Blue White Illustrated

S e P T e M b e R 1 2 , 2 0 1 5 b l u e w h i T e o n l i n e . c o M 13 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 Opening Statement: First thing I'd like to do is thank the fans. Especially the students, it was one of the more beautiful days in Happy Valley. The fact that our students were still out there going crazy under those types of condi- tions, I'm very appreciative of that. We've said from day one, [with] the en- tire community and campus coming to- gether, we are going to do great things this year, so I wanted to take a minute to thank everybody for that. You were carrying a play card, did you take a more active role in the play-calling? How did you think the offense ran today? I was more active all week long. We lost Andrew Nelson for the game, and you could make the argument that he is one of our better offensive linemen. So I thought considering everything we did some nice things on offense today. We were able to run the ball, I don't think we had a turnover in the game, in pretty significant wet weather. I thought all the coaches did a nice job having a plan and to have our guys be prepared. There's still a lot of things we need to get cleaned up and a lot of things we need to get better. Why did you feel the need to take a more active role in play-calling? We needed to be more effective. We needed to be more effective on offense and defense and special teams. There are a lot of challenges that I think a lot of people are aware of, but nobody wants to hear it. We have to find a way to get better every single day, and that's through fundamentals and tech- nique. I do think Saquon Barkley being able to make people miss tackles is helpful for us. [Brandon] Polk has brought that, I think [Chris] Godwin's consistency has really brought some- thing. I think Mike Gesicki is a special player. He had some opportunities today, but he'll make those next week. I saw him right after the game and the first thing he says to me is "I'll bounce back." I told him to enjoy the win and I know you're going to bounce back. Enjoy the win and we'll get back to work tomorrow. I'm proud of the guys for preserving, for sticking together, having each other's backs and finding a way to get a W. How much of what happened today represents improvement from week 1 to week 2? I think our guys made improvements. I don't have any doubt. We made some plays. I felt like the guys made the plays they should be making. I would love to see the plays we could make in different weather conditions. Considering the weather conditions, we played the style of game we needed to play. We were successful with that. A lot of teams are playing out-of-conference games to open the season and again were excited for the win.

• Cover