James Franklin acknowledges poor playcall on 4th down

James Franklin acknowledged the poor playcall his team made on 4th-and-5 with the game on the line Saturday night.

Penn State had a 4th-and-5 at Ohio State’s 43 with just over a minute left in the game and ran an inside draw that got stuffed for a loss. They turned the ball over on downs and lost by a point, 27-26.

Penn State had called two timeouts prior to the play to set things up and appeared to outsmart themselves by giving the ball to a running back who had just 43 yards in the game instead of quarterback Trace McSorley, who had 461 combined yards passing and rushing.

James Franklin, on his feelings after the unsuccessful fourth-down conversion: "Obviously, we should've called something different there."

He's still on his opening statement. No questions taken yet.

— Josh Moyer (@ByJoshMoyer) September 30, 2018

“Obviously we should have called something different there,” Franklin said after the game.

Gee, ya think?

That was a horrific call no matter how you look at it, and it’s one that may have cost the Nittany Lions a shot at the College Football Playoff. Franklin was rightly bashed on Twitter over the call.

The Penn State head coach seems to think the loss will bring out the best in Penn State moving forward.

Franklin says Penn State is a great program and it lost to an elite program.

"We're going to find a way to take the next step as a program because we've been knocking on it long enough." …

"I give you my word. … We're going to find a way to take the next step."

— Josh Moyer (@ByJoshMoyer) September 30, 2018

Getting over that loss may be harder than Franklin thinks.