James Franklin has lost his team. The evidence is indisputable. The Nittany Lions entered the season as the No. 2 team in the country, with as much returning talent and experience as any team in the country. Yet, through seven weeks, Penn State still does not have a win over a Power 4 opponent.
The Nittany Lions are now 3-3 after a 22-21 loss to Northwestern at Beaver Stadium in Week 7, and 0-3 in Big Ten play. The loss comes a week after a fruitless trip to the Rose Bowl against the previously winless UCLA Bruins, and is the second straight as a three-touchdown favorite.
Penn State’s big game struggles
The first loss of the season came in Week 5 at Beaver Stadium, a double-overtime defeat at the hands of No. 6 Oregon. That loss dropped Franklin’s record to 4-21 against top 10 opponents and instantly evaporated any goodwill the 12th-year head coach generated in Year 11 with two College Football Playoff victories over SMU and Boise State.
It’s not just that Franklin has come up small in the biggest moments, typically one of the first steps to losing the fanbase. It’s that he hasn’t beaten his rivals. Oddly, with Pitt no longer on the schedule regularly, Penn State doesn’t have a traditional rival who reciprocates the animosity. Ohio State has Michigan, Michigan State does too, and even the Panthers have West Virginia. Can you really call Maryland a rival?
Still, Penn State fans have built up quite the hatred for the Buckeyes since joining the Big Ten in 1992, and Franklin has beaten them just once since taking over the program in 2014, and it came courtesy of a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown.
Two seasons ago, when Penn State lost to Ohio State, Michigan, and Ole Miss, clearly the three best teams on its schedule, including the Peach Bowl, Franklin decided to make a change on offense. He fired Mike Yurcich and brought in an innovative play-caller from Kansas, Andy Kotelnicki.
Then, after last season’s losses to Ohio State, Oregon, and Notre Dame, he made a change on the defensive side, letting Tom Allen go to Clemson after one season in Happy Valley and hiring Jim Knowles away from the Buckeyes’ staff.
While those were necessary attempts at an upgrade, desperate coordinator changes are another typical checkpoint along the path to termination because eventually, you run out of coordinators to blame, and the finger gets pointed back at you.
Penn State’s every game struggles and excuses
This time around, instead of handling business against inferior opponents, Franklin’s team didn’t bounce back after losing another big game in Week 5 to start conference play 0-1 in a season that had national championship expectations. That’s another telltale sign that a coach has lost the locker room.
But don’t worry, because he had plenty of excuses to uncork in the postgame press conference in Pasadena. Maybe worst of all, Franklin cited the travel, which every Big Ten program signed up for when they took the checks for the West Coast teams to join the league. They knew what they signed up for.
Now, he did it again. Instead of salvaging a lost season, Franklin is letting it spiral, and once you start the death spiral, it’s nearly impossible to get out.
James Franklin’s recruiting class is unravelling
Penn State typically starts out hot on the recruiting trail, and the 2027 class was not looking any different. Franklin entered this season with four 2027 commits, constituting the early No. 1 class in the country. However, that class is fracturing, with four-star wide receiver Khalil Taylor de-committing and five-star running back Kemon Spell
That’s the final step. When your players, both current and future, lose faith in you, it’s almost impossible to get out of the death spiral. Whether your school plans to fire you or not, recruits and transfers don’t see stability when they look at your program, so the level of talent you can attract dips, and your roster begins to erode.
That’s the final step. The only question now is how long Penn State will let him spiral and how far administration will let the program fall before finally pulling the ripcord and paying his hefty buyout.