Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/408409
N O V E M B E R 1 , 2 0 1 4 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 12 COACHSPEAK | 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 O S T G A M E P R E S S E R Was Christian Hackenberg having trouble holding onto the ball for a particular reason? One just came out of his hand. The other one, the running back was coming by and knocked the ball out of his hand. I think it was one, for sure. It's hard for me to say. It's a problem with it just being one. Why does the offensive line con- tinue to have trouble? Is it the players or coaches? What's going on? It's a combination of a lot of things. We've been struggling all year long. We have depth issues and now we lose our le= tackle. So that magnifies an issue that we already have. I love those guys, they are working hard, and they are get- ting better. We've moved some guys around. When you have to take your center and move him to right tackle then you have to take your right tackle to le= tackle. I don't want to be repetitive, but I feel like I have to be. It's an issue, it was an issue before and we knew that last week. When you lose your starting le= tackle it becomes more of an issue. When did you realize Donovan Smith would not be available? We pretty much knew the likelihood of Donovan playing this week wasn't good. You're always hopeful, but we had a pretty strong indication that he prob- ably wouldn't play. He didn't practice all week. Can you talk about how Sam Ficken kicked the ball today and what he's come to mean to this team? He's been playing extremely well. I said that to you guys in the spring. I said that to you in the summer. He's also an example of a guy who's been here; he's a senior, he's done everything right both on and off the field. He's graduated. You're talking about a veteran player, who's seen it and done it and that shows up on the field. That's why we're going to keep working hard to develop the players we have and recruit more so that we can have more senior players, like Ficken, having an impact in the game. Your freshmen Grant Haley and Marcus Allen, they had a couple lapses. What do you hope these young guys can take down the road from this? I want them to play with passion. I want them to play with emotion, but there still has to be poise there. I think the fact that Marcus is from Maryland and that maybe on that opening play that might have had something to do with it. We will talk about it and we will address it. Grant and the fumble was a big play in the game, but he has also made a bunch of big other plays. His coverage on punts that didn't have much hang time were big. I'm proud of those guys and we're going to focus on correcting those issues and working on our ball security and learning from those situations. They've been playing a lot of football for us and for the most part have been good as true freshmen.