Nov. 13—It was surprising Sunday that Penn State football coach James Franklin decided to fire offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich in midseason and not wait until after the regular season..
After what Franklin said Monday, though, it’s even more surprising that it didn’t happen sooner.
In so many words, Franklin said that Yurcich didn’t follow game plans and, even more damning, didn’t listen to Franklin’s instructions during games.
Franklin said after the Nittany Lions’ 24-15 loss to Michigan on Saturday that “we’ve got to find easy completions for a quarterback (Drew Allar) to get into rhythm. That’s what everybody does.”
So I asked him Monday if he told Yurcich to call more easy passes during Saturday’s game once he saw there weren’t enough of them being called.
“I think you guys have heard me come in and talk whether it’s openers, whether it’s third down, whether it’s starting fast,” he said. “All of those things we’ve had lengthy discussions about and had a plan for.
“But a lot of times when we got to the games, either we did not call the games that way or we did not execute the games the way we intended them to. Yes, those things were asked for.”
Those acts of insubordination sealed Yurcich’s fate.
Remember that Yurcich was a play-caller that Franklin had eyed for several years. He fired Kirk Ciarrocca after one season to hire Yurcich, who had mixed results in his three seasons at Penn State after building an impressive resume at Oklahoma State, Ohio State and Texas.
So Franklin deserves blame for not vetting Yurcich better to make sure they would mesh. It turned out that their relationship was not hunky dory.
It was telling that Franklin used the word “collaborative” twice when describing running backs coach Ja’Juan Seider and tight ends coach Ty Howle, who will share play-calling duties the rest of the…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/surprising-penn-states-james-franklin-044900310.html
Author : Reading Eagle, Pa.
Publish date : 2023-11-14 04:49:00
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