What Penn State head coach James Franklin said after making the College Football Playoff
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College Football Playoff
Penn State has clinched a spot in the College Football Playoff for the first time since its inception in 2014. Find all of our coverage here as the Nittany Lions look for a path to a potential national title.
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Penn State head coach James Franklin met with the media over Zoom on Sunday after his program made the College Football Playoff for the first time, with a matchup against No. 11 seed SMU at Beaver Stadium looming.
Here’s everything Franklin said about SMU, his offense and more.
On making the playoff and SMU
“Having a home game is huge for a ton of reasons. Obviously, hopefully, a homefield advantage — also for Happy Valley, the community — should be a win-win for everybody. So we’re excited about that. And then, SMU, we’re just getting to know them. I literally got them on the TV right now. Starting to get to know them on a much deeper level, understanding what makes them tick, how they operate, what they’ve done this year to allow them to be successful.
“I have some background with [SMU head coach Rhett] Lashlee, followed his career from afar. SMU is interesting as a place. When I was at Vanderbilt, we went and visited them for their stadium. We were talking about building a new stadium. So we went and visited a number of schools, and SMU was one of them. Obviously tremendous history and tradition at SMU. They’ve done a really good job. Look at their roster, very different than ours. I think they have 48 players from the transfer portal. We have nine. Just very different ways of building it. And they’ve obviously done a really good job. So looking forward to getting to know them a little bit better over the next couple days.”
On injured safety K.J. Winston and the overall team health
“We will not get K.J. back for this year. Like I mentioned before, long-term injury. But the other thing is, we came out of that game pretty healthy, didn’t have a whole lot of issues. I always meet with (head athletic trainer) Andy Mutnan, after the game in the locker room; he kind of runs down once he’s gotten through it all. And we came out of it pretty good. So I think we’re in a pretty good place. I don’t really see us getting anybody back that’s been out, but in terms of who we played with this past week, we were able to come out of that game fairly healthy.”
On the week ahead
“This week will be a combination of rest and recovery, getting a feel for who SMU is, ton of study on them, and then some self-study on ourselves as well. And then we’ll do some practice as well. Some of that will be more general Penn State versus Penn State, almost like early bowl practices, almost like spring ball, where we’re just trying to get better at some areas that we think we have some room for improvement. And then we’ll get into SMU, but this week will be most importantly about rest and recovery and getting a head start on these guys.”
On running backs Kaytron Allen and Nick Singleton
“When you know you’re able to put up the numbers that we were able to put up on Saturday, it allows you to be explosive. It allows you to stay on schedule, allows your play-action pass game to really get going. But when Kaytron rushes for 124 yards and 8.9 yards per carry, and Singleton, 105 yards and 10.5 yards per carry, and then Nick also another 43 (receiving) yards on top of that. That’s the ideal situation, but it starts up front.
“Our offensive line, I thought did a really good job against a front that we had a ton of respect for on film and statistically, but our line and tight ends did a really good job. And I thought Nick and Kaytron did a good job of breaking tackles and making people miss and falling forward. So that was a real positive. It’s something we’d like to sustain for the rest of the season; that’s going to be important. But it’s a challenge, because everybody goes in with the mindset on defense that you got to try to make people one-dimensional and stop the run.”
On how the offense is playing
“I think we’re getting better, but we’ll see. It’s all going to be based off of how we play against SMU. I mean, it’s what you do on a consistent basis. And although we did some really good things on Saturday, we turned the ball over two times, and it’s hard to win when you lose the turnover ratio. So we did some really good things to build off of. We got to eliminate those bad football plays that hurt you. But overall, yeah, we’re doing some good things, but that’ll be decided really, in how we play the rest of the season. So I’m going to hold my strong opinions until after the season.”
On the transfer portal opening Monday
“We’re moving, and I’m pushing my staff to be very aggressive there. The challenge that I don’t think a lot of people think about is, typically, when your season ends and you’re in that time getting ready for a bowl game, you have time to sit down with all of your players and find out what’s going on. Who’s coming back, who’s considering going into the transfer portal, who is going into the transfer portal. And a lot of those things impact your decision-making on who you’re going to try to go out and get to replace those guys with. So it’s hard to come up with a plan.
“We’ll do that this week, but we’re probably a week behind other programs. I didn’t really want to be having those conversations last week when we were getting ready for Oregon. So that’s a little bit of a challenge. It’s hard to totally know what you want to do in the portal until you know exactly what’s going on with your current roster for next year. But I’ve asked our staff to be aggressive and move and make some decisions in positions that we think we’re going to have some needs. So we’ll have a better idea this week.”
On how quarterback Drew Allar is playing
“Yeah, I think he had probably five or six plays that are as good of plays that he’s had in his career, and probably five or six plays of better quarterback play that I’ve ever been around as a college player. But he probably also had four or five throws that he would like back — throws that he normally doesn’t miss, that that he missed. Also made some big plays with his legs. So I’m very, very pleased with his overall development, his maturity, his leadership.
“He made some huge plays last night to keep us in this thing, and continues to do a great job of distributing the ball to our playmakers and also managing our run game. We put a lot on the quarterback at the line of scrimmage, and he does a really good job of managing all those things. And I think from Year 1 to Year 2, he’s made a significant jump. And I think that the scary thing, and the exciting thing, is I still think there’s a ton left of development in him.”
This story was originally published December 8, 2024 at 5:16 PM.
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