For Penn State football, defensive coordinator Brent Pry’s departure for the head coaching job at Virginia Tech brings a level of uncertainty to a program that has long leaned on the reliability and consistency of his unit. While not without its highs and lows, it was regularly one of the nation’s best in sack totals and scoring defense and became the backbone of Penn State’s ability to be competitive on a weekly basis.
The vacancy in and of itself is, in practice, a fairly straightforward obstacle for Franklin in his first offseason under a new 10-year deal, which comes with the implication of bigger and better things ahead — although finding a replacement of Pry’s equal may prove to be easier said than done. It remains to be seen if Franklin will look internally for Pry’s replacement, with the likes of co-defensive coordinator Anthony Poindexter, or outside the program.
Removed from the on-field implications, Pry being named to lead the Hokies gives Franklin a third active head coach (Pry at Virginia Tech, Ricky Rahne at Old Dominion and Charles Huff at Marshall) who once served as an assistant under him. Oregon offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead could once again make that four depending on his offseason decisions. Ultimately, while Pry’s move to Blacksburg is a negative for the Nittany Lion program at large, it is not without some residual benefits from the standpoint of staff development. Interestingly enough, Pry’s first game as head coach will come on the road against Rahne.
In either case, Pry’s departure not only provides Penn State with a practical vacancy to fill but also a less tangible one for Franklin to navigate personally.
Much like Vanderbilt baseball coach Tim Corbin, Pry has long been a close confidant of Franklin, the two coming up through similar coaching ranks over the years and forming a bond over that span. Franklin, then a quarterback, was coached by Pry’s father, Jim, at East Stroudsburg not long after Pry himself began coaching outside linebackers and defensive backs in 1993. Pry was also among the first assistant coaches hired when Franklin took the head coaching job at Vanderbilt, with Franklin calling Pry in the dead of night to offer him the job.
“I was asleep in bed and the phone woke my wife and I up. She’s like, ‘Who is it?’ ‘It’s James Franklin.’ She’s like, alright, and he offers the job on the spot and says he wants me to be there the next day,” Pry recalled earlier this year. “I’m like, ‘Coach, I got to be able to say goodbye to my guys and wrap some things up [at Georgia Southern, where he was defensive coordinator for the 2010 season].’ He said, ‘Did I tell you what I’m paying you?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And he told me, I said, ‘I’ll be there tomorrow.’ He said, ‘You can pay somebody to pack your dang office up.’”
While there are a handful of Vanderbilt connections still on Penn State’s staff in various operational roles, Pry was the last remaining of the assistant coaches who made the move with Franklin to Penn State. So his departure marks the final chapter for a coaching staff that had at least always had some remnants of Franklin’s past.
StateCollege.com talked to both Franklin and Pry this summer about their relationship.
“Obviously our roots,” Pry said at the time. “It goes back to East Stroudsburg and Denny Douds’ program. They’re a very genuine program, very just quality people, treating people the right way, you know, valuing the right things. And we kind of cut our teeth in that. And the people that are important and instrumental early in [Franklin’s] career are the same people that are instrumental and important to me. Mike Terwilliger, my father, Denny Douds, Mike Santella — just guys that really are near and dear to both of us.
“And then the second piece, just the relationship with my family. James played for my dad and so it’s not just me, it’s my father, it’s my mother, it’s my brothers. When he comes around the corner and says, how’s dad doing? You know, it’s just, I love that. I love that he knows my family like he does. And that’s carried forth. I talk all the time about what it means that, you know, I really believe he loves and cares for my wife and my children.
“And then we both were at a Division II school, you know, and just had to climb and work and scrape and we slept on hotel floors at conventions and recruited on money out of our own pocket and all those things that so many lower level coaches operate, what they go through, setting up the field, the headsets and football games, and then trying to coach your position and that’s the road we traveled. So it was just a couple of different ways that have been significant in our past and have kind of aligned us with one another and created this bond.”
For Franklin, again, Pry’s departure is likely not an insignificant change for Franklin both personally or professionally. While it’s difficult to gauge Franklin’s growing personal and operational trust for various members of his increasingly new and changing staff, it seems unlikely that anyone will fill Pry’s shoes starting Wednesday.
As Franklin noted this summer, being on the same page can go a long way both at home and at work.
“Having people that you care about, and they care about you,” Franklin said this summer. “Both professional and personal matters – you can go talk to about anything like highly, highly personal issues or sensitive professional issues. And you’re gonna value their opinion, because you don’t have to spend an hour explaining the background to everything, and how you normally operate because they know. […] We’ve been together long for a long time. And those guys (staff members he has known for a long time) can push me when I need to be pushed, but also when I make a decision that maybe the majority of the room doesn’t understand, they usually do. So then when we break the meeting, and leave they’re going back and reinforcing.”
At the end of the day it’s difficult to know for certain if or how Penn State’s on field results will be impacted by Tuesday’s news, but it seems safe to assume that it was a bittersweet moment for a duo who have been together for as long as any pair of coaches, both starting from very little and ending up where they are today.
As Pry recalls of a moment over a decade ago, Franklin pulls up to drive the two of them to a recruiting function early in Franklin’s time at Vanderbilt. And as Pry climbs into the car, Franklin looks over him with a smile.
“We made it.”
