The 2025 season was going to be the ultimate referendum on Franklin. The answer is clear, much earlier than expected: He failed.
www.nytimes.com
James Franklin’s disaster of a 2025 season can’t be overstated or overcome
It’s always been so important to put James Franklin in the proper context. Big game failures, yes. Coming up short of the highest heights, yes. Consistent winning and excellent program building? Also yes.
Here’s some context on James Franklin after Saturday’s 22-21 home loss to Northwestern, which ends any chance of this Penn State team reaching the College Football Playoff. He is the first coach to lose consecutive games when favored by 20 points or more — that’s ever, in the history of football and point spreads, according to Fox Sports; only two teams, 1996 Nebraska and 1997 Texas Tech, have done that in the same season; and Penn State now has a great chance to be the first preseason top-two team to finish a season unranked since Lane Kiffin’s USC of 2012. You have to go back to Ron Powlus and Notre Dame of 1994 to find the next one.
The 2025 season was going to be the ultimate referendum on Franklin, the 12th-year coach who won two Playoff games last season to reach the semifinals. The answer is clear, much earlier than expected: He failed, in spectacular and unprecedented fashion, and he’s effectively done at Penn State. How and when, exactly, that divorce occurs is immaterial; there’s no coming back from this, and Penn State and Franklin both need something new.
“I’d do anything to take that hurt away from them,” Franklin said about his players after the loss, suggesting they may have been adversely affected this season by all the noise around him. “But like I told them, we’ve got to stick together. We’ve got to tune out all the noise and we’ve got to get to work. That’s the only answer, get to work. We’ve had some adversity in the past — not like this, but we’re going to get to work.”
That’s fine, but when you were a popular pick to win a national championship, no results from that work will suffice, not after this loss and last week’s unthinkable 42-37 flop at UCLA (yes, UCLA continued its stunning interim-coach turnaround with a 38-13 win at Michigan State on Saturday, but Michigan State has a strong case as the worst team in the Big Ten). This historic two-game parlay of pungency followed up a classic, a double-overtime loss to Oregon, back when Franklin’s inability to beat high-ranking opponents was his biggest problem.
Now he and his fragile team can’t beat anyone, and it’s not getting better with quarterback Drew Allar out for the season after suffering a season-ending leg injury Saturday. Penn State’s next three weeks? At Iowa, at Ohio State, Indiana at home. From national championship hopes to scrapping for an invite to the Motor City Bowl (it’s called the GameAbove Sports Bowl now, but you get the idea) in a matter of six weeks of football.
This is truly a remarkable achievement. It’s also Penn State’s first three-game losing streak since 2021, right before Franklin got a 10-year contract.
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Just sayin': Quite an accomplishment......
