Here's the quotes from most of Franklin's presser
Franklin: I want to give Ohio State credit. Good football team. I think Barrett makes a difference for them, there’s no doubt about that. I think Braxton Miller is a special athlete with the ball in his hands. And then obviously their tailback. I thought they played well up front as well. We’re having major issues. We’ve had major issues for two years with punting the ball. The way we need to play right now, which is play great on defense and find ways to grind it out on offense and play field position. We haven’t been able to do that for two years. If we need to have open try outs, we’re going to have to find a way to solve that problem. That's been a major issue for us. We had real opportunities. I think early in the game. There was a touchdown called back for a penalty. I think it was a significant play in the game at that point. We had a huge dropped ball down in the low red zone. We had some opportunities early in the game, our defense was playing well and the offense was moving the ball and those things, we weren't able to capitalize on it. If you don't capitalize on the road against the No. 1 team in the country, you're going to have some problems. We got the same guys that keep stepping up. Carl Nassib, Anthony Zettel, Garrett Sickels had a big game, career high eight tackles, Barkley with 193 rushing yards. So we got some work to do. Give those guys some credit. Good football team.
Q: Why was Christian Hackenberg in at the end of the game and did you consider taking him out?
Franklin: He got banged up. I asked the doctors if he was good to go, they said he was good to go, so we're going to continue... no different than late in the game they had Bosa and their starting defense in there. We're still playing football to win, to try to find a way to be successful.
Did you consider attempting a field goal on the fourth-and-8?
Franklin: I think it was a 48-yard field goal. One of the issues that we had, it showed up late, is we're getting push inside. They triple-teamed our right guard, Chasz, and knocked him back. Unless you're going to be really stout, Joe has a tendency on the long field goals, he can bang them but they come out with a low trajectory. That was the situation right there. We felt like we also had some opportunities from a field position standpoint we didn't take advantage of. There was one time where I was hoping that we'd punt them deep and didn't do that. So obviously we're going to have to factor all those things into how we're handling normal situational football, how you would normally manage a game, those things are affected by that.
What did you think of Saquon Barkley's performance?
Franklin: I was hopeful that he was going to be able to play last week. Obviously he played well this week. We want to continue building on that. One of the things that was challenging was, he's running the ball and we're moving the ball and having some success and we have a negative yardage play. Now you're in a long yardage situation, an obvious passing situation, which is everything you want to stay out of with where we're at right now, especially being on the road. We had the issues with the crowd noise and then the snap got snapped at the wrong time and hits Brandon on the fake sweep. Those things all contributed to long yardage situations and made them a real challenge.
What was the impact of Ohio State pinning you deep?
Franklin:I think that's significant, the fact that their punter was able to be really aggressive and get the ball off. Not only was he able to swing field position a few times, but he was also able to sky punt us and back us down there deep a bunch of time. The ball I think one time rolled down to the two or three yard line, and numerous times we caught the ball at the six. And then we go to punt it and punt it for, what was the average, it wasn't very good. So that field position kept catching up with us.
What happened on fourth-and-2 sack?
Franklin: Barkley was the fourth progression on the back side. So those things, unless you kind of understand the quarterback progression, we went for the flat to a stick route. Again, we had opinions, we thought we had a chance at the stick route. It didn't happen. They kept getting push and getting pressure. For Christian, to think we're going to get back to the fourth progression on a three step drop is probably not going to happen.
Do you have to say anything to Mike Gesicki?
Franklin: He's got a chance to be a really good player. We believe in him. He's got an opportunity to make plays that he will make. We're going to keep going to him and keep giving him opportunities. He's made those plays in practice and he's made those in games. But he needs to do it consistently, no different than any other guy.
