Spring check-ins: Could Penn State be the next Midwestern power?

Is James Franklin up for building a smash mouth, defensively dominant team that matches 2023 Michigan or 2024 Notre Dame?

Here at America’s War Game I try to be upfront with biases and re-examine them from time to time to make sure I’m not missing something about the game we all love.

One of my biases is that James Franklin is a high floor, low ceiling coach who’s more or less incapable of “winning the big one” and coming out ahead against a team with equal or greater talent. He’s known for being meddlesome on offense and I suspect he has a broad philosophy that’s oriented around getting the ball to his best players in key moments, to the point where they create some clever and wonky formations but also to the point where they get predictable in big moments.

Also, I’ve long criticized his program for failing to emphasize the most important weapon in college football, the deep threat receiver. The exception was the brief window in which they had Chris Godwin, which happens to coincide with Franklin’s sole Big 10 Championship.

BUT, I’ve noticed that each of the last two seasons has included a Midwest team that was big and strong enough at running the ball and playing defense to advance to the National Championship without much of a deep threat passing game or great outside receiver. I don’t think any of the usual suspects (Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame) quite fit the bill for that role this year so if someone does fill it (and there’s no law saying someone has to) maybe it’d be Penn State.

So let’s try and investigate Penn State from that paradigm rather than writing them off as just another typical Franklin squad.