UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- James Franklin rehashed Penn State's issues with the four-minute offense, lamented the No. 7 Nittany Lions' lack of a pass rush, recalled his quarterback "running for his life" and mentioned a players-only meeting that was called Sunday.
It's been a pretty busy 72 hours hours since Penn State's one-point heartbreaker at The Horseshoe and all the questions and criticisms that were brought up since then have been heard by the Lions' head coach.
"We played a really, really good football team on the road," Franklin said Tuesday at his weekly news conference. "We should have finished. We did not. But we got to give credit. Some of the challenges that we've had, the things that people are bringing up, we're working on them. We see them just like the media does. We see them just like the fans do. The best teams in the country have issues that they need to work on and get better, and we're one of them."
In a loss Franklin called a "painful lesson" for his team, Penn State's challenge now is trying to fix the flaws that showed against Ohio State and deal with new limitations that could be presented this week after starting defensive end Ryan Buchholz and starting left tackle Ryan Bates were injured in the collapse in Columbus. It's never as good or as bad as it seems, but the Lions' head coach certainly spent plenty of time outlining Penn State's challenges -- he rarely used the word problems -- and how the team rebounds from here will be telling.
Franklin pounded home the team's issues in the run game, not because it can't get going with Heisman Trophy candidate Saquon Barkley back there, but more so because of the negative yardage plays the run game wracked up. Barkley had nine runs that resulted in negative yardage. Getting Trace McSorley more involved as a running threat -- something that when he does when the quarterback is at his best, Franklin said -- is also on its list of to-dos.
"Our issue is the negative-yardage plays," he said. "Whether they make a good call and catch us in a look that we're not expecting or whether it's an RPO, we should have pulled it and threw the ball rather than handed it off, or whether it's not trying to turn every run into an 80-yard run, only getting two yards. We have to get better in that area."
While fan concerns about the negative-yardage plays and RPOs were hot-button issues after the loss, Franklin wasn't exactly willing to sit back and let people proclaim this offense as broken or inept.
"This is the style that we've been playing. This is how we've been doing it. We've had negative-yardage plays for two years," he said. "Can we get better in this area? Yes. We've had one of the most explosive offenses in the country, again. For a little bit of perspective, in the last 18 games, we've been 16-2. In the last 16 games, we were 14-2. We've lost those two games by four points with one of the most explosive offenses in the country."
There's also the problems with the four-minute offense that I outlined already this week, but Franklin added that the Lions probably could've been more aggressive late in the game and could've done things differently to help out their patchwork offensive line in the fourth quarter. Saturday night he said the Lions changed their identity late in the game. After watching the film, did he stand by that statement?
"When you run this style of offense that we run, where we probably are a pass-to-run team, we're going to throw the ball to create running situations," he said. "When you get into four-minute offense, the football book, the game management book from the beginning of time, as you run the ball, you eat the clock up, make them use their timeouts, throw the ball, incomplete, the clock stops, not the scenario you want to be in. The reality is when you run this style of offense, you can't try to become something else in four-minute."
It was a tough lesson for Penn State to learn in such a huge spot, but making sure this season doesn't unravel after the team lost its first game since last January was the reason why Jason Cabinda, McSorley and Barkley called a players-only meeting on Sunday. Franklin said he had nothing to do with the meeting and Cabinda said nobody had their heads hanging after they met.
"There were some things we had to kind of get off our chest," Cabinda said. "Making sure the mentality of the team was the same, we were still taking the same approach. Knowing there's a ton still left for -- a ton of football left, a lot still left to be accomplished. Kind of just reiterating those things really."
Franklin and the coaching staff also reiterated to the defense on Sunday that the lack of pass rush against J.T. Barrett is something that has to change. The cornerbacks were asked to hold up in coverage for far too long against elite explosive athletes and Franklin said Shaka Toney, the defensive end who was thrust into a much bigger role after Buchholz went down, "probably played too many plays," Franklin said.
Toney is a situational defensive end whose speed is his best asset and while he played more snaps than Shane Simmons and freshman Yetur Gross-Matos, something has to give should Buchholz miss extended time.
"Some of those injuries are starting to add up for us a little bit at certain positions," Franklin said. The Lions of course already lost starting defensive end Torrence Brown for the season.
QUICK HITS
• In many ways this might've been Franklin's most insightful news conference so far this season. He was honest about the team's problems and didn't hold back talking about them. In fact, he spent more time talking about what went wrong than he did about the upcoming game. That's rare for him. One of the areas where Penn State lost to Ohio State was with explosive plays, the first time all season the Lions lost that key statistic.
"We need to be more explosive," Franklin said. "That game we were not explosive. We didn't have the big plays we had in the past that, as you guys know, over the last two years, that's been kind of our eraser for some of our issues."
• The negative-yardage plays got a lot of play in the media room as well, with Franklin reiterating that it's as much about Penn State limiting problems than making it worse.
"We just have to continue to be creative and be willing to use Saquon as many different ways as we possibly can. Like I mentioned, I think the biggest issue is not the production that Saquon is having, it's taking the negative-yardage plays away. It's not handing the ball off in a situation where we're going to get a tackle-for-loss," he said. "Don't get me wrong, sometimes they're going to call the right defensive call at the right time, and sometimes we make the right call. That happens. That's part of football. But I do think if we can eliminate and cut in half some of those negative-yardage plays, that will be very helpful."