Yep, it sucks for the team and for Franklin that our three starting linebackers are out, but life isn't always fair, and fans and the talking heads don't always know and understand all of the issues.
Awesome picture BTW.
Franklin has had to endure issues that no other program has had to overcome.
Which makes it IMPOSSIBLE to accurately assess what his real coaching skill is. He has many "positive intangibles" in his overall personality and this gives him a very high value for the program , so I think he needs to be given enough time to show what he really can do for the program. Major issue, as I see it, is the continuing Media Negativity Feast on Penn State which adds additional recruiting/image issues that Franklin has to address.
That being said, to this date, Franklin's coaching has been unfortunately well below average, but, as I said before, our program has had to endure unprecedented issues manufactured by the NCAA and our own BOT.
Even with the currently less than stellar performance, I believe that Franklin COULD be the CEO type Coach that we need. Problem is...are his assistant coaches good enough to allow him to manage the program and leave the game management to the other coaches?
As an example of having the right STAFF in place, if you check, Joe's early year successes were directly tied to George Welsh being on the coaching staff. Check the success we had against teams rated ABOVE us when Welsh was on staff and then see what happened after he went to Virginia. Franklin needs this kind of spark plug coaching to provide superior scheming & game-day coaching. Then he needs to be smart enough to leave the staff alone and just listen. Do we have that now??? I don't know yet.
Irony Point.....Larry Johnson appears to be the missing link in tOSU's defense. Always had the athletes, but we could occasionally count on the defense making mistakes in how they performed. No longer! Sad that he still is not with us. I believe our defense would be much stronger if he was! THANKS BOT!
