Franklin wants players, staff to 'work smarter' to top last year's success

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Even after coming off a Big Ten title and a trip to the Rose Bowl, James Franklin wasn’t immune to a few fan suggestions during last week’s trip across the state for the coaches caravan.

“My two best stories I think I told you guys when I was actually using the restroom [the first year] and the guy tapped me on the shoulder for an autograph,” Franklin said last week. “This year, while I was using the restroom somebody had recommended us running the zone read out of the Power I with both Saquon [Barkley] and Miles [Sanders] on the field at the same time. That was an interesting conversation.

“I understood what he was trying to say, which was basically get Miles and Saquon on the field at the same time, but where we kind of got into an interesting conversation is how do you do that out of the Power I?”

While there will be many tweaks made on both sides of the ball behind closed doors during the summer months, the one constant will be what Franklin demands of himself, his assistant coaches, coordinators and players. That standard — and by all accounts it’s a pretty high one — won’t change despite Penn State being in the spotlight as a national title contender. A preseason top-10 team with a crop of players who are expected to dot the preseason watch lists, including the most important individual award list of them all, just means last year’s work has to be exceeded.



With heightened outside expectations come more demands from the program’s head coach, something Franklin has always strived for while climbing through the coaching ranks. Defensive coordinator Brent Pry said each year he’s worked under Franklin the head coach has raised the bar for the staff too, holding daily conversations about what the program can do better, or how the staff can be more efficient with their time.

“Nobody outworks him to be honest,” Pry said following the conclusion of spring practice. “We don’t step off the gas. It seems like the Big Ten championship was a couple of years ago to be honest. From recruiting to developing some spots that we need to fill for next fall there’s not time to look back. It’s full speed ahead.”

Franklin said during his first year at Penn State that his greatest strength was his passion and drive and that those two traits were also his greatest weaknesses. In college and in professional sports there’s rarely time to enjoy the ride or bask in the glory of an accomplishment because it’s on to the next goal. Last year’s achievements were put to rest when the team picked up their Big Ten championship rings after the spring game, but even then Franklin had already long pushed last year’s success to the back of his mind.

“I just think that’s kind of who I am," he said. "We’ve had a discussion about that as a staff. The staff doesn’t feel like I or we enjoy the commitments and the wins as much as we should and they’re right. But, I also know as soon as you achieve that you better get to work on the next goal.”

And that work on the next goal started full speed ahead during winter workouts where the players’ usual one lap around the field was upped by the head coach to two. Franklin’s intention was to hammer home the message that what the Lions did last year both on the field and in the offseason won’t be enough to get them back to or over last year’s hump.

The problem?

The lap isn’t a warmup, but rather an all-out sprint. If players want to warm up they need to arrive before the first lap and do so on their own, Franklin said. The linemen, with hands on their hips afterward, weren’t exactly fans of the two-lap sprint.

“It was ridiculous,” Franklin recalled with a laugh. “You have 300-pound guys trying to run a lap and it’s essentially a sprint so they convinced me that we probably need to cut that back so we cut it back.”

After spring ball Franklin turned the team over to the captains and strength coach Dwight Galt, who will put the players through plenty of sprints, sand pits and stadium runs in the coming months. Galt, who worked with Franklin for eight years at Maryland and then with him at Vanderbilt before joining him at Penn State, knows better than anyone else what buttons to push with the players to get them physically prepared for the season. Galt also has last year's road map to know what tweaks certain players need to make this year.

Galt worked with tight end Mike Gesicki in the winter and spring to get him to up his weight so he can maintain his offseason gains when the season starts. That work will be critical to continue this summer. He also worked with Saquon Barkley to get him even faster, something that's difficult to do with a player who runs a 40-yard dash in the 4.3s.

While the players do their part, the coaching staff continues working to add to a 2018 recruiting class that’s ranked No. 2 in the nation. The staff kicks off summer prospect camps June 2 in Macon, Ga., with a satellite camp stop. They have eight camps scheduled from June 2-June 17, a mix of satellite camp stops in Georgia, Tennessee, Illinois and Virginia, plus four camps in State College.

It’s a rigorous schedule and as always it picks up ArtsFest weekend in July with the Lasch Bash recruiting event, a big-time gathering for 2018 pledges and high-priority prospects. At that point the focus then shifts back to the current team and gives the staff a chance to see if all of their preparation and that of the players will be a difference maker once the season begins.

“For us to think that we can prepare and put in the same amount of time and commitment that we did last year and get the same exact results or better this year it’s probably not likely,” Franklin said.

“What I don’t want people to think is that it means going from working 18 hours a day to working 21 hours a day. That’s not what I mean,” he continued. “It’s working smarter, it’s working more efficient, it’s being more creative, it’s thinking outside the box, it’s approaching things from maybe a different angle or a different perspective because of the experiences that we had last year, because of the wisdom that we gained from those types of things.”