Penn State football head coach James Franklin held his first press conference today since the 2020 season ended, answering questions about the offseason.
Franklin offered a state of the union on Penn State Football, and answered questions on the comings and goings off the busy offseason thus far.
There was a lot to discuss, as the Nittany Lions have added four players via the transfer portal since season’s end, lost three players to the portal, made a major coaching change and had a few very key players decide to return for 2021.
The busy month has seemingly injected some optimism in the fan base, coming off of a weird but disappointing 4-5 season, one the Nittany Lions started 0-5 for the first time in program history.
However, with the players coming to happy Valley and the players they have coming back, it would be fair to think Penn State Football will be back to being a contender in 2021.
Franklin took questions for about 45 minutes earlier today, lets take a look at three big takeaways from his time with the media.
Mike Yurcich was Franklin’s white whale
Earlier this month, Penn State football shocked the college football landscape when they announced a major coaching change.
Offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich would be joining the team, while Kir kCiarrocca would be relieved of those duties after just one short year.
When asked about that today, Franklin unsurprisingly would not go into too much detail on why he made the change, but continually referenced that Yurich was a guy he’s had his eye on for some time now.
Franklin said they have had many conversations over the past few years and cited “offensive philosophy” as a reason for the change, and philosophically his offense can get Penn State football to where they want to go.
"“It’s going to be back to who we were the previous three or four years,” Franklin told reporters. “It’s going to be spread, it’s going to be tempo, there’s going to be an emphasis on explosive plays. Obviously we’re still working through all those types of things, but me and Mike have been talking for a long time, and we’re on the same page in what we want to do and how we want to do it. And Mike has lived in that world.”"
The head coach detailed further that an emphasis on explosive plays, not having turnovers and scoring points is what offense is all about.
Whether or not it was Ciarrocca’s fault this season, they were not very good at any of those three things.
Ciarrocca’s offense was built to eat up the clock and grind out drives, while it seems Franklin is more interested in speeding up the tempo, spreading it around, and he referenced getting more players involved in the offense.
Franklin admitted it was very tough to move on from Ciarrocca, and said Kirk handled it with class.
This is a “critical offseason” for the program, Franklin noted, and seemingly did not want to miss out on the guy he’s been chasing.