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.
All of that said, I very much appreciate Franklin's efforts during his tenure at Penn State. He undeniably cared deeply for his players and how they represented the program. He involved his family in his public life, regardless of whether things were going well or poorly.
He raised the floor of Penn State's program. Coming out of the sanctions era that Bill O'Brien so expertly navigated, Franklin dealt with significant roster limitations in his early years. His 2016 season was nothing short of miraculous. The years that followed also went swimmingly, following the 11-win 2016 season with 11 wins in 2017, 11 more in 2019, 11 in 2022, 10 in 2023, and 13 in 2024. Those are a lot of very good seasons. Unfortunately, the losses made their own headlines and deservedly so.
Still, add it all up and Franklin had a successful tenure in his time at the helm.
I spent plenty of time writing about Franklin's struggles with his Blue Chip Ratio ("BCR") peers over the years. Remember that these are teams where their rosters are comprised with 50%+ four-star and five-star recruits. The results were terrible:
Over 27 contests, that's a 6-21 record. Yikes! And it's worse: the win over 2016 Ohio State was legitimately elite...but every other BCR victory featured an opponent that lost at least four games and those five squads combined to go just 35-29 in those seasons. In the end, despite their top-notch BCRs, those were mediocre teams.
Now that the book has closed on Franklin's tenure, I decided to examine his record in one-score games, too. Football nerds classically look to one-score games to explain variance as winning one-score games tends to be unsustainable. Unsurprisingly, Franklin got off to a solid-enough start, especially finding success in tight contests in 2016 before things plateaued and eventually backslid. Here are the results:
We don't need to dig through all of the detail here. Suffice it to say that Franklin went 24-25 in one-score games. Very average. We could dig deeper and suggest that one-score wins against 2-10 Army in 2015, 3-9 Maryland in 2015, 5-7 Indiana in 2018, and 7-6 Bowling Green in 2024 are actually massive causes for concern instead of plusses. But there's no point. Franklin didn't elevate the program in tight games, either.
There were some very good moments, even some great ones. Not nearly enough big wins, but still, there were some quality wins. I decided to compile my personal list for the top-10 wins of the Franklin era. Before getting to the top-10 itself, here are some honorable mentions:
HM. 2019: 17-10 v. Pittsburgh (8-5). A decent win over a decent rivalry opponent.
HM. 2014: 26-24 v. UCF (9-4) @ Dublin, Ireland. Franklin's first game. A riveting win fueled by 454 passing yards from Christian Hackenberg.
HM. 2018: 22-10 v. Wisconsin (8-5). Solid win over a solid team.
HM. 2022: 35-31 @ Purdue (8-6). Sean Clifford outdueled Aidan O'Connell, setting the tone for a big-time bounce-back season after a rough 2021.
HM. 2016: 29-26 v. Minnesota (9-4) in OT. Needing a comeback at home vs. Minnesota to force OT isn't ideal, but the win was clutch and began the shift in 2016.
HM. 2016: 41-14 v. Iowa (8-5). Blowing out Iowa is tough.
HM. 2022: 35-21 v. Utah (10-4) @ the Rose Bowl. This had all the makings of an elite game...then Cam Rising got hurt and it turned into a blowout. Not Penn State's fault, but it does knock down the prestige of the win.
10. 2017: 21-19 @ Iowa (8-5). This one is complicated. The ending was thrilling with a walkoff from Trace McSorley to Juwan Johnson. Penn State completely dominated the game at scrimmage, yet needed the walkoff because they couldn't finish. Iowa also lost five times. However, four of those losses came to tough opponents and they beat Ohio State by 31. Maybe this should be higher, but I can't get over how Penn State just kept not scoring.
9. 2024: 21-7 v. Illinois (10-3). A memorable impromptu Whiteout evening in State College at the beginning of a special season. Illinois proved to be a tough out all year, not just against Penn State, and the Nittany defense buckled down after allowing an opening drive touchdown.
8. 2019: 28-21 v. Michigan (9-4). Another Whiteout victory. This was Sean Clifford's virtuoso performance and featured massive games from both KJ Hamler (against his home-state team) and Micah Parsons. It also kept a perfect season alive.
7. 2019: 53-39 v. Memphis (12-2) @ the Cotton Bowl. The Penn State defense struggled mightily with the Tigers. At the time, that was both frustrating and surprising. In retrospect, a Memphis team led throughout the season by Mike Norvell and in the Cotton Bowl by Ryan Silverfield should have been expected to produce a valiant effort.
6. 2021: 16-10 @ Wisconsin (9-4). The first game in the post-COVID world. The Penn State offense struggled to get on track, but the defense held up heroically against Graham Mertz and the Wisconsin attack with Jaquan Brisker leading the way; Brisker and fellow safety Ji'Ayir Brown each recorded an interception in the last three minutes of the game to seal the win.
5. 2017: 35-28 v. Washington (10-3) @ the Fiesta Bowl. One of the last non-Playoff bowl games before opt-outs took over the postseason, this one was a banger. Penn State's offense got off to a rousing start even though Saquon only played sparingly -- most Penn State fans can hear "look at the speed, oh my goodness!" without having to think too hard -- and held on just enough to get the win.
4. 2016: 38-31 v. Wisconsin (11-3) in the Big Ten Championship Game. This one surely speaks for itself. Paul Chryst's squad was extremely consistent, brought an elite rushing attack, and came in favored with good reason. The Badgers then jumped out to a 28-7 lead and appeared destined for a comfortable win. Then, McSorley hit Saeed Blacknall late in the first half for a long touchdown, did it again early in the third quarter, and turned it over to Saquon to provide the rest of the scoring. That Wisconsin team suffered seven-point losses to Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State. Tough outcome for them. Stellar win for Franklin.
3. 2019: 17-12 @ Iowa (10-3). Everyone assumes that the 2017 win at Kinnick should take the cake, but this victory at Iowa was Franklin's best road win. Clifford struggled mightily, going just 12/24 for 117 yards and a score while taking three sacks. The rushing attack proved steady and the Penn State defense shut down the Iowa rushing attack. In the end, even though they allowed Nate Stanley to throw for 286 yards -- yes, an Iowa QB threw for 286 yards -- Iowa only mustered a pair of field goals and a touchdown. This one was huge.
2. 2017: 42-13 v. Michigan (8-5). Most of the games on this list featured a top opponent. On paper, 2017 Michigan was a top opponent. In the end, 2017 Michigan was only OK. But still, Franklin's squad announced to a national audience that the 2017 Nittany Lions would be a player on the national level by positively roasting Jim Harbaugh's bunch. Not knowing that consecutive losses would follow in Columbus (by one) and East Lansing (by three), this was the peak moment of Franklin's tenure.
1. 2016: 24-21 v. Ohio State (11-2). As if there was another option. Franklin's team was unranked at 4-2 and found themselves as a 19.5-point underdog against Urban Meyer's fully operational Death Star. Then the game started and it was...weird. McSorley completed just eight passes. Penn State's first possession ended with a blocked field goal. Nittany also fumbled a punt in the first quarter that was recovered by the Buckeyes, setting up their first score. A third quarter punt snap sailed over Blake Gillikin's head and into the endzone where Gillikin covered it for a safety. However, overcoming those three catastrophic special teams blunders, the Penn State defense held tough, McSorley led a 74-yard touchdown drive on seven plays in 60 seconds at the end of the second quarter, and then McSorley led another 90-yard touchdown drive on five plays in 80 seconds early in the fourth quarter to make it a 21-14 game. Cam Brown blocked a punt on the ensuing drive to set up a field goal. Then it happened. A classic OSU drive under Meyer, covering 59 yards in 5:06, before John Reid dropped a sure interception on third and long to set up Tyler Durbin for a 45-yard field goal attempt. Durbin's kick found Marcus Allen's airborne hands and Grant Haley scooped the ball up off of the turf, returning it 60 yards for the go-ahead score. OSU's final drive was truly bizarre, taking 3:25 to go just 12 yards thanks to consecutive sacks by Jason Cabinda and a split from Kevin Givens and Evan Schwan to ice the game. The most magical night of the Franklin era. It feels like it happened a very long time ago because it did, in fact, happen a very long time ago.
This is obviously a subjective list. But it's telling that only one game on this list occurred after opening day in 2021. Yikes. That probably goes a long way to explaining where we are today.
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