Patrick Kraft shares his role in Penn State finding a new defensive coordinator

Penn State athletic director Patrick Kraft recently shared the role he plays in helping the head coach James Franklin and the football team hire assistant coaches.

This comes shortly after defensive coordinator Manny Diaz left the program to become the head coach at Duke. With that move, one of the most prestigious defensive coordinator roles in college football is now open ahead of the Peach Bowl.

“Probably to James’ chagrin, I played football,” Patrick Kraft said. “So, I have a lot of thoughts and none of them are relevant or worthy of a text message here and there.”

Kraft was joking, but he quickly got more serious about how the process goes.

“Look, I believe we’ve got the best football coach in the country. I see a lot of our head coaches up there, I let our coaches make decisions on the assistant coaches. I think we’ve got the best head coaches, a lot of them I’m looking at, in the country. They gotta do their job, and that’s what their job is.”

While it is the coaches’ jobs, be it James Franklin in football or any other coach in another sport, to hire assistants, Patrick Kraft did emphasize that he wants to support his coaches.

“I’m here to support them. I’m here to do whatever I can. I can be a sounding board for them. But I’m here to just support in any way I can. And I know everyone thinks that’s financially related. It’s not. But I also want to make sure I challenge them to think big and think in a different way than what was thought of in the past. I would like to think I’m a person they can lean on to say, what do you think here? Because sometimes it’s always better to have outside eyes looking at it,” Kraft said.

“So, I think that’s how it works but we’re partners, all of us, in this. That’s kind of how it works. That’s the way I believe it should work. They make the decisions and they do what’s right for their program. They know their programs. James knows this program better than anybody. I have a good feeling for what I see, but that’s just a small part of it.”

James Franklin shares how Penn State will handle defensive coordinator spot in bowl game

Ahead of the Peach Bowl, Penn State will need a plan for the defensive coordinator spot. That, as head coach James Franklin explained, will look a lot like the way the offensive coordinator position looked this season.

“Obviously, a tremendous opportunity and we’re very, very happy for Manny Diaz and his family. Did a great job for us, has accepted the head coaching position at Duke. So, we will handle it internally very similar to how we’ve handled it on offense for the last few games of the season,” Franklin said.

“And, obviously, trying to also balance that while also interviewing and trying to decide what we’re going to do moving forward with our defensive coordinator position, whether it’s an internal candidate or an external candidate. We’re working through that right now, but we’ll handle it like we have on offense to last the last few games of the season, and I’ll get into more specifics as we get together again.”