Sunday Column: Big Picture Remains The Same for Penn State, But it’s one Franklin Needs to Change

In the grand scheme of things, this one didn’t mean anything. Penn State said as much on Tuesday, when it locked up James Franklin for 10 more years even though his team had dropped nine games in the previous 12-plus months.

Win, lose or tie, the Nittany Lions’ coaching future was set long before they kicked off one of the snowier games you’ll see against yet another ranked opponent, their sixth of the year. So, considering the outcome wouldn’t really affect anything other than which lower-tiered bowl destination was in Penn State’s future, there was no reason for anyone to get too worked up about the result, right?

Well …

Once again, this flawed but feisty team did just enough to make you believe the game was in its grasp while simultaneously failing to get out of its own way at just about every crucial juncture.

In its last regular-season game, the 10th loss in that 12-plus-month stretch, Penn State brought out all its greatest hits from 2021, including …

• Sluggish, low-energy start

• Inexplicable miss on high-percentage kick (yes, the elements played a role here)

• Poor tackling

• Joey Porter Jr. PI

• Turning a 2nd-and-1 into a Turnover on Downs

Any one of those things, on its own — we won’t even mention the two unsightly fourth-quarter turnovers — would have been enough to be the difference in a road game against a quality opponent, and yet — stop me if you’ve seen this before — Penn State was still in it thanks to more superhuman efforts from Jahan Dotson, the dogged determination of Sean Clifford, and a defense that (mostly) got it together after a brutal start.

But even though that defense played well for much of the game, it was still vulnerable to a big play at a big time — in this case, Payton Thorne’s dime to Jayden Reed for the deciding 20-yard touchdown. Penn State, while punctuating a Dotson highlight reel that will be seen in just about every NFL scouting facility this winter, once again could not make its own big play at a big moment. Instead, we are left to ponder questions such as “Would Jake Pinegar have been a better option on short field-goal or extra-point tries this season than Jordan Stout?” or “Does this team have a play in the playbook that can pick up 1 rushing yard?”

It might be easier to stomach, somehow, if this team was a total trainwreck, if it had quit on the coaches or were as consistently helpless in all aspects of the game as it has been in those short-yardage situations on offense. But that it plays hard enough and well enough for the majority of the game to win, and doesn’t win, makes the experience particularly painful, even if you’ve told yourself you’ve lowered your expectations and have already mentally moved on to 2022.

Maybe it’s a chemistry thing. The Penn State offense will look very different without Dotson and Clifford next year, and maybe the new faces at quarterback and running back will change the entire dynamic of the offense. Maybe an extra year in the program will allow one or more offensive linemen to be a true contributor and that group will play with some cohesion and/or aggression. Maybe Parker Washington will flourish as the No. 1 target, and Brenton Strange and Theo Johnson might do more than flash a few times per season. The only certainty in college football is change, and Penn State could use some change on that side of the football.

Again, though, from a 30,000-foot view, most of the above stuff is just changes to the chassis. The engine is and, for the foreseeable future, will be Franklin, who sees the same persistent issues that you do. After pushing enough of the right buttons to lead his team to a 5-0 start, he couldn’t cover or correct enough of those issues to pull out any of the big games down the stretch.

At many places, especially those spending the kind of money that Penn State is now paying Franklin, back-to-back five-loss seasons would make a coach a little nervous about his future. Franklin has 75 million reasons not to be nervous. But he also has a lot of work to do, likely a lot more than he would have figured a couple of months ago.