Sept. 24, 2017
Penn State Football
at Iowa - Head Coach James Franklin
September 23, 2017
James Franklin | Head Coach
Opening Statement
"Obviously the first thing you have to do is give the University of Iowa credit. They had a great plan tonight. Obviously coached extremely well. Very talented, this is a tough venue to play in, first time being here it was electric in here tonight. So first thing you got to do isgive Iowa all the credit in the world. I thought they had a really good plan on defense. They say we're an explosive offense; they weren't going to give up a big play and they played really soft and said we were going to have to take all the underneath routes, and if we were patient enough to do that all the way down the field. So I thought that was a really good plan. Thought our defense played unbelievably well and probably hasn't got enough credit this year for as well as they're playing. In the first half, not only did they hold them statistically down to low numbers, but they just kept giving our offense the ball with great field position. We weren't able to execute on offense and finish drives and geta lot of yards, and we need to get better in between the tackles so we can punch the ball in the end zone. Again, they were playing a soft coverage and made us earn it all the way down the field. I told the guys in the locker room, 'if you look at any really good season, there's always one game where the team has to gut it out and find a way to win, and we were able to do that tonight.' Obviously Trace McSorely, we've seen in for a year and half, is one of the most mentally and physically tough players I've been around, a clutch player. Then Saquon Barkley, I cannot imagine that there's a better player in all of college football. I've been doing this for 23 years and this guy is special, I don't know what his stats were or what he did, but every time he touched the ball, I don't care if it was a 20-yard run or an 8-yard run, it was something special, it really was. The guy is a great leader on the sideline, couldn't be more positive, he's tremendous. We found a way to get a win tonight, obviously Trace just told me he punted the ball at the end of the game there, and that's not who we are and that's not who he is. He got caught up in the moment. The other two things I want to mention, is we didn't have Torrence Brown tonight, a tremendous loss for us tonight, a tremendous young man. And then obviously, at right tackle we played a redshirt freshman, who was starting his first game, in Will Fries, we didn't have Chasz Wright and Andrew Nelson for most of the game. Will Fries went in and battled in his first start on the edge in a tough environment."