Penn State head coach James Franklin press conference: Minnesota
The Penn State Nittany Lions have one final road game in the 2024 season. This weekend, the team heads out to Minnesota to play the Golden Gophers in a matchup of teams in the top half of the Big Ten. Penn State is ranked fourth in the standings, while Minnesota fell to seventh after a loss to Rutgers on Nov. 9. Minnesota enters the game coming off its bye week. Head coach James Franklin kicked off game week in traditional fashion with his weekly Monday press conference. Check out his full comments on the Blue White Illustrated YouTube Channel, or embedded below.
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Penn State vs. Minnesota press conference
Minnesota is in the middle of the Big Ten standings, but deploys a strong defense with a secondary that has gotten their hands on the ball quite often. While Penn State is the better defense overall, they lack the same ability to get the football. Franklin explained the schematic differences that make that happen.
“They’re a zone team, and when you’re playing zone defense, the argument there is, you have the ability to have your eyes on the quarterback, which typically can lead to being in a better position for interceptions. Playing man coverage, you’re going to challenge more routes, but then you have to transition from eyes on the guy you’re covering to losing eyes on him and trying to find the ball where in zone coverages. More times than not, your eyes are on the quarterback the whole time. So I think that’s probably one of the big differences,” Franklin said.
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More game week coverage
Join Blue White Illustrated for another exciting of pregame coverage. The BWI Live show airs Tuesday through Thursday at 10 a.m. on YouTube for a daily 60-minute football conversation. We’ll also have practice updates from Wednesday night’s practice and game-day coverage on Saturday!
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The Penn State Football Tailgate Show airs at 12:30 on Saturday before the 3:30 kickoff in Minnesota. We bring you 90 minutes of pregame analysis and a breakdown of the game leading into the official pregame show and radio call of the game on 99.5 The Bus.
