and move on to talk about Indiana, who the Nittany Lions will face this weekend back at Beaver Stadium (noon, ESPN).
2) And, believe it or not, Franklin mostly did have the occasion to talk about Indiana, just not necessarily in the manner he would have chosen, during the question and answer session to follow his opening statement.
Asked in every which way, Franklin was faced with questions about the team’s reaction to the loss, the team’s ability to rebound and move forward after the loss, the reaction of individual players after the loss, and the ability of individual players to respond and move forward after the loss.
He answered earnestly the first time about the effort that the coaching staff makes to set a tone of consistency, working to narrow focus on things to improve and learn from whether the previous game is a win or a loss. He said that the game could be used as fuel, whether it is from the confidence gained or setbacks to drive progress forward to overcome it the next time.
Then, eventually, he was asked about the last time Penn State lost its first game of the seasons the past two years and its subsequent follow-up loss in the game afterward, and how Franklin might be able to prevent the same from happening this time around.
“I'm going to answer your question, but it's kind of pretty much the storyline that everybody has been asking me. I've kind of answered that question about 12 different ways. You're probably the most direct with it,” Franklin said. “But it's about moving on. It's about, okay, here are the issues. Here are the things that we've got to get corrected. I do think the stretch that we were on played a factor in that. But we had to make the corrections and we need to move on. Today will give us a pretty good idea where we're at with that.”
3) As they say in journalism, I have buried the lede here.
The biggest and most notable thing to transpire at Franklin’s press conference came not at the beginning or any point within his question and answer session. Rather, having wrapped up and taken his last question about 40 minutes into the press conference, Franklin offered up what is described in the official transcript of the press conference as his “closing remarks.”
And by that, he meant to vent his frustration at the tenor and tone of one of the questions that occurred after the game and, to a larger extent, provide his perspective to his journalist, captive audience.
Some context:
Saturday in the postgame press conference, Franklin was asked about his decision to go for a 2-point conversion, trailing at that point of the game, 19-24. Ultimately, Franklin said that the way the game played out, the decision “wouldn’t have mattered.” At that point, another reporter interjected that it would have mattered if Penn State had kicked the PAT and trailed by 11 instead of 12 points on the ensuing possession, down 31-20 instead of 31-19, which Franklin dismissed as a statement being couched as a question.
“It's always this situation. If it works, everyone thinks it's a good call. If it doesn't work. But I told you, we checked the book, the book says go for it,” Franklin said. “I talked to the offensive coaches. I talked to the defensive coaches. We all agreed. It wouldn't have played out at the end. You don't like it? So you asked me again, but I think I've already answered the question clearly.”
So, today, Franklin went back to the mat for more.
Saying that he wanted to talk about the specific two-point conversion decision, Franklin expanded by noting that he wanted to talk “big picture of what I struggle with,” about the nature of the question itself.
You can watch all of it beginning at the 39:42 mark of the video clip below:
“So going for two in that situation. We looked at the classic two-point chart, which said go for it. We used our analytics stuff, which said go for it. We decided to go for it partly because we're on the road, not playing as well as we thought we should be at the time, and if we picked up the two-point conversion, it increased our chances and put us in a better situation. If we didn't pick it up, we still we’re going to have to overcome those points at some point.
“At the end of the day, here is the thing I struggle with. A lot of these decisions are not clear-cut. There's some that are. But there's a lot that is not clear-cut. It's a gut feel. And what I struggle with is when those decisions, and again, I already told you the two-point chart said to go for it and the analytics stuff said go for it, but then opinions are stated as facts and I struggle with that.”
Similarly, Franklin said he struggled with opinions stated as fact about disciplinary issues of which people don’t have the entire set of facts. He also brought up the decision to kick it to Minnesota with 2:40 left to play rather than kick an onsides kick, noting that it was the right decision “because it worked.”
“My point is, sometimes the decisions are clear-cut, and I get it. And I make mistakes. A lot of people make mistakes. But when things are gray, when things are gray and things are stated as facts, I struggle with that,” Franklin said. “When I see people criticizing decisions on discipline, and I'm not just talking about my program, and you don't have all the facts, I just struggle with things being stated as facts when they are not. They are opinions.
“A lot of times, it's based on how it plays out. If I went for it too early in the game and we picked up the two, it's a great decision. We threw a screen. They had three guys we had two. If we run inside and score, we get two. It's a great situation. I'm not saying I'm always right. But it's easy after the fact to say that that was a bad decision when we don't execute.
“Now, at the end of the day, I'll be the first one to admit, I'm ultimately responsible for making sure that we execute the decision. So, I don't want you to misinterpret what I'm saying. I'm still responsible for all of it and I'll take it. But I will tell you that's where some of my frustration comes from sometimes. Doing this for 24 years, that's the hard part. You can disagree with me. You're more than welcome to. I'm stating my opinion on how I see it.”
Bonus) Noah Cain will likely be back in action Saturday, given what Franklin said about the running back room and the coach's philosophy about the position on Tuesday.
"Nothing really has changed. We've had some injuries that have changed it. That’s probably the only thing. But we've said in the past that if a guy was hot, we would stay with them and that's happened. So, we've left guys in there.
But really, the only difference has been we've had some guys get banged up that we could have played. Noah could have played, but it didn't make sense to play a 90-percent Noah when we had three other guys at 100 percent.
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