Penn State coach James Franklin is probably coaching the best roster he's had since leaving Vanderbilt for the program. Despite that, he's come under some fire recently for (maybe) icing a kicker during a Penn State blowout victory over Georgia State.
Oddly enough, James Franklin has heard your gripes and he has decided to deny the entire thing even happened. Well, some of that and some saying “it is my job” type of stuff.
Also, please leave your “PSU denying stuff is what it does” jokes at home.
“We had mostly our fourth-team defense, some threes, on the field,” Franklin said Tuesday, as transcribed by ESPN. “I've been doing this 23 years. We've never worked a fourth-team field goal block. I'm on the headset and our defensive coaches are talking about how those guys won't even know how to line up. I'm shaking my head and the recommendation was to get the second team in there. I call the timeout and we are able to get the second team on the field, and from that point on, we're going to go block the kick.”
Basically, he is saying that the players had no idea how to lineup for some field goal defense. Logistically speaking, that makes sense, though it still isn't great to be doing that up huge against a buy-game opponent.
“If people don't think that we should go block the kick at the end of the game because of the score, then you probably won't understand us,” Franklin said. “We have a standard of how we do things and I want our guys to do that on the football field and I want them to do that in life. If you have a bad day, you've still got to go to work in the morning. When something bad happens at work, you've still got to come home and be a great father and a great husband. The situation or the elements, should not affect our standard and how we do things.
“It's their job to try to score. It's our job to try to keep them out of the end zone. It's not a whole lot more than that.”
How you feel about this is likely entirely contingent upon your fan allegiances. If you like Penn State, you completely understand what Franklin is saying and 100 percent agree. If you despise them, you are currently looking for another quote by the coach that makes this one hypocritical.