Did James Franklin call out Pitt's Pat Narduzzi, Colorado's Deion Sanders?

While explaining why he uses his platform at news conferences the way he does to not alienate his players, Penn State coach James Franklin may have singled out another group of individuals within the sport: some of his FBS coaching colleagues.

At his weekly news conference on Tuesday, Franklin told reporters that he sometimes gives carefully worded answers to them not to avoid their questions, but to not be “divisive to my team or my players,” adding that “we’ve all seen examples of coaches that have not handled that well.”

“Whether they meant to be that way or not, that’s how it comes off and it causes problems,” Franklin said. “That’s always the delicate balance — how do I answer your question without doing one of those two things?”

While Franklin’s statement didn't cite specifics, an outside observer doesn’t have to delve too far into the past to see the kinds of examples that the Nittany Lions’ 10th-year coach cited. Several coaches last weekend — most notably Pitt’s Pat Narduzzi and Colorado’s Deion Sanders — generated headlines for scathing critiques they made about their respective teams after difficult losses.

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After Pitt’s 58-7 blowout loss at No. 12 Notre Dame in Week 9, Narduzzi expressed regret that he and his staff were unable to properly restock the Panthers’ roster after having six players selected in the 2023 NFL Draft, tied for the most in the ACC.

"As a football coach you lose a lot of good players from a year ago and you think as a coach you're going to replace them, and obviously we haven't," Narduzzi told reporters after the defeat, which was the most lopsided of his nine-year Pitt tenure. "Again, it starts with me. I didn't do a good enough job coaching today. Put it on me, and we've got to make plays."

The meat of his quote, in which he said the good players from 2022 weren’t replaced, circulated on social media, with several current and former players reposting it and expressing confusion, astonishment and concern. The full comment was later posted, which included Narduzzi’s admission that “it starts with me,” though even with that qualifier, the substance of the initial quote was unchanged.

Narduzzi responded later that night with a post of his own on X, formerly known as Twitter, in which he took responsibility for the lopsided defeat. He said he apologized to the entire team during their weekly Sunday meeting and noted his remarks “didn’t obviously come out the way I intended them to come out.”

Unlike Narduzzi, Sanders singled out a specific position group following Colorado’s 28-16 loss to No. 20 UCLA. After his son, quarterback Shedeur Sanders, was sacked seven times by the Bruins’ overpowering defensive line, the elder Sanders took aim at his offensive line, criticizing it while seeming to indicate he intends to replace them after this season.

“The big picture, you go get new linemen,” Sanders said after the loss, which was the Buffaloes’ fourth in their past five games following a 3-0 start. "That’s the picture, and I’m gonna paint it perfectly."

Colorado is allowing 5.25 sacks per game, the second-worst mark among 133 FBS teams, and is averaging an FBS-worst 2.51 yards per carry.

Sanders said Tuesday that he had a “private personal meeting” with the offensive line in the aftermath of the UCLA loss that the first-year Buffaloes coach said “went phenomenal.”

In his Tuesday news conference, Franklin stressed the importance of an open line of communication with players so that they’re not hearing a critique about themselves in the media before the coach has a chance to address it with them.

“That doesn’t mean I’m not having very direct conversations with someone, but I also don’t want to say something in this press conference I haven’t said to that player first or to those players first,” Franklin said. “I don’t think that’s the right thing to do.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Did James Franklin call out Pat Narduzzi, Deion Sanders?