Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/890458
M I D S E A S O N G R A D E S Barkley, defense shine for Nittany Lions in season's first half In his news conference following Penn State's 31-7 victory over Northwestern earlier this month, James Franklin was asked about Saquon Barkley's relatively quiet afternoon and also about the per- formance of the team's offensive line, which wasn't able to create much run- ning room for Barkley against a Wildcat defense that had given up its share of rushing yards in its first four games. The coach's response was to zoom out and refocus on the big picture. "We're critiquing a Big Ten win on the road where we scored 31 points and ba- sically played shutout football," he said. "Do we have to get better? Yes. Nobody knows that better than our offensive staff and our offensive line and [assis- tant coach] Matt Limegrover, who will do a great job. I feel like we're [able] to go into the bye week and say, hey, these are the things that we need to improve on from an individual perspective, from a fundamental perspec- tive, from a technique perspective. Obvi- ously, everybody is back [on the offen- sive line], so we had the guys last year to win at a high level, and we need to build on that for this year. We need to get that group playing at a little bit higher level, there's no doubt about it." As recently as a year ago, a 24-point road victory over a fre- quently bowl-worthy oppo- nent would have been viewed as an unqualified success. That this perform- ance was being picked apart for signs of weakness was a NEWS & NOTES FIELD GENERAL Heading into the Michigan game, Franklin had com- piled a 31-15 record in three-plus seasons with the Lions. Photo by Steve Manuel |