James Franklin addresses Penn State's wide receiver situation

Going into the offseason, there are some questions about the wide receiver position at Penn State. It’s a unit that underperformed in 2023 and now faces questions about players leaving and head coach James Franklin potentially adding new players through the transfer portal.

However, Franklin emphasized that there’s not a lot of ambiguity about the position group within the program.

“To be honest with you, there’s really not a whole lot of ambiguity within the program,” James Franklin said. “Just because things haven’t been announced to you guys doesn’t mean there’s ambiguity. I think sometimes there’s a plan that the player has on when they want to make their announcements.  Sometimes, God forbid, there doesn’t need to be an announcement. Like, ‘I’m coming back,’ and why does that need to be announced? That should be the expectation.”

James Franklin is referring to KeAndre Lambert-Smith, who was brought up in the initial question about ambiguity at the position because he hadn’t announced a return to the program yet.
 
“So, there’s less ambiguity in between the program than, maybe, you guys feel, and to be honest with you, maybe that’s part of your rationale to ask over and over again. But sometimes that’s the only reason the players make announcements is because they don’t want to get asked the question anymore. It’s kind of a fine line between those two things,” Franklin said.

“But I think we have a pretty good idea. We talk about, there really should be no surprises, that we hope over their time in the recruiting process, and really the time they’ve been on campus, that they’ve developed a relationship with their position coach as well as the head coach that they can come in and have an honest conversation, that we can be a part of the process with them because we’re going to tell them the truth.”

Penn State has lost one receiver, Cristian Driver, to the transfer portal. As of now, the Nittany Lions haven’t added any transfers at the position. However, there are three wide receivers currently committed to sign with Penn State in its 2024 class.

“Again, it doesn’t always work for us because we don’t tell people what they want to hear. We lost a guy a few years back because he wanted to be promised the starting job, and I thought he was going to be the starter. But I wouldn’t make a promise,” Franklin said. 

“Again, we try to be transparent. I want to win as many games as possible. We have very, very high expectations and goals here, but I am not going to change my values and morals and treat people the way; in a different way than I would want to be treated, and I’m not going to treat the players different than I would treat my own children. That’s been good to us. Although I look awful, I try to live my life in a way professionally, as well as personally, that I can put my head on the pillow at the end of the night and try to get a few hours of sleep.”

James Franklin shares how much Andy Kotelnicki’s success excites him

Penn State will have a new offensive coordinator in Andy Kotelnicki moving forward. This is a hire that James Franklin is excited about moving forward.

“A couple of things, when I say that, he had been with the same head coach for 11 years. Ton of respect for him, friend of his, friend of mine. So, when I talk about tough to leave, that’s kind of what I’m talking about. Tremendous amount of stability, and obviously to your point, that’s what excited. You look at the head coach and the offensive coordinator, there hadn’t really been that type of success and productivity in a place like Buffalo. They go to Kansas, there really hadn’t been that type of success and productivity at a place like Kansas before. So, that was a big reason for me being attracted to him in the first place and then also coming up under a guy that I have a ton of respect for within the profession,” Franklin said.

“But, yeah, I think that’s really kind of what got this ball rolling is what you described with the success and the points and the yardage and game control that they were able to have at Kansas and was a big part of their success.”