Penn State Football
James Franklin Press Conference
vs. Appalachian State – September 1, 2018
Opening Statement
First thing I want to do, obviously, is give App State all the credit in the world. I don't know what's in the water in Boone, North Carolina, but it seems like they've been doing this for a long time to whoever they play. It's hard talking to a coach after a game like that. I just told him, I know you don't want to hear this right now, but you guys do an unbelievable job.
So, first and foremost, I want to give App State all the credit in the world. They do a great job. I think they had a really good plan today. I started the game at 46 years old, and I ended it at 51. I don't think I have any chance to catch Coach (Russ) Rose whatsoever with games like that. I thought overall our offense looked really good at some times and other times we just looked like a young team with inexperienced players making mistakes. There was one player each drive or each play that didn't do what we needed to do consistently, and I think the same thing on defense.
I think our inexperience showed up a few times and we didn't play the way we are capable of playing. I did not think we played well on special teams, which is usually the story across the country. Early in the season like that, in college football, we have typically been pretty good, but obviously weren't. The on-sides kick was a huge play in the game. Obviously, the kick-off return very early in the game when we had momentum swung it back in their direction.
We got a win. We're going to enjoy wins around here. We're going to critique this thing tomorrow. But, I wanted to make sure our coaches, before going into the locker room, emphasize that we just won a great football game against a tough opponent. I think, sometimes, I have seen coaches after games like that and wins like that maybe had a different picture in their minds of how the game was going to go and they don't handle it with the players the right way after. We just celebrated in there. We made a few points. I want them to go out and enjoy themselves tonight, and then we will come back in tomorrow and we have a lot of things that we need to get cleaned up and corrected before our next game.
I would like to thank the fans. I thought for an opening game of the season, I've heard people talk about forever Labor Day weekend is always a challenge across the country, and I thought our attendance and our fan support was unreal. So, I want to thank the fans for all coming out and supporting us. We were able to get 105,000 people. I looked around and it was impressive, as you could tell driving into the stadium on the blue bus looking at the RV lot and the fans on the road. I just want to thank the fans for the tremendous support we got tonight, because we don't win it without them.
Q: How do you see this game help you guys move forward?
A: It's like I mentioned to the team, you look at any really good season and there is always a win like that where you had to overcome adversity, it's a gritty win, and you had to fight it out and stick together. Having Trace McSorley as your quarterback with the game on the line always helps. I thought the kick-off return play that we schemed up where everybody kind of stopped and KJ [Hamler] acted like he was staying in and Johnathan Thomas came and almost tackled him and he went up the sidelines for almost 50 yards. That was coaching right there. That was a key play in the game. But, I think, again, we're going to look back at the end of the year and this is going to be a critical win for all. All wins are going to be different. All wins aren't created equally. Most importantly, we found a way to get a win, get a tough win against a tough opponent. If you look at their history, Michigan, Tennessee, took Tennessee to overtime when they were ranked number nine last year. Wake Forest had to block a field goal at the end of the game to beat them. They seem to do this against everybody. I am proud of our guys. We found a way to get a win and we're going to enjoy it.
Q: Can you talk about the impact KJ Hamler had, making big plays in the clutch the way he did?
A: We got a lot of belief in KJ [Hamler] and have for a long time. This is really the first football game he has played in two years. He had an injury his senior year of high school, showed up here and still wasn't ready, so we had to redshirt him. But, we see this stuff all the time from him. One of the things we probably have to look at is ways we can get his hands on the ball a little bit more offensively and on special teams because he has a chance to change the game at any moment. One of the things I tried to do with KJ around halftime, he hadn't said a word, and I think you guys know the only thing faster than KJ's feet is his mouth. I said, you need to start talking and having fun because I'm not seeing that. He said, "oh I'm locked in". I said, "No, I want you to practice the same way you play in games and you don't act like this in games, so start having some fun, start enjoying yourself." I don't know if that's what did it or not. Either way he made some huge plays for us down the middle and the option route with the kick-off return. We have to find a way to get the ball into his hands.
Q: Your secondary did not have a particularly good game until the end, what were you being told was the problem? And can you describe what you've seen and what you've been told about Amani Oruwariye's interception at the end?
A: I didn't. There was so much noise going on in the headset I didn't know if it was an incomplete pass. There was confusion on the headset, but then the way the fans reacted and all our players started running on the field I said, we must've intercepted it I guess. I'll say two things. We have to be better in coverage. They were running two times, where they ran what we call the Big Box, which is the inside receiver run's a fade. The first one we didn't do a good job of covering it. The second time, we probably didn't make the call that we would have wanted to make in that situation that put our safety in a tough position in that play. You have to give them credit. The only play on [Tariq] Castro-Fields, the guy makes the perfect throw, over the shoulder, outside, fully in stride, right on the sideline. The coverage was great, so you have to give them credit. He made a big time throw in a big-time situation. We had another one up the sideline it was covered too. The safeties have to get off the hash and the corners have to jam the vertical. We can't allow a full releaser up the sidelines. They're the things that stand out to me. Besides that, they did a really good job on saying we're going to get the ball out quick. We're going to dig and dunk. A lot of spacing concepts where they would free release and swing the back out of the back field and use sit-down routes and spread the field horizontally and get the ball out of the quarterback's hands quickly. It was a good play. Where I would probably make the argument is we have to be better against the run. When you watch that game the series that we got them off schedule, tackle for a loss, sack, or penalty, we had three and outs, but when we didn't they were just getting positive plays, 40 yards, 60 yards, thing like that, so we had to sneak in a few explosives.
Q: Miles Sanders - two touchdowns and the game-winner in overtime in his first start, how do you think he handled himself?
A: Afterwards, he just came up to me and said "I've waited two years for this", and I'm happy for Miles (Sanders). You look around college football, and to me, it's a concern. We've made some rules to make it easier to transfer, and I get it, but I worry because I think most of us, and all of us, are using the game of football to teach life lessons and the lesson of life is not to leave to go to the path of least resistance, it's to battle and fight and earn a job and overcome adversity. Miles is a great example of that. He is sitting behind Saquon Barkley, maybe the best running back on the planet, and he just kept grinding and kept working and kept staying positive and I think he is going to have a huge year for us. Tommy Stevens is an example of that, so I get both sides of the story. I worry a little bit that we use high school and college athletics to teach some of these things, and I worry that some of these rules may be softening that. So, I struggle with that. I think some people have abused it, and that is why the rules get put in place, but I worry if we are doing what is right for the kids.
Q: James, you guys don't see a 3-4 defense that often, how much of that played into the trouble you guys had early on protecting Trace (McSorley)?
A: I think the 3-4 defense was part of it. I think the other thing is that they are a sudden, twitchy, under-sized, movement defense, and those types of defenses usually give college offensive lines trouble. We struggled with that early on. I think the 3-4 plays a little part of that because we only see it maybe a couple times a year, we don't see it against our own team in practice, you try to simulate with scouts and it's not necessarily the same, but again you have to give those guys credit because they have done that to everyone they have played.
Q: Miles (Sanders) had seven carries in the half, finished with 19. Coming in, did you guys have a distribution of carries in mind for guys or would you have liked to get him more touches?
A: No, we kind of have a rotation that we talk about on Friday and then go over, as a group, on Saturday morning. Whether it's two to one, so the starter gets two reps in two series and the next guy will get one series, or three to one, or whatever it may be. So, we talk about it like that, and then touches it's not really about, it's touches, it's hard to do that in our offense. I brought that up about KJ (Hamler), but it's hard to do in our offense because typically in the passing game it has always been like that, you go through your progressions and you hit the open receiver. In the running game, with as much RPO stuff that we do, it's hard to say that a guy is going to get this many carries. Probably the one thing they did that we struggled with today offensively was the cover zero. We probably could've worked a little more cover zero. They got us a few times where they just had more guys blitzing than we account for. So, that's probably an area that I would say that on myself, and the coaches and the offensive coaches, that we have to have a better plan for the cover zero stuff.
Q: On Kevin Givens, is there anything you can tell us about why he didn't play and if he will miss anymore games and your thought on not having him out there. How did that impact your defense?
A: He was a suspension for violation of team rules, and I'm going to leave it at that as you guys know that I normally do, but I don't think there is any doubt when you got one of your better defensive tackles not playing the game, did that have a factor in it? I don't think there is any doubt about it, and we will be better when Kevin (Givens) starts playing for us.
Q: When you guys are up 24-10 and 31-17, but you have played a lot of people, do you think your defense wore down? And you mentioned the onside kick, was that an execution thing or were you guys surprised by that?
A: They did a good job. They caught an onside kick, they went with the dribbler, they executed it extremely well. I think we lined a little deep, and I think we were leaving a little early, which that is a recipe for disaster in that. We lined up too deep and we were creeping out a little bit early, and they saw it. We literally just reminded them of that on the sideline: see the ball kicked and don't leave early, you are fast enough execute your responsibility without leaving early, and they got us. So, that's ultimately on us.
Q: PJ Mustipher and Micah Parsons both played several series today, did you play them more than you expected, about what you expected, and how do you think they handled it?
A: To be honest with you, I'm not sure because I don't know what their totals are. I expected them to see them in the game. I wanted our coaches to get a half-time report on where those guys numbers were, all of those guys like that, because I don't want to have a Sunday where we get in there and I say "How come you didn't play more", and I forgot that I got caught up in the moment of the game and I don't want that. We talked about that ahead of time, but I don't know what their rep count was and it's not like we had an exact number on it. We just wanted to make sure that we got those guys in the game, and as those guys gain more confidence and gain experience, it's going to help our team. I don't think there is any question.
Q: The game ends up on Jake Pinegar's leg making a difference there in the end of regulation, 5-for-5 on extra points and one field goal that he made, what did you learn about him in game number one as him with your field goal kicker?
A: I thought Jake was calm, cool, and collected and did his job. I thought we held well, protected well, and he did a nice job, he did what he was supposed to do and it's going to allow us to build on that for the rest of the season. It's a good way to start when you have a true freshman kicker kicking for the first time in front of 105,000. It's just like I told (Rafael) Checa - Checa was our kickoff guy, and he goes to run out there and his eyes were this big. I just tell him that this is no different than Saint John's vs. New Mattha, you have been doing this your whole career. Both of those ended up doing a really good job as true freshmen for us.
