James Franklin is in his 11th season as Penn State’s head football coach, and every one of them seems to unfold in similar fashion.
Early on the Lions play The Teams They Will Beat – Bowling Green and Kent State this season, Delaware, Massachusetts, Ball State, Idaho and Appalachian State in others. Mere appetizers, of course.
Sprinkled in will be The Teams They Should Beat – West Virginia, Illinois and UCLA this year, and other middling fare in previous campaigns, like Maryland and Purdue. (These are not to be confused with The Teams They Surprisingly Don’t Beat, like Michigan State in ‘17, ‘18 and ‘21, Iowa in ‘20 and ‘21, Indiana in ‘20 or Minnesota in ‘19.)
Then there are The Teams They Might Not Beat. This year they worked overtime to topple USC on the road, and conquered Wisconsin despite seeing starting quarterback Drew Allar knocked from the game with a leg injury.
All of which sets the stage for now. For The Team They Almost Never Beat. That’s Ohio State, of course, this Saturday at noon at the Beave.
As in, No. 3 (PSU) vs. No. 4 (OSU).
As in, the 7-0 Nittany Lions against the 6-1 Buckeyes, whose lone loss was at No. 1 Oregon.
Whoa, Nellie.
The Lions are 1-9 against Ohio State under Franklin, with the only victory coming by a 24-21 score in 2016, on a fourth-quarter field-goal block by Marcus Allen, which resulted in a 60-yard touchdown return by Grant Haley. (And lest we forget, Haley, one of the fastest Nits that season, barely outran the Buckeyes’ Aussie punter, Cameron Johnston.)
That would lead, in time, to PSU’s only Big Ten championship under Franklin.
Penn State came close against Ohio State the next two years, losing by a point each time. But the sad reality is that the Lions have dropped seven straight to Ohio State, and that they have been outscored by an average of 10 points per game (i.e., 33-23) in their nine losses to the Buckeyes on Franklin’s watch.
That failing, combined with a 3-7 mark against Michigan (absent from this year’s schedule), has left Franklin with a double-whammy. Not only is he viewed as the guy who cannot win The Big One; he is seen as an ace recruiter who fails to meet the moment on game day.
I would not be so bold to dispute either designation. He’s a big boy, in the third year of a big-boy contract (10 years, $75 million). He knows the score, knows he has to break through the glass ceiling Ohio State represents in order to assuage the masses and establish himself as a championship-level coach.
Certainly it feels like Penn State is due. Certainly it doesn’t feel like Ohio State ought to be able to bully the Nits forever. Yes, the Buckeyes appear to be the better team this year, just as they have been over the last several. But it’s not like the Lions don’t have the resources to stand toe to toe with OSU, not like they’re failing to attract primo talent.
It is curious, though, that the Lions fall well short of the Buckeyes at certain positions, notably wide receiver. For all the recruiting prowess shown by Franklin and his staff over the years, PSU has no obvious go-to guy on the flanks for the second straight season. Yes, Harrison Wallace III and Julian Fleming (an Ohio State expat, interestingly) have had their moments. But the biggest receiving threat has been tight end Tyler Warren, he of the 17 receptions against USC and the 47 catches overall.
Meantime, Ohio State has produced four wideouts that have gone in the first round of the last three NFL drafts – Chris Olave (to New Orleans in 2022), Garrett Wilson (to the Jets in ‘22), Jaxon Smith-Njigba (to Seattle in ‘23) and Marvin Harrison Jr. (to Arizona this year). This season Emeka Egbuka has 43 catches and freshman Jeremiah Smith 35, while working with quarterback Will Howard, a graduate transfer from Kansas State. All told Howard has clicked on 74 percent of his passes, 17 of them for touchdowns, with four interceptions.
Penn State’s top outside guys are Wallace with 22 catches, Liam Clifford with 14 and Omari Evans with 11. Meaning that the Lions are likely going to have a heckuva time stretching the field Saturday, whether Allar plays or not (and Franklin, true to form, wasn’t saying in his weekly conference call with reporters Monday).
That being the case, won’t it be that much harder for PSU to unleash its two exceptional backs, Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen? Won’t it be that much easier for the Buckeyes to take away the underneath stuff to Warren?
Certainly this could be something of an oversimplification. Certainly Andy Kotelnicki, the Lions’ first-year offensive coordinator, has shown himself to be adept at getting the most out of the guys available to him. But it underscores the fact that where PSU is concerned, nothing comes easy against Ohio State – that nothing ever seems to come easy.
(Another possible issue for the Lions: Howard, a Downingtown native, grew up a Penn State fan but according to 247 Sports was not offered a scholarship by the Nits out of high school. Asked by reporters for his view of this week’s game after last Saturday’s victory over Nebraska, he said he was “stoked” and added, “They didn’t think I was good enough. I guess we’ll see next week if I was.”)
Long story short, Penn State is at a familiar fork in the road. Forging a new path will involve hacking its way through the brambles and avoiding the potholes. Goodness knows there are always plenty to navigate.