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Penn State head coach James Franklin Winter press conference

Headshot 5x7 reduced qualityby:Thomas Frank Carr•about 10 hours•

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The Penn State football team turned the page on the 2024 season and officially began 2025 on Tuesday with James Franklin’s winter press conference. Each February, the team meets with the media and officially introduces the freshman class from the previous year after the moratorium on media interaction is lifted in their first year.

Franklin spoke for roughly 40 minutes as he typically does, and you can hear that on the Blue-White Illustrated YouTube Channel or here on the site. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube Channel so you don’t miss any off-season press conferences or comments from Franklin, his staff, and the program.

Franklin discusses transition of staff this winter

The timeline for Penn State’s staff churn has no set calendar appointment, but the longer the team pushes into the playoffs, the further it gets into the next offseason. Shortly after the team’s loss to Notre Dame, Franklin’s top deputy, defensive coordinator Tom Allen, left for Clemson. The following search lasted for roughly two weeks before Jim Knowles was officially announced as the next leader of the defense. Now, JaJuan Seier has taken a job with the Fighting Irish, and the team is looking for a new running backs coach.

Franklin hasn’t spoken since the end of the season and addressed various topics around those events on Tuesday.

“Yeah, I think that’s one of the things that we’re going to have a lot of conversations with about as a staff as well. The NFL hiring process has really changed schools like Penn State, you know, because what happens is you either lose a coach to the NFL very late in the process and now you have to go hire someone who’s probably already signed a contract and that that can become costly in terms of buyouts and things like that, because it’s so late in the process, all the best guys are typically tied up at that point,” Franklin said when discussing the running backs job.

Freshmen availability

Penn State finished the season 13-3 with losses to Ohio State, Oregon, and Notre Dame. After the season, the team retained most of its draft-eligible talent that could have chosen to leave for the next level, including starting quarterback Drew Allar. That fact has pushed the team to the top of the way-too-early predictions for 2025, making them an early favorite to win the championship next season.

However, there are still holes across the roster, with the transfer portal failing to yield everything the Nittany Lions need to reload for the upcoming season. It stands to reason that several of the team’s second-year players will need to step into roles for the upcoming season to elevate the team into the top echelon of college football. Hear from those players this week at Blue White Illustrated. Our reporters were out in force during winter media day to talk with the likes of Cooper Cousins, Tyseer Denmark, Dejuan Lane, Ethan Grunkemeyer, and more.

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