Blue White Illustrated

OPENING STATEMENT First, I want to thank the fans for coming out. Unbe- lievable environment with a record crowd. I couldn't ask for better support from the community and from the uni- versity. This one hurts, obviously. We didn't 9nish the game when we should have 9nished the game. There's no doubt about it, we played a great 9rst half and we weren't able to 9nish late in the game. Obviously, you second-guess some things a;er a loss like that. We should have kicked the 9eld goal in the 9rst half, but I felt like trusting our of- fense rather than putting a true fresh- man out in that situation. Obviously, a;er the second half it's easy to sec- ond-guess that decision. I didn't feel like you could beat that kind of oppo- nent kicking 9eld goals. We were going to have to score touchdowns and be ag- gressive. The reality is, we had opportunities, but we didn't make plays. We didn't tackle well in open space, we dropped some balls, we just didn't make plays when we needed to make plays. At the end of the game, we had a situation there, going for it on fourth down. Ob- viously, when we don't have the suc- cess we should have had, we should have called something di:erent there. I'm pretty upset right now because I'm hurting for those guys right now in that locker room. I know how hard they've worked. The reality is that we've gone from an average football team to a good football team to a great football team. We've worked hard to do those things, but we are not an elite football team yet. As hard as we've worked to go from aver- age to good, and from good to great, the work that it's going to take to [become] an elite program, it's going to be just as hard as the ground and the distance that we've already traveled. Scratch and claw and 9ght. Right now, we're comfortable being great. I'm going to make sure that everyone in our program, including my- self, is very uncomfortable, because you only grow in life when you're uncom- fortable. So we're going to break through and become an elite program by doing all the little things. Lose by one point this year, lose by one point last year, you make that up with all the little things. By going to class consis- tently so the coaches don't have to babysit you and we can spend our time developing you as men and as people and as players, and not be babysitting little things. Don't get me wrong, our guys do a great job with going to class, but there are two or three guys. It's all the little things that are going to matter, and we are going to 9nd a way to get [beyond] being a great program – which we are, just so everyone is crystal clear. We are a great program. We lost to an elite program, and we are that close. We have gotten comfortable being great. We will no longer be comfortable being great. We are going to learn from this and grow from this, and we are going to 9nd a way to take that next step as a program, because we've been knocking at the door long enough. It's my job as the head coach, I am ulti- mately responsible for all of it. I will 9nd a way. We will 9nd a way. And with all the support of everybody in this community and everybody on this campus and the lettermen and every- body else, we are going to get this done. I give you my word, we are going to 9nd a way to take the next step. I can read o: all these stats, but the stats don't matter. We are done being great. ON BECOMING A GREAT PROGRAM It's all the details. It's all the little things. It's 9nding a way to overcome adversity consistently. It's, like I said, going to class to consistently. It's getting to meetings on time. It's having your phone turned o: in the meetings. It's not settling for a "B" in a class when P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> C O A C H S P E A K E X C E R P T S F R O M J A M E S F R A N K L I N ' S P R E S S C O N F E R E N C E great, the work that it's going to take to [become] an elite program is going to be just as hard as the ground and the dis- tance that we've already traveled." That latter point was underscored two weeks later when the Lions suffered a 21- 17 loss to a battered and bruised Michi- gan State team that had been a decided underdog when it stepped into Beaver Stadium. Unlike the Ohio State game, in which Penn State played up to its capa- bilities, this was an afternoon full of missed chances, any one of which might have changed the outcome if the Lions had been able to take advantage. In the coming weeks, Iowa, Michigan and Wis- consin will be happy to leave Franklin's team with even more regrets. But when Penn State's fifth-year coach talks about the next step, he's not talking just about the weekly drama of the typical football season; he's taking a longer view. And that step involves recruiting. The hard truth for the Lions is that de- spite the recruiting uptick that has oc- curred since the program's on-field turnaround in 2016, Ohio State still has more great players than they do. It has enough great players that Urban Meyer can hand the Buckeyes' offense to a sophomore quarterback and entrust him to engineer victories in any stadium in the country. The first true road start of Dwayne Haskins' college career couldn't have occurred in a more inhospitable place, but he threw two touchdown passes in the final eight minutes of the game. Ohio State has enough great play- ers on defense that it can withstand the loss of a potential No. 1 overall draft pick and still hold its own against one of the better offenses in the Football Bowl Sub- division. Nick Bosa didn't take a snap at Penn State, but the Buckeyes still sacked Trace McSorley four times. As Franklin said following the game, "We lost to an elite program." Five years ago, the Buckeyes pummeled

• Cover