Jason Cabinda was with James Franklin from the very beginning at Penn State, joining the program in 2014, Franklin’s first year, and the former star linebacker was a key piece of Franklin’s greatest success in Happy Valley, the 2016 Big Ten Title. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Cabinda took to social media to defend his former coach from frustrated Nittany Lions fans.
“Hot seat” talk has reached a fever pitch for Franklin after a loss to previously winless UCLA in Week 6 sent the Nittany Lions tumbling out of the AP Top 25, and all but squashed Penn State’s chances of making the College Football Playoff. Now an analyst for NFL Network after a seven-year career in the league, Cabinda essentially told the Penn State faithful that the grass isn’t always greener.
And for those of you all in my DM’s with the Fire Franklin Fire Franklin mantra’s just remember we aren’t talking about some coach who has all the talent in the world but for some reason can only win 4-8 games a year and we’re questioning why. This is someone who consistently…
— Jason Cabinda (@jasoncabinda) October 5, 2025
How long can Penn State hit its head against James Franklin’s ceiling?
In many ways, Cabinda is right. Franklin has won at least 10 games in each of the last three seasons and six of the last nine. Had the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff been in place across his entire tenure, last year would have been his sixth appearance, not his first. Still, a 4-21 record against Top 10 opponents, including the Week 5 loss to Oregon this season, is tough to swallow.
The best argument for Franklin is that with the 12-team CFP, consistently beating the teams you are supposed to, even if you lose to the best opponents on your schedule, will earn you a spot in the postseason and a chance to play for a championship. If you do that for enough years in a row, you’re bound to break through. However, Saturday’s loss shows the holes in that formula.
It isn’t easy to be perfect in the games you’re supposed to win every year. So, if you can’t ever take down an Oregon or an Ohio State, or maybe even an Indiana now that Curt Cignetti has that program humming, your margin for error is incredibly slim, and very little hope accompanies you into the CFP.
Cabinda is right, Penn State could move on from Franklin and find itself in a worse position a few years down the line. It’s hard to know what the true ceiling of the program is, especially in the NIL and revenue-sharing era, because it has really only ever had two head coaches. But at this point, I’m sure many Penn State fans would like to find out.
Franklin has had the resources to build talented rosters. He not only retained veterans like Drew Allar, Nicholas Singleton, Kaytron Allen, Dani Dennis-Sutton, and plenty of others from last season's roster, he added multiple starters from the Transfer Portal and submitted another top 20 recruiting class. The talent has been there in Happy Valley, and that’s a credit to Franklin, but he hasn’t done enough with it, and eventually, the evidence that he can’t win a national title becomes overwhelming.
Franklin has a cumbersome buyout, so it’s not likely that the program moves on from him this season, but in what was supposed to be an all-in year, all hope is gone after playing just two Power 4 opponents, and no matter how many 10-win seasons he’s strung together, that’s unacceptable.