Blue White Illustrated

C OA C H S P E A K| EXCERPTS FROM JAMES FRANKLIN'S WEEKLY PRESSER What did you hope to get done dur- ing the bye week? What did you get done? And do you plan to continue to modify practice? Yeah, for a number of reasons. It's the battle that you go through as the coach. As the coach, you want to run as many plays full-speed [as you can in order to focus on] technique, fundamentals, some of the combination blocks and the banging and defeating blocks and things like that. There's the part of you that thinks that's the right thing to do, and then there's the part of you that is looking down the table at your trainer and what he thinks we should be doing and at [performance enhancement coach Dwight] Galt, what he thinks you should be doing, and all the coaches and what they think we should be doing, and then come up with a plan that makes the most sense for Penn State. I think on top of that, as we know, we're still a little bit short. So the time off is important for us. Probably more important than at some other programs, not just for this year, but over the last three, four years. And I think we were able to accomplish that. I felt really good about what we were able to get done this week. I thought the GA practice we had was a really valuable thing for our program long term. The extra meeting time, we stayed in and had extra meeting time. You're always kind of scrambling with your meetings to get through your in- stalls for that day and have them pre- pared to practice, where we were able to take 15 minutes off the field and go 15 minutes extra in film room and be able to take your time and go through some things. Again, the young guy practice was a great one because the coaches and the GAs were able to kind of go through things from day one and not rush through things for the upperclassmen when the younger guys are still trying to figure things out. So I thought we got a lot done. We still need a lot of reps, but I thought we made the right choice. We'll continue to modify. Tuesdays are work days for us. We'll have pads on. We won't go full pads. We won't go pants, but we'll go helmets and shoulder pads and get some good work in. And Wednesday we'll modify again to just helmets. How will the loss of Jordan Lucas impact the secondary when you're going up against a Michigan team that seems to be throwing the ball all over the place the last few games, al- most 800 yards? I think Michigan has been really play- ing well on defense all year long, either No. 1, 2, or 3 in the country in most cat- egories. The offense is really starting to come on now. The defense has put them in really good positions with short fields and things like that, and their offense is gaining a lot of confidence. One of the things that really jumps out, you look at starters for them and they have 18 senior starters. Eighteen senior starters. We have four. That was one of the things that really kind of jumped out when you look at their depth charts. They have a bunch of sen- ior starters. They have a bunch of grad- uate transfers. They've got a bunch of juniors. That's one of the things that jumped out. They're big and physical on both fronts. I think some of those numbers [become] a little bit skewed whenever you're playing an overtime game. But, yeah, they are playing with a lot more confidence right now. They're much more explosive on offense. And they're doing a nice job. The receivers are really coming on, making plays for them. The tight end, [Jake] Butt, is making plays for them. They protect really well, and they're going to try to run the ball, like they do every week. It's going to be a tremendous chal- lenge, there's no doubt about it. But I'm looking forward to being at home, where we've played pretty good, and we're gaining confidence. So it should be a great college game. It should be a great college atmosphere. Looking for- ward to it. Obviously, losing Jordan, a guy who's played a lot of football here, is a captain for us, that's going to have an impact. There's no doubt about it. Fortunately, we have played some other guys, and that's helpful. But whenever you lose a senior starter who's played as much football as Jordan has and a guy who's been a captain, it's going to have an im- pact. We're aware of that. The guys are aware of that. With everyone [you lose to injury], you're not going to replace him with just one guy taking a spot. It's going to be a number of guys stepping up to re- place his production and his leadership. What does Malik Golden bring to your defense now that he's going to be out there even more? I know he's been out a lot in your nickel defense. How does Jordan's injury affect per- sonnel on your base defense, on things like your nickel? Malik's a guy we've been excited about since we arrived on campus. He's a playmaker. He's athletic, a guy who's played wide receiver, a guy who's played defensive back and a guy who took the opportunities that he's gotten and made the most of them. I'm actually excited to watch Malik play. I'm excited to watch him take the next step in his de- velopment. Does it leave us a little bit thin, and does it leave us a little bit thin at the nickel as well, the star package? Yeah, there's no doubt about it. We're looking at different ways of solving some of those challenges and some of those is- sues. Whether we play more corners in those situations, that's kind of what we're working on this week. We have a plan, but obviously we haven't prac- ticed yet to see how comfortable we feel yet with that plan. You come into it on Sunday. You have an idea of what you want to do. You work on it again on Monday, and you go out on practice on Tuesday and Wednesday, and you either build on some things or you eliminate some things that maybe didn't look as good as you expected them to be. So it does leave us thin. N O V E M B E R 1 8 , 2 0 1 5 B L U E W H I T E O N L I N E . C O M 14

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