Penn State Football: James Franklin costs the Nittany Lions again

Another year and the same result. James Franklin rips a loss from the jaws of victory. Will he ever learn for Penn State football’s sake?

For as bad as Penn State played for long stretches of their game Saturday afternoon against Indiana, the Nittany Lions found themselves with a 21-20 lead late in the game. After two consecutive sacks and two incomplete passes, Penn State got the ball back on the Indiana 15 yard line with 1:42 left and the Hoosiers with only one timeout.

The Lions could have decided to take three consecutive kneels and then kill more clock with a fourth down play. Indiana would have had the ball back with 20 seconds or so left to go. Instead running back Devyn Ford took the handoff and the seas parted as the Hoosiers were going to let him score. Ford looked confused as he was looking around but ended up going into the end zone.

So it was a bad mental error by Ford. The coaches should have discussed it beforehand and maybe they did. Instead of making up for it though and trying a two-point conversion to go up two scores, the Lions kick the extra point. We all know what happened afterwards. Indiana scores to force overtime. The refs blew the call on Michael Penix’s two-point conversion in overtime, but this loss was not on the refs.

The blame falls squarely on James Franklin.

For several seasons now under Franklin, Penn State has fallen short when they have had leads in games. Franklin’s mismanagement of crucial situations is mind numbing. In fact this humble writer wrote about this same topic two seasons ago. Two years later we are, no pun intended, still talking about the Nittany Lions not being able to close out games.

Franklin has discussed on several occasions taking the next steps to get the program to the elite level. Well elite coaches like Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney do not make coaching errors like this repeatedly in critical situations.

Penn State now is staring at an 0-2 start with Ohio State visiting State College next Saturday night. It is 2020 and of course anything can happen, but the Indiana game certainly does not inspire much confidence the Lions can upset the Buckeyes.

As a fan and an alum of the school, I will always bleed blue and white. But after several times forgiving Franklin for his shortfalls, the baffling decisions in the Indiana game may have been the last straw.

Franklin is a great recruiter and ambassador for the program. However he is a bad in game coach, especially at crucial parts of the game. Under Franklin, Penn State has enjoyed success but it just feels this team will never reach its true goals of getting to the College Football Playoff and winning a national championship as long as he is coach.