Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1524108
A U G U S T 2 0 2 4 2 5 W W W . B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / T H E B I G P I C T U R E / / / / / / / W ith his 11th season at Penn State coming up, James Franklin has quietly become one of the lon- gest-tenured coaches in Nittany Lion football history. He'll never catch Joe Paterno, who coached 548 games over the course of 46 seasons, but Franklin has now been on PSU's sideline for 127 games, a total that ranks fourth all-time, behind only Paterno, Bob Higgins (159) and Rip Engle (156). The same cannot be said of Franklin's top lieutenants. The Lions have three new coordinators in 2024, with Andy Kotelnicki arriving from Kansas to take charge of the offense, Tom Allen coming from Indiana to spearhead the defense, and Justin Lustig heading back to his home state to oversee the special teams following two seasons at Vanderbilt. The change in leadership in all three facets of the game has added another layer of intrigue to a season that was al- ready shaping up to be a break with the past thanks to the Big Ten's latest wave of expansion and the evolution of the Col- lege Football Playoff into a four-round, 12-team battle for the national title. In the midst of all that upheaval, Penn State has some on-field questions to an- swer. The Lions need more productiv- ity from their wide receivers and more consistency from junior quarterback Drew Allar, who showed great promise in his first season as a starter but strug- gled against Ohio State and Michigan. Defensively, the Lions need to build on last year's strong performance, and they must do it without one of their more promising young players, safety King Mack, who headed to Alabama via the transfer portal following spring practice. Franklin recently addressed these topics and more in a wide-ranging in- terview with BWI. BWI: How do you assess the wide receiver group as a whole at this point in the offseason? FRANKLIN: I think it's good. You look at the transfer portal, especially the second window, and there's not as much in there as people probably think. We did a study looking at the last cou- ple of years, the guys who went late in the portal. Not a lot of those guys have panned out. A lot of them are in there for a reason. We looked at it hard and we just didn't feel like there were any obvi- ous guys who were significant upgrades. I think talent-wise, I've never ques- tioned the talent that we have in that room. But there needs to be a significant step this year so that not only are they a big-time unit, but one of the better units in our conference. That's what our whole offseason is about. That's what training camp is going to be about. I think with success, this unit can take off. Talent is not our issue. In measur- ables — speed, strength, those types of things — our room probably matches up with the best receiver rooms in the country. But we've got to produce. BWI: Does Andy Kotelnicki's de- meanor and vibe help build the kind of morale you're looking to see? FRANKLIN: Yes. One of the big things with Andy is that he's a relational leader. He's an esprit de corps guy. He's got everybody pulling the rope in the same direction. I think there's more of a sense that we're in this together, where maybe sometimes in the past when things didn't go well, it wasn't always presented as, "Hey, we win together, we lose together. If things don't go well, we'll get it fixed together." Also, when you look offensively, Kan- sas was one of the [best] teams in the country in terms of explosive plays. And not only that, when we made the co- ordinator change [last November], we were more explosive as an offense after we made a change. So, it's a combina- tion of all those things and a few wrin- kles that we've done in our past, maybe with [former offensive coordinator] Joe Moorhead, that we're going to be doing again, and I think will make us more dif- ficult to defend. BWI: You've said during the offsea- son that you want this to be a player-led team. Is that a message you've empha- sized? FRANKLIN: Yeah, I think that if the coaches are always the people who are driving the standards and driving the accountability, you'll never reach your true potential. The best teams that we've had, the players have led. One of the things I'm talking to players about right now is, you're a junior or senior, it's easy to hold the freshmen account- able. Will you hold a peer accountable? We've been talking about it a ton. I think there are some real good exam- ples of it. [Redshirt senior center] Nick Dawkins is a great example of a guy who is really verbal and willing to call out his teammates. I don't think that's common in today's student-athletes. And then also, the only way you can do that is if you're living up to it every single day. If you try to call people out and you ain't living it, people look at you and call BS. I N T E R V I E W J A M E S F R A N K L I N "If the coaches are always the people who are driving the standards and driving the accountability, you'll never reach your true potential. The best teams that we've had, the players have led." F R A N K L I N At a moment of radical change for college football, James Franklin looks to position Penn State for success — in 2024 and beyond NAT E BAU E R | N AT E . B A U E R @ O N 3 . C O M