Blue White Illustrated

P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> in the 21 Big Ten seasons that predated Franklin's arrival in 2014, they won only three league crowns. But because they came tantalizingly close to the Big Ten Championship Game the past two years, losing four regular-season games to Ohio State and Michigan State by a combined margin of nine points, those seasons are viewed by some as missed opportunities rather than as part of a more general upward trend. Which brings us back to those cham- pionship habits that Franklin and his staff are looking to instill. The biggest disappointment of Penn State's past two seasons (three if you count the Rose Bowl loss to USC in January 2017) was the team's habit of faltering in the fourth quarter of games that it could have won. In those four games vs. the Buckeyes and Spartans, PSU was outscored 45-19 in the fourth quarter. If you subtract last year's come-from-ahead loss to Ohio State, in which they scored two touch- downs prior to the Buckeyes' rally, the Lions' output dips to six points in three games. As those six points indicate, part of the solution to the team's fourth-quarter malaise involves the offense. The Lions haven't run the ball consistently the past few years, and that's an especially glar- ing weakness when you're clinging to a late lead and are trying to shorten the game. But the defense has come up short, too. And while a case can be made that the Lions simply didn't have the depth to play four strong quarters against Ohio State's powerful offense last year, they've had opportunities in all four of the narrow losses cited above and weren't able to seize them. Amid the atmosphere of positivity at media day, defensive coordinator Brent Pry ad- dressed those disappointments head- on. "We've talked on our side of the foot- ball about being finishers. A closer's mentality," Pry said. "Some things go into that. You know, it's not something that we ignored or pretended didn't exist. We did try and identify why it oc-

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