James Franklin cites 'sloppy football' for Penn State’s offensive struggles in short fields against Nevada

It’s hard to find much to complain about for Penn State in Week 1’s 46-11 win over Nevada, especially as the offense didn’t punt once and scored on each of its first nine drives.

But if you’re nitpicking, the Nittany Lions did squander a pair of golden opportunities against a weaker opponent.

They came away with just two field goals after starting drives on the Nevada 6-yard line (after Zane Durant’s interception) and the Nevada 18-yard line (after King Mack’s 73-yard kickoff return).

James Franklin tabbed “finishing drives” as one of his team’s biggest areas to improve moving forward.

“We had some missed assignments and things like that that made the game more difficult than it needed to be, so we need to get those things fixed,” Franklin said. “We’d get off schedule, somebody’d blow an assignment, we’d get a tackle for loss or a zero-gain play, and now we’re kind of behind the sticks and weren’t able to overcome that.”

On Penn State’s drive after the interception in the first quarter, the Lions moved the ball respectably on first and second down. A 2-yard screen to Trebor Peña and a 3-yard run from Kaytron Allen set up a third down from the Wolf Pack 1. Most would expect Penn State to be able to overpower to smaller Nevada team in two tries from the 1-yard line.

But Nick Dawkins and Drew Allar couldn’t connect on a wide-right snap on third down, leading to Ryan Barker’s first field goal, from 28 yards.

On the second drive following Mack’s return, Penn State put itself behind the chains quickly. Left guard TJ Shanahan Jr., one of seven “starters” Franklin said they have up front, failed to reach the defensive tackle in front of him on a wide zone to the left side. His first step wasn’t good enough to catch the defender knifing upfield, causing a 3-yard tackle for loss on Nick Singleton.

“I talked a bunch to you (the media) about having seven offensive lineman that we view as starters, and all those guys have to play like that,” Franklin said. “They have to show that they warrant being on the field, and then we just got to be a little bit more consistent with everything we do.”

Allar dumped it off to Singleton for no gain on second down and then had a nice scramble for 11 yards on third down. It wasn’t enough to overcome the initial negative play.

Perhaps Penn State would’ve gone for a fourth-and-3 in a close game, but there was no sense in using one of your best short-yardage plays in a blowout.

“Can you overcome long-yardage situations? Yeah, but the best offenses don’t even get to third down. They’re picking up most of their first downs on first and second down,” Franklin said. “So staying out of negative-yardage plays is how we’ll be more efficient and more effective, not only in the red zone, but across the field.

“When you talk about sloppy football, when you go back and kind of look at drops, you look at tackles for loss or even zero-yardage plays. We just had too many of those in the game to allow us to go where we wanted to go and play the way we wanted to play. So that’s what we’re going to have to do to be more efficient when it comes to touchdowns and not kicking field goals.”