Thoughts on the End of James Franklin's Tenure at Penn State

When the Chicago Bears fired Lovie Smith following a 10-6, non-playoff season in 2012, I was ready for the Bears to try something different. Smith's players always loved him and always played hard, but Smith was entirely unable to find even a league-average offense during his tenure. After nine years, it was time. Of course, the 12 seasons that followed were...underwhelming. Marc Trestman got off to a good start before imploding; he lasted just two season. John Fox apparently retired by taking the Bears job; he muddled through three crummy years. Matt Nagy got off to a scorching hot start in 2018 after GM Ryan Poles mortgaged the 2020s for that roster, but one missed field goal (preceded by many other missed field goals and extra points) torpedoed his tenure. Then Matt Eberflus happened. Yuck. Thankfully, Ben Johnson is here to save the day. The Bears wandered in the coaching wilderness for 12 years after Smith left. But it was still the right move. Smith's tenure had run its course and it was time to try someone new, risk be damned.

The firing of James Franklin has some similarities. Franklin spent 11.5 years at the helm in State College and oversaw a slew of elite defenses with some reasonably strong offenses. We'll go through Franklin's tenure in much more detail below, but suffice it to say, his five top-10 finishes are nothing to sneeze at! Unfortunately, Franklin built his reputation as a coach who consistently handled teams with lesser talent but couldn't beat peers or more talented squads. That approach will get a coach a lot of runway. Lovie Smith avoided bottoming out with the Bears...but he also proved unable to push the Bears over the top. At some point, a team needs to try something new.

Unlike Lovie Smith, Franklin bottomed out. True, Penn State is only 3-3, which is a mediocre record on its face. But things look much worse with just a bit of investigation. Penn State struggled to put away Nevada, FIU, and Villanova, then infamously mustered just 109 yards and three points through three quarters against Oregon. Still, Franklin was in fine shape...until losing outright as a 25.5-point favorite at UCLA and as a 21-point favorite at home to Northwestern. It's going to get worse. Penn State's problems -- subpar DT and LB play combined with a non-functioning passing offense -- will be exploited by the more talented opponents on their roster in the coming weeks. If interim coach Terry Smith can get the team to six wins, it will be a tremendous accomplishment. This is the reality that got Franklin fired.

Franklin politicked for years to get his preferred "alignment" with a university president and athletic director. He got it in Neeli Bendapudi and Pat Kraft. Franklin asked for increased financial investment. He got it, primarily in the form of his hand-picked coordinators in Andy Kotelnicki and Jim Knowles. And the results? Disastrous.

Add it all up and it was time for Franklin to go. He put his eggs into the 2025 basket and then failed spectacularly. Kudos to Kraft and the athletic department for deciding to eat the $50M left on Franklin's deal in an effort to reorient the ship.

The Penn State Football Paradigm Has Shifted

The first two years of the James Franklin era at Penn State were rough. The Nittany Lions, mired in the post-Sandusky sanctions that stunted the program's roster, shuffled through a couple of years of wildly unimpressive 7-6 records. The wins in 2014? UCF, Akron, Rutgers, UMass, Indiana, Temple, and Boston College. Four of those were one-score wins. The wins in 2015? Buffalo, Rutgers, San Diego State, Army, Indiana, Maryland, and Illinois. Just two of those were one-score wins, so that was improvement I guess? None of that matters. After a rough September in 2016, everything changed. Penn State showed the ability to play with the big boys in 2016 and, most notably, immediately stopped losing to mediocre teams. For a team that lost to Temple and Northwestern in 2015 after losing to Northwestern, Maryland, and Illinois in 2014, Penn State ceased succumbing to scrubs. To wit:

From 2016 through yesterday and excluding the 2020 season (which I always exclude because what in the world was 2020?), Penn State's record is 86-26. Of those 26 losses, only four have come to teams that managed only single-digit wins:

• 2016 Pitt went 8-5. Nittany lost 42-39 in Pittsburgh. 2016 Pitt played a brutal schedule and also took down 14-1 national champion Clemson.
• 2018 Michigan State went 7-6. That 21-17 loss was a terrible loss.
• 2021 Illinois went 5-7. Do I need to delve into the 9OT loss? Sean Clifford, clearly injured still following his exit from the Iowa game the week before, played his worst game. Illinois QB Art Sitkowski threw for 38 yards in the win.
• 2021 Arkansas went 9-4. I'm not sure what to do with bowl games littered with opt-outs.

So, to be clear, 22 of those 26 losses came to teams with 10+ wins. As of this morning, Penn State hadn't lost to a team that ended the year with fewer than 11 wins since 2021 Arkansas.

Over Franklin's tenure, some teams have moved into the elite tier. After largely living in the same tier as Penn State for decades, Kirby Smart arrived and moved Georgia into the tippy top. Oregon was great a decade ago, then wandered in the wilderness before Dan Lanning showed up and reestablished the championship pedigree. Other teams have moved into the elite tier and then back out of it. Here's looking at you, Clemson and Michigan.

Franklin never took that step into the elite tier. His now infamous "great to elite" speech following the second straight one-point loss to Ohio State in 2018 has proved prescient in unintended ways. Still, in an effort to get over the hump, Franklin has facilitated the employment of:

• A football-friendly university president (Neeli Bendapudi)
• A football-focused athletic director (Pat Kraft)
• A rising-star offensive coordinator with a top-dollar contract (Andy Kotelnicki)
• The highest-paid defensive coordinator in the country (Jim Knowles)

Penn State was, arguably, doing everything it took to get on the path to elite production. But even if that didn't work, the floor was insanely high.

Until today. Everything changed today.

We start with Knowles. After handling the overmatched preseason opposition, the PSU defense held Oregon to relative meager production in the first half, allowing just three points. And then...

• Oregon: 10 plays, 80 yards, TD
• Oregon: 10 plays, 75 yards, TD
• Oregon: 6 plays, 7 yards, punt
• Oregon: 7 plays, 25 yards, TD
• Oregon: 1 play, 25 yards, TD
• UCLA: 11 plays, 75 yards, TD
• UCLA: 7 plays, 40 yards, FG
• UCLA: 17 plays, 75 yards, TD
• UCLA: 6 plays, 68 yards, TD
• UCLA: 3 plays, 17 yards, FG (stopped by clock)
• UCLA: 6 plays, 8 yards, punt
• UCLA: 8 plays, 75 yards, TD

Ummm, wut? Over those 12 possessions (excluding Oregon's end-of-half kneel down), that's eight TDs, two FGs, and two punts. Unforgiveable. That's unacceptable for an Arena League defense. Sure, Knowles had to deal with the loss of athletic LB Tony Rojas this week, but he's supposed to be the top defensive mind in the country. Surely he can survive against UCLA without one LB. But no. Knowles was either unwilling to play a spy against UCLA QB Nico Iamaleava or, when he did play a spy, failed to have a player ready to go with sufficient athleticism to hang with Nico. Dani Dennis-Sutton was spying on the last UCLA TD which, well, isn't going to work.

When Sean Clifford got hurt at Iowa in 2021, it cratered the season because Ta'Quan Roberson was completely incapable of operating the offense. Clifford played hurt, the offense scuffled, and the season went off the rails. Surely the 2025 defense isn't unworkable now with Rojas out...right? Much like Jan Johnson before him, Dom DeLuca tries hard, but he's wildly overmatched athletically and completely abandoned his zone responsibilities on multiple occasions today, creating massive running lanes for Iamaleava. There must be another option, not like it matters at this point.

Obviously it's unfair to put everything on Knowles, even with how poorly his defense has performed lately. There's plenty of blame for Kotelnick's offense. It starts with the coach. Why...in the world...is Nick Singleton...playing so much over Kaytron Allen? Singleton was playing great at the end of the 2024 season. Allen has wildly outplayed his backfield buddy this year. Singleton continues to get the majority of the touches. It's just bizarre.

Beyond the RBs, Drew Allar continues to to underwhelm. Some of that is unfair to Allar; Kotelnicki wants Allar to be Beau Pribula or Trace McSorley and he isn't. Allar's numbers look fine enough today at the end of the game. But much like last week against the Ducks, Allar and his offense struggled early. After a 75-yard touchdown drive, the offense sputtered to a three-and-punt and followed with a turnover on downs, giving the ball back to UCLA to push the halftime lead to 20. I won't blame Allar for the next drive...

That "honor" goes to Luke Reynolds. There was always going to be a drop off from Tyler Warren to whoever took over his job; that was inevitable. Unfortunately, the guy tasked with the primary responsibility there, Reynolds has been terrible. Reynolds has been missing blocks all over the place to kill running plays and has dropped a few catchable throws through five games. But he hit a new low point, handing the ball back to the Bruins on the second snap of the second half with a fumble, too.

So where does Penn State go from here?

Honestly, bowl eligibility is now the concern for me. Oh boy. The energy form the Penn State sideline was non-existent throughout the game, even as the season slipped away. Both coordinators seem intent on pretending that objective reality isn't the case. Knowles wants to play with a six-man box even though his DL can't generate pressure and his LBs now lack athleticism to operate with all of the space they need to cover. Kotelnicki pretends that his QB is mobile, and while Allar tries to run when necessary, it isn't pretty or explosive.

I thought Penn State needed to beat Oregon last week, even though I didn't think they'd win. Everything came together on paper in advance of that game. Oregon had to travel across the country. Penn State got a night Whiteout. Penn State featured their best roster in many years. And yet, Nittany still found a way to lose.

I figured that they'd suffer their normal post-1st-loss hangover this week. Franklin has done that many times, but (i) UCLA is terrible, (ii) this Penn State team was supposed to be better, and (iii) in the 12-team Playoff era, everything was still in front of this squad. And it didn't matter. The hangover lasted into the 2nd half.

Is there a world where Penn State runs the table and heads into the Playoff at 10-2? I mean, yeah, sure, I guess. But it's much more likely that we live in a world where this Penn State team completely unravels and misses a bowl game than it is that we live in that 10-2 world.

Today is a gut punch on the level of the 2017 Michigan State loss that killed Nittany's path to the Playoff ...but 2017 MSU was very good! 2025 UCLA is not. Losing to a bad team has the chance to torpedo this season, spilling over into recruiting losses. Honestly, it's hard to imagine that not being the case at this point.