Penn State Head Football Coach James Franklin Photo by: Michael Corsey @ Michael Corsey Photography

Penn State vs. Michigan
November 21, 2015

Opening Statement
I wanted to start by thanking all the fans for coming out, it was a great atmosphere. I think the fans really had a big impact early in the game with penalties. I give credit to Michigan; it’s a good football team. They made fewer mistakes than we did today. We have to get off the field on third down more consistently. We have to score touchdowns in the red-zone. We were not able to run the ball consistently today whether it was traditional runs or wildcat. By the time the ball carrier got the ball there was someone in his face. We tried to do some new things with the jet sweep off the wildcat. We were one-on-one on the edge, their guy had enough speed to keep it to a minimal gain, but we weren’t able to be consistent enough in the run game and it showed in the red-zone, we had too many field goals. The turnovers out of our own intone hurt us. Our defense was able to make some big plays, but we weren’t able to capitalize on those turnovers. We had to burn too many timeouts; this is something we need to get cleaned up. Whether it’s us not getting the call in correctly, we will have some long conversations about that to get it corrected. Michigan is a good football team, I give those guys credit. We still have a lot of work to do, but we have another opportunity next week against another good football team and then a bowl opportunity to get better as well. We need every single practice, we need every single meeting. My heart hurts for these seniors because this was the last time they were going to play in Beaver Stadium and they aren’t leaving on a positive note.

Q: When the game was 21-13 and you had fourth and goal from the one, what went into your decision to go for the field goal?
A: In that situation we were going to have to score a touchdown and go for two. We were going to be in a situation where we were going to have to do that or kick the field goal and then score later in the game. That was the discussion on the headset with all the coaches and we decided to take the points now, or go for the touchdown and then have to go for two. At that point we had a hard time in the red-zone and punching it in, so we thought kicking the field goal was the best decision.

Q: How much do your special teams need to improve going forward?
A: We made a big play with the blocked punt, which was huge, but then we gave up two big plays. We had the start to get some momentum and get back into it, but the turnover deep in our own territory puts our defense in a really bad spot. We do get the field goal, and had an opportunity to stop then and then get the ball back and go down and score, but we gave up a big kickoff return and they’re starting with the ball on their side of the field. There is no doubt there are some issues that we have to get cleaned up. It’s everything, it’s kicking, it’s coverage, it’s kicking location, and all those things are very inconsistent right now.

Q: You talked about the red-zone, is it what they weren’t doing, was it what you weren’t doing, a little bit of both?
A: You’ve got to give those guys credit, they have been one of the top defenses in the country, and they have been number one, number two, number three and almost every defensive category in our conference, as well as in the country. The last couple weeks they have had some people do some things but you look at the type of defensive team they’ve been having all year and that’s a good team, a good veteran team. We went into it talking about those things 18 senior starters for them, we have four, and that showed up, that is a big physical group and it definitely showed up a few times today.

Q: James can you take us through that first series in the red-zone, it looked like Christian (Hackenberg) had checked into a run on a third down, can you talk about the play calling on those types of plays?
A: Yes we made multiple run-pass checks, where basically we are calling a run play with a pass and he goes up and we are trying to find our best situation to be successful, based on numbers in a box and if they overload then we want to throw the ball, if they are giving us the opportunity to run the ball by playing coverage, then we run the ball. So, that’s what those calls were, so we could get the best situation to be successful. That’s what happened. It ended up being three runs, but they weren’t all three run calls, they were checked with these.”

Q: How do you access your tackles today on defense?
A: I thought at times it was good. When they got the ball on the perimeter with some of the key screens, when we overloaded them in the box, that’s what we call key screens, the receiver screens out on the perimeter. We didn’t do a great job with force a couple of times and then missed some tackles in open field. I thought really the thing that hurt us defensively was third down, we got on the third a long number of times and weren’t able to get off of the field consistently.

Q: What could you say about the beating that Christian (Hackenberg) took today in the pocket but him hanging in there and gutting it out, was there any consideration of just taking him out because he did look hurt on a couple of occasions, to us anyway?
A: There is no doubt; you have got to give Christian Hackenberg all the credit in the world. He’s taken a pounding for the past year and a half. The fact that he hasn’t missed a game or really missed a series is impressive. No one really can question Christian Hackenberg’s mental or physical toughness, and we have got to get our protection and our run game more consistent to help him out. There is no doubt about it. There were a couple times that he was slow to get up especially at the end of the game, but he was ready to play. We had a situation when we have the chance to win the game he gives his best in it, right there until the end. But yes, there is no doubt about it, you can’t question his toughness.

Q: James, we saw Carl (Nassib) briefly early on was that just trying to see if he could gut through it and go, and also can you talk a little bit about the effort you got from Brandon Bell tonight?
A: Carol (Nassib) was limited, obviously from the previous game, he was limited all week and we hoped if by limiting his reps in practice all week that we would see how he would feel on Saturday. I could tell Friday at the walk through he wasn’t feeling great, but he wouldn’t tell us that. And then, on Saturday you could tell during warm up that he wasn’t feeling great and once we saw that he wasn’t going to be able to go and help us and help himself, but then we made the change and pulled him out. I thought Brandon (Bell) did nice things, the veteran player. I don’t know what the stats say, but I think overall that he did some really really good things. His leadership is excellent he has so much passion and pride for the game and Penn State, he’s a good football player and he is going to continue to be a good football player.