Nittany Lions Head Football Coach James Franklin

Penn State vs. Kent State
September 3, 2016

Opening Statement:
JF: First of all, I appreciate everybody coming out, the fans, I thought it was awesome. Great weather and great environment here at Penn State and we’re very appreciative of that with our fans and alumni that come out to support us. I thought overall we’re definitely happy with a win. I think we could have been cleaner. We didn’t play as clean as we would have liked to be, but we scored over 30 points with a defensive touchdown. Offensively we gave up a touchdown so you see 13 points, but it really was six. I thought we played well on defense. It was great to see seven sacks from an inexperienced defensive line. It’s also great to see a guy like Shareef Miller in his first game get two sacks. One of the things we have to do a better job is dealing with scrambling quarterbacks. It was either a sack or a scramble for a first down, so we have to do a better job with our rush lanes on the defensive side of the ball. Great to see Amani [Oruwariye] step in there with his first significant playing time and get an interception returned for a touchdown, that’s great. Offensively I think Saquon [Barkley] had a very sneaky 100-yard game. His game didn’t necessarily look like that if you watched it, but he still ended up with 100 yards which was very productive in the game. I think Trace [McSorley] managed things well for his first start. They were going to play a defense which we’ll probably going to see a lot of where they overload the box with the safeties up under 10 yards, press corners leaving those guys on an island and try to stop Saquon Barkley. It’s a smart plan so when we get in that type of game you’re going to be forced to run verticals, take shots up the field and run crossing routes. We did a lot of that today and we need to hit more of them, there’s no doubt about it. I think we need to sustain and finish our blocks on the offensive line. We need to finish better, but I think overall those guys did a good job battling and I’m pleased with them. On special teams, Joey Julius I thought had a great day on kickoff. I told coach Brent Pry I don’t want to see him trying to get in the hit reel on defense, but he probably had the biggest hit of the day. We had great momentum there which is why it was a shame that the offense gave up the touchdown right after that because I thought the sideline and stadium erupted and we had really good momentum at that point. I’m really happy for Joe’s role. Blake Gillikin coming in as a true freshman I thought punted extremely well. Overall I think there are some really good things to build off of, but we have a lot of things we need to get cleaned up. I know people say we have a big game coming up this week so we’ll look at this past week and learn from that and move on to the next one.

Q: Can you speak about Trace [McSorley]’s toughness and about his composure especially on a day like today making his first start?
A: I thought his composure was really good. That’s kind of just who he is. He’s been that everyday since I’ve seen him on-campus through the recruiting process. There’s no doubt that we’re going to run our quarterbacks so that toughness aspect is going to be really important and he displays that all the time. He displays it in the weight room, in summer workouts and in practice so there’s no surprise that it showed up in the game as well. I was pleased with him. I mean you look at his accuracy, even some of his incompletions. He had one that he threw away in the redzone, which was clearly a throw away. Another where he drilled a receiver in the facemask. I thought he played very well overall.

Q: Did you realize Blake Gillikin was that good and got a standing ovation? With a 47-yard average in his first start, did you think he would be able to do that and how will that impact and change things for you guys this year?
A: I didn’t know he got a standing ovation so thank you everybody for doing that, it’s great to reinforce a positive. As you guys I know I tried to kind of temper my expectations a little although he showed that. If you talked to our team everybody talked about his summer and the way he was kicking the ball it was clearly obvious to everybody that he had a chance. We never know until the games get going and practice gets serious, but he showed it time after time after time in practice. We tracked every punt. His location could have been a little better. He had one drop where the nose of the ball was down so he didn’t get it off as clean as he would have liked to, but I think he can be better than what he showed today. I went to him right when we start our typical warmups when we do a sky punt and he knocked it about 12 yards out of the endzone. I said to him that his legs were a little live today and he was excited about the game so just to make sure he understood that. I remember back playing quarterback when there were some days my arm felt stronger than others and you get caught up in the moment so I think the same thing happened to him.

Q: How would assess your redzone play? Do you feel you left some points out there and also why did you go for two early on?
A: We had a plan to just be aggressive on the opening drive and we wanted to go for two. I think we did leave some points on the board and we weren’t as clean as wanted. We ran a little naked-type play where it was a run pass option to Mike Gesicki, who would have had two touchdowns in the game, was wide open with Trace [McSorley] rolling right it’s an easier play, but going left the quarterback has got to get his hips around and he threw it straight into the ground. If he lofts it it’s a wide open touchdown, but we have to be cleaner and score touchdowns. We can’t settle for field goals in the redzone, there’s no doubt about that. I think if you look back at that game we left between 14 and 21 points on the board so again that’s what I mentioned about playing cleaner. That’s what our focus will be on all this week.

Q: Marcus Allen and Amani Oruwariye had big plays when you needed them to change momentum. How would you assess the secondary play with those two guys?
A: I mentioned to you guys all summer that we felt really good about our back seven with our linebackers and defensive backs. I thought Marcus Allen played really well, I thought John Reid played really well and obviously Amani [Oruwariye] made a big play for us. Christian Campbell did some nice things, Malik Golden did some nice things and we feel good about our depth and experience in the secondary. We feel good about our experience at linebacker. It felt good to see Manny Bowen get a bunch of reps and I think as you guys saw, there’s been a lot of talk about linebackers which is why recruiting at this position is really really important. I think you also saw how we were able to go money and star with some of our nickel and dime packages and help with that, which is part of our plan.

Q: Trace’s size, he’s got this admirable competitiveness that shows, do you ever worry about that becoming recklessness sometimes?
A: I think that’s part of his game. He’s got similar size to a lot of NFL quarterbacks and college quarterbacks right now. You look around the country, that’s how the people who are running these offenses play. We’re going to be aggressive in the quarterback position and feel good about Trace and that he’s done all the right things and taking care of his body. That’s how we’re going to play. I think it’s a little different here at Penn State to run this style of offense and how to run a quarterback but that’s how we’re going to play. I think there’s times where when he’s wide open in the field and he knows he’s going to get tackled but we have no problem with sliding and we’ve discussed that. But it’s hard to do that in close quarters sometimes.

Q: Could you maybe give us and update on the status of Evan Schwann and also assess Shareef Miller’s play and really making some standout plays out there.
A: To be honest with you, I don’t even know… He walked off the field on his own, but you never know how those things are going to look the next morning… I was really happy for Shareef. It’s funny though, what I told Shareef after the game is that I’m really happy for him, but he’s actually put himself in a tough position, because he doesn’t practice like that. My point to him is, you played at such a higher level today, that I have much higher expectations for you in practice. If he would understand and embrace that, and practice every day at a much higher level, he could have an unbelievable college career here. I think this is a great learning experience for him. It’s great to see young guys like that go into a game and have such success. He’s a great young player out of the city of Philadelphia which is awesome. But, now has to practice at a much higher level every single day so he can evolve into the type of player he’s capable of being.

Q: How would you qualify Trace McSorley’s performance today, how did you think he did?
A: I haven’t really had a chance to look over the stats here. Just over 50% [completion]. Two touchdowns over 200 yards and 1 sack, which I don’t even think was his sack it was more of a blindside hit from the offensive tackle. I think overall, when you put 30 points on the board and have over 50% completion, we’d like it to be a little bit higher than that, no doubt, but when you can score touchdowns and not turn the ball over? That’s a great place to start. I think he’s got a lot more ability that he showed today. It’s a good starting point but it’s nowhere where I know he wants to be and nowhere where we need him to be, long term.

Q: At what point did you guys start using John Reid as a punt returner or figure out that he could be in the mix? Also, what were your impressions of Miles Sanders making the safety back?
A: We started to work John in, we had four guys that we were working back there. The last week and a half we started to make a move there. We made the decision late this week that we felt confident enough to put him back there. He’s got great ability. People may miss that he’s got great strength and he’s explosive. He always caught the ball but his fundamentals early on weren’t great. We just want to clean those things up. As you know John, he’s the type of guy once you decide to make him the punt returner, he’s going to stay out there after practice on his own with managers and Wombacher [Jordan], one of our punters, and get in a bunch of work. He’s done that and I think he has the chance to be a weapon for us down the road. As for Miles, we weren’t as effective in our kickoff return as I wanted to be today. They were putting some really good hang time on the ball and they weren’t deep kicks so the ball was kind of short. A couple times our wedge wasn’t far enough out for the return and it kind of threw our time off. The distribution between the return and the blocks wasn’t right. We’ve just got to mix that up a little bit more in practice so we can recognize depth and distance and kicks. But I think it was a pretty good plan.

Q: Can you talk about Trace’s deep ball accuracy? He threw a lot of balls up there for the receivers today.
A: I thought, in a perfect world, he could have put a few of those balls out there a little further and let the guys run for it. But I did think he put the ball in position that other guys could adjust to make plays. I would rather the ball be underthrown than overthrown because typically your wide receiver can adjust and find the ball. The DBs typically have a hard time doing that. The issue is, one of his balls was short and he left it inside, you can’t leave it inside. We typically have a blue line on the field at practice which is about 4-5 yards from the sideline, that’s where we want the ball dropped, outside around the blue line.