It's surprising that Penn State's James Franklin didn't fire Mike Yurcich sooner [opinion]

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 season.

"They're good people who are widely respected and who are fiercely loyal to Penn State," Franklin said. "Penn State is very important to both of them. Both have recruited and developed positions that are two of our better positions.

"I know what I'm going to get from them. I know how collaborative they're going to be with our staff. They're widely respected by the players, an important part of this as well."

Franklin's critics have suggested he needs to look in the mirror instead of making Yurcich the fall guy for the Lions' 12-game losing streak against Big Ten opponents ranked in the top 10, mostly Ohio State and Michigan.

His critics don't care that Penn State is on the way to its fifth 10-win season in eight years for the first time since the 1980s. They're tired of losing the biggest games.

"We need to play well and we need to play well against our toughest opponents," Franklin said. "That's the reality of it. We embrace that. That's why you come to a place like Penn State as a coach. That's why you come to a place like Penn State as a player.

"We understand what comes with that, the positives and the challenges. You embrace it or you don't come to a place like Penn State."

His firing of Yurcich is an admission that he has fallen short, at least when it comes to hiring an offensive coordinator.

Yurcich, an Ohio native, was the first coach from a Power Five school to identify Allar as a potential starting quarterback. It's somewhat ironic then that the poor play of Allar and the offense against Ohio State and Michigan is one of the reasons why Yurcich was dismissed.

"That was a big part of that decision," Franklin said. "It's everything. It's everything I just talked about. Every unit has to be operating at its highest level, and that is recruiting, development, offense, defense, special teams.

"We've had times where we've done that. But we've also had times where we were really strong in certain areas and not strong in others."

Whoever Penn State's next offensive coordinator will be, it sounds like finding a good fit with Franklin and the rest of the staff will be paramount. It's apparent that Yurcich did not fall into that category.

"We're in the people business," Franklin said, "and we need to get the right people at Penn State, buying into Penn State and what we can do and where we can go, and then give them all the resources and support they need to produce at the very, very highest level."