After a quite unbelievable game against the UCLA Bruins, the Nittany Lions were left grasping for answers to the media’s countless questions. While Penn State had lost before to the Bruins, this was perhaps their most inexplicable. After coming in off their first home loss of the season, they were 24.5-point favorites and fully expected to exorcise their demons from last week. And yet, behind a spirited performance bolstered by their new-look coaching staff, the formerly hapless Bruins found new life, and won 42-37. As a result, a number of questions postgame were aimed at James Franklin. Needless to say, even he couldn’t fully explain away this loss.
“We made mistakes today that we normally don’t make — had a ton of missed assignments, turnovers at critical times, penalties at critical times, things that we really don’t do and have not done for a very long time. So, give UCLA credit,” he said during his postgame press conference. What is probably frustrating to Penn State fans most of all is that Franklin is wrong. These mistakes have occurred all season long, and they have not been remedied. Nothing seems right about this Penn State squad at the moment and when your head coach is dancing around a question, it doesn’t make the current situation feel any better. That, however, was not his worst response.
When asked about why he his team wasn’t prepared, Franklin was quick to play the blame game, saying “obviously, we did not handle last week’s loss well. We also lost some players in that game, and then everything else — travel, everything else — we did not come out with the right energy to start the game.”
This looks even worse when you consider Franklin’s confidence early in the week. The fact that the Nittany Lions came in still ranked in the top 10 and got absolutely outplayed and outcoached by a wholly new coaching staff on the other sideline reflects poorly on Franklin. Most importantly, it reflects poorly on the narrative Penn State was trying to create this season. They were trying to be the next Ohio State or Michigan, beaten and bruised in Big Ten play, but coming out on the other side as champions. Now they’re pretty much left to pick up the pieces of what could have been a historic year for them.
One would like to think that there could be a “what now?” scenario, but Penn State may be beyond that. Even if they run through the rest of the season unbeaten, this stain on their resume will stick with them throughout the rest of the season. Most importantly, with teams such as Ohio State and Indiana still left on their schedule, do you really think things couldn’t get any worse? Entering this season, Penn State had so much to play for and dream about. Now those dreams could be coming to a surprisingly early close.
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