News and Notes From Penn State’s Week Four Press Conference

It’s Tuesday!

Well, it was Tuesday. And that means James Franklin’s weekly press conference with all the post-Auburn, pre-Villanova humdrum.

So, without further ado;

• Franklin says that the emotion he showed after the Auburn win was due in large part to feeling like Penn State fought through what he referred to as “more than Auburn.”
• Mentioned that John Lovett’s absence was not necessarily a disciplinary suspension and that he was unsure how that got to the TV broadcast.
• Feels PSU can be better at situational awareness on offense and defense, particularly on third down.
• Needs Penn State to wrap and tackle more against better ball carriers to both bring them to the ground and avoid targeting.
• Penn State needs to capitalize on all opportunities to create turnovers because those are “game-changing plays that could be season-changing plays.”
• PSU has 1,500 tickets left against Villanova. Franklin wants to start a sell-out streak at Penn State.
• Franklin has known Villanova head coach Mark Ferrante for a long period of time.
• Insert long list of FCS over FBS upsets
• Points out Brisker, Brooks as standouts as well as Mustipher, Luketa and Ebiketie.
• Franklin reiterates that he wants this season compared to the whole of his PSU tenure rather than just last year.
• Adds that Tangelo wanted to come to PSU out of high school which helped the transfer process.
• Looping back around to Lovett, Franklin reeeaaallly not happy with ABC saying he was suspended. Either it was untrue, or someone let slip something that they should not have.
• Franklin says that Jy’Ayir Brown has much more confidence this year and that he hopes he is in a similar spot to Brisker next season.
• Tyler Warren was someone that people in the program have felt will be a difference maker and that he’s just been struck behind very talented players at tight end.
• Franklin jokes that he’s grown on Twitter, doesn’t have to block people “when muting gets the job done.”
• This is the Sean Clifford that Franklin says he always knew and anticipated.
• Lastly, Franklin says he’s done some homework on some of the, err, mishaps among the refs on Saturday.
• Says first grounding call on Clifford was not how he’d ever seen the rule applied in the past and that Clifford’s pass was the result of miscommunication on an option route.
• On the Mustipher fake punt, he felt there should have been a flag for Auburn covering the center in their defensive alignment.
• On the Nix intentional grounding no call, he felt that Nix was still within the pocket.
• On Brandon Smith’s late hit, he felt Smith was trying to slow up and avoid the hit.