Here’s James Franklin’s response to criticism from WVU’s head coach over late touchdown
Late Saturday night in Penn State’s 38-15 win over West Virginia, backup quarterback Beau Pribula pushed his way into the end zone with six seconds on the clock to score six of the game’s final seven points. Pribula punctuated with his lone drive of the game with a score and operated most of the drive by handing off to Trey Potts or by keeping it himself to run, with only one pass attempt — a seven-yard completion — to his name.
West Virginia head coach Neal Brown said he wouldn’t have made the same decision, according to 247sports.
“Who cares? Here’s the thing, I took timeouts,” Brown said. “I wouldn’t have done it but it doesn’t bother me. I just think stuff like that comes around and goes around. At some point, it’ll come back around. When? I don’t know. But, it doesn’t both me. I’m not upset about it.”
Penn State head coach James Franklin responded to Brown’s comments Tuesday afternoon, defending what happened on the field Saturday night. In particular, he pointed to the need to get his backup players more valuable playing time.
Here’s everything he said about the situation and his decision to continue running his offense.
“I guess everybody looks at it differently, right? For me, I believe that my responsibility in those type of situations is to get my twos in the game. But I think once those twos get in the game, then they deserve the right and the chance to play and compete. That’s what I believe. I believe that from the opening kick to the last whistle, you compete and you play. Now if you leave your ones in, that’s a different story. Then you should change how you play. And you take knees and you run in situations that you normally wouldn’t run in. That’s different. But when your twos go in the game, those guys get a limited amount of reps. They should have a chance to compete. I believe that not just from a Penn State perspective. If we’re ever in that situation, I see it the same way, this isn’t me looking at it just from our view. I got a bunch of other things I could say, but I’m just going to leave it at that. That is my philosophy and our philosophy. I think when our two offense was in there against the majority of their ones, they have a chance to compete. And I think Beau getting in there and being able to run the offense — they went to cover zero, which it’s hard to run when you go cover zero — Beau should have the ability to check to our cover zero plan and have a chance to execute a play that has a chance to be successful against cover zero. And then should have a chance to score. So I’m comfortable with that. I can’t do a whole lot more than that and I’ll leave it at that.”
