James Franklin addresses Penn State's second half offensive struggles in bowl loss

Penn State was locked in a close game with Ole Miss at halftime of the Peach Bowl, but the Nittany Lions offense didn’t do much of anything in the second half, as the Rebels pulled away for a 38-25 win.

The Rebels outscored Penn State 18-8 in the final two quarters, and Penn State didn’t get on the board after halftime until there was 4:14 left in the game and the contest was out of reach.

Afterwards, Penn State head coach James Franklin addressed what went wrong for his offense in the second half against Ole Miss.

“Obviously, I think they made some adjustments, but overall we weren’t able to stay on schedule,” James Franklin said. “You don’t want to be in third and long situations. So whether it was a drop or an incomplete or whether it was a rush of no gain, you get off schedule against a good team with that type of defensive line.”

Penn State did a nice job in the run game, averaging 6 yards per carry, and the Nittany Lions also had 10 tackles for loss, compared to five for Ole Miss.

But the Rebels’ defensive front was able to be disruptive in other ways.

“I think their length at the defensive tackle, they were able to bat down a few balls, which those may not be sexy plays, but they’re significant,” Franklin said. “That was probably the biggest thing. We weren’t able to stay on schedule on third down.”

James Franklin shares challenges Ole Miss’ tempo created

While the Penn State offense struggled in the second half, the Nittany Lions defense also had its share of issues.

If there was one aspect to this year’s Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl that seemed to have an outsized impact on the outcome it was the tempo that Ole Miss ran its offense at.

The Rebels were thwarted early on by the Nittany Lions but slowly got into a rhythm as the game went on.

“So the tempo is challenging early on in the game, where we were able to get negative plays, takes them out of their rhythm,” Penn State coach James Franklin said. “But obviously when they’re able to play with tempo and have positive plays and build on it, it is difficult to stop.”

Ole Miss had made it a point going into the game to run a lot of tempo, because its coaches felt like Penn State would be unprepared for that based on what they’d seen in the regular season.

Head coach Lane Kiffin was blunt about pushing the tempo vs. Penn State in the Peach Bowl.

“Just in studying and game planning, didn’t really feel in that conference they had played much tempo,” Kiffin said. “Obviously that’s part of what we do, and we were able to — that only works when you make first downs.

“So we made some plays, and we were able to get into some tempo situations where they weren’t aligned, and took advantage of that.”