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Rudel: Nittany Lions still in transition

UNIVERSITY PARK – When we last left James Franklin, he was putting the cap on a four-game losing streak that ended the 2015 season.

Well, unfortunately for the Nittany Nation, 2016 hasn’t started on a winning note, either.

Franklin met the media Wednesday – national letter-of-intent day – to discuss Penn State’s recruiting season, which six months ago took shape as one of the nation’s top classes but ended with a series of decommitments and the Lions finishing somewhere closer to the Top 25.

Even the typically effervescent Franklin’s usual positive vibe couldn’t spin the bottom line.

“There were some challenges,” he said. “No doubt.”

That Franklin lost a legacy recruit, linebacker Andrew Pryts (son of former PSU player Ed Pryts), seemed to sum up the disappointment. Pryts switched gears and announced for Stanford on Wednesday morning.

“At the end of the recruiting period, it can get aggressive, and it can get nasty,” Franklin said. “And if you leave the door open “

Other schools are only too happy to barge through the crack.

That’s what appeared to happen to the Lions, and the bump in the road comes at least as a mild surprise given that recruiting, with a staff stocked with young, aggressive coaches, was supposed to be Franklin’s strength.

He underscored its importance upon his introduction as the Lions’ head coach two years ago, when he said, “I’ve found the plays work a lot better when you’ve got good players.”

Clearly, Franklin has not had – and was not left with – enough good players, especially on the offensive line, which sets the table for the entire operation and probably cost John Donovan, the Lions’ OC for Franklin’s first two years here, his job.

Still, if Penn State fans have been concerned with two years of questionable in-game management, Christian Hackenberg’s digression and bad special teams play – three aspects that speak directly to whether a team is well-coached – not closing out players who had already verbally committed sounds another alarm.

Chalk it up to the ongoing transition. Counting Donovan, the Lions lost three assistant coaches since Thanksgiving, not to mention their downward trend of going winless after October.

Further, Penn State got caught in a national trend in which a couple hundred players have decommitted from their original choices in the last month. PSU assistant Terry Smith said Wednesday that Miami, with new coach Mark Richt, lost 22.

The Lions’ fast start to the 2016 class was supposed to be the Band-Aid that helped breathe some optimism into the spring. That didn’t happen as Ohio State and Michigan both appeared to gain more separation with top-five classes.

Penn State addressed some of its offensive-line deficiencies, but very few top programs are winning with true freshmen – or even redshirt freshmen – up front. It also landed the nation’s top running back in Miles Sanders.

Franklin came armed with statistics, including that the Lions have signed a total of 21 four- and five-star recruits the last two years, which is 10 more than the 11 assembled in the three previous recruiting classes combined.

“Clearly, obvious progress is being made,” he said.

While recruiting definitely is an inexact science, and there are plenty of walk-on success-stories such as Matt McGloin and Carl Nassib, Deon Butler and Troy Drayton, Franklin himself admitted, “The (recruiting) rankings have significance.”

Franklin praised his staff for scrambling to land late backup choices and “overcoming the storm.”

But he was also quick to say, “We want to become the storm.”

Speaking of storms, through two years on the field and three recruiting classes – two of them from full recruiting seasons – so far the Nittany Lions’ answer to long-term success, as the Bob Dylan song goes, “is blowing in the wind.”

Rudel can be reached at 946-7527 or nrudel@altoonamirror.com.

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