Every great coach occasionally pulls some upsets vs higher ranked, perceived more talented teams. Franklin s dearth of wins in this category is stunning. Until he changes the narrative he will continue to face scrutiny from both the fans and the media. It s year 12, the University has stepped up, it s time to for James to do his part.
Starts this year. Golden opportunity with Oregon coming into the White Out. Can't lose that one. Then OSU in Columbus. Another golden opportunity to get a HUGE monkey off his back. Then on to the playoffs to make a statement.
We want both and for the money he gets paid we we should get both, beat the inferior talented teams and spring upsets or win the pick'em games every once in a while. I would say win these games against teams of equal or better talent a third of the time to throw something out there as a metric. Franklin is at less than 10% or something really bad like that.
There is nothing to be gained by confronting fans in the stands and the fact that he doesn't realize that says a lot
Before we hit the playoffs, let's win the Big Ten Title game first and draw a first round bye.
Would you take what Day has produced? I think they've underperformed their talent until last year and even then, they still somehow lost to their hated rival for like the 10th straight time (only a slight exaggeration).
No one gets both. No one consistently beats all of the teams with lesser talent and also springs some upsets. There literally is no team doing this year in and year out.
Some people don't like this but the referines put their foot on the scale when the games are that close for Ohio St and Michigan. That's just how it is.
My 16-year-old son does a Franklin imitation with the first quote to troll me. He thinks it's funny and kind of a jerk move that Franklin was trying to get a student in trouble.
It feels like it. Last year we're up 10-0 and get a big third-down stop, then our DB steps over the receiver, gets a penalty and Ohio State goes on to score. Technically a penalty, but it looked more like instinct than blatant taunting. The game turned after that.
And you watched defenders doing that several other times that same weekend without penalty.
We've had a few over the years. Like the OSU FG where the snap was 3 seconds after the play clock had expired. Or the leaping penalty.
I don't know how often that penalty is called but I agree with Ian that it looked more like instinct than taunting.
Most of the time we play Ohio State like we're afraid that our offense can't keep up. Even though stats maybe weren't great last year we had some offense. They were just really darn good at goal line defense. I hope Knowles brings that mindset to this team. But I also think our OL was not quite there when we played them. I thought from Oregon on we looked great up front. It might have been a different game if that OL was there.
