For as long as James Franklin has coached at Penn State the message has been the same. Don’t look toward the future. Don’t dwell in the past. Just stay in the present.
It’s the kind of thing that has rolled more than a few eyeballs during media scrums as players spout a company line that doesn’t allow for much in the way of spicy quotes of look-ahead thoughts. It’s just going 1-0 this week and next week and the week after that.
If it had the feeling of a new-coach cliché at first, it’s hard to deny the dividends of the message all these years later. Penn State has won far more than it has lost. It has had success far more than it has had failure and it has turned a sanction-riddled program into one of the best in the nation.
So touché, the message apparently works. 1-0 this week, 1-0 next week, 1-0 the week after that. Rinse and repeat. And whatever you do, make sure that learning from the past doesn’t mean dwelling on it.
But as No. 10 Penn State improved to 3-0 in 2021 with a 28-20 win over No. 22 Auburn on Saturday night it was hard to ignore the lingering ghosts of the Nittany Lions’ 4-5 2020 season slowly being exorcised. Talk to nearly any player and the response is the same: we are better than that and we’re going to prove it to you and we’re going prove it to ourselves.
It’s an interesting change of headspace for a program that has tried not to dwell on anything for too long. Instead of looking entirely ahead there is still a part of this Nittany Lion team made from the fabric of 2020’s failures. Offseason workouts were tougher. Preseason camp was more intense. Everything had a heightened sense of purpose. Everything had a little something to do with what had already happened. Sure, the Nittany Lions are living in the present, but they’re dragging along some bad memories and making sure each and every one of them gets beaten to a pulp.
For a program that prides itself in the moment, this moment was certainly a product of not completely letting go of the past. While some looked at the Nittany Lions’ opening three games this offseason and saw upwards of two losses, Penn State has turned those potential pitfalls into an early contender for one of the best early season resumes put together so far.
And at least some of what is happening now is a product of not forgetting what has already happened.
“Yeah, it’s definitely a motivating factor. It was definitely a huge motivating factor on the offseason, as we were working to prove that we weren’t that team from last year,” receiver Jahan Dotson said on Saturday night. “But we got each other. Right now, we’re leaning on each other in these close games. It’s just fun to be out here with these guys. I enjoy every single moment. I know they do too.”
Proving to people — perhaps even themselves — that they are a better team than they were in 2020 can be seen all across the roster if you look hard enough.
Linebacker Jesse Luketa went from a somewhat lackluster 2020 to becoming a dynamic player at both linebacker and defensive end. Quarterback Sean Clifford went from a mistake-prone in 2020 to going 28-for-32 on Saturday night without throwing a single incompletion in the second half of the game.
Even Dotson, who was snubbed from a handful of conference award lists in 2020, has found an even better gear to improve on an already outstanding career. Everyone is just a little bit better and a little bit more focused.
“Last year wasn’t us,” Clifford said. The three-year starter is now 14-2 in his career outside of the 2020 COVID season. “Everybody knew that, and even if you didn’t I’m hoping that we’re proving it now.”
“You own it,” Luketa added. “The good, the bad, the ugly. And you know, we’ve got that chip on our shoulder. We know we’re going to work day in and day out. And we will keep that same mentality.”
Then there is the case of coach James Franklin, who, for all his perpetually unhappy critics, has picked up two ranked wins in the first three games of the season and finds himself turning a team nobody thought too highly of into yet another tentative playoff contender. The Nittany Lions should be 4-0 and perhaps even 5-0 by the time they head to Iowa City on Oct. 9 and it would be 2017 all over again, with the road beyond favorable for more than a few redemption victories against the likes of Maryland and a struggling (by Buckeye standards) Ohio State also on the horizon.
And what a turn of events that would be for a coach who was handed the brunt of Penn State’s failures in 2020 only to turn that same team around into what it is slowly becoming in 2021.
“As a team, you know, we took that personally,” safety Jaquan Brisker said of the 2020 season. “Obviously as a head coach, you’ve got to take that personally because that’s your name behind it.”
“He’s just not letting things fly at all,” Brisker added. “It’s back to Penn State [football], not using COVID as an excuse or anything like that.”
So yes, at some point the Nittany Lions will become their fully realized selves in 2021, but for now there’s still a bit of a revenge tour going on. Not so much to seek revenge against the teams that beat them in 2020, but revenge against the team they themselves were.
And perhaps that’s not revenge at all, instead a form of redemption, turning yesterday’s mistakes into tomorrow’s success, going 1-0 all the while.
