No one in college football has learned from his mistakes better than Virginia Tech head coach James Franklin. He has already addressed the huge chip on his shoulder with how things ended at Penn State. In a recent interview, the Hokies’ head coach went into detail on the exact areas he faltered, and one main reason was the hiring of a defensive coordinator.
“And although I do think taking on risk is important,” Franklin said on the Next Up with Adam Breneman. “I think we took on too much risks in too many different areas, and it left us susceptible for what we do best. I think the first thing is hires. We made great hires on resume. But I don’t know if they were the right fit at the right time.
“We had a system of how we played on offense, how we played on defense, and how we played on special teams. Although we hired different people, they were part of the same system and the same family. We did not play early on the way I think we were capable of playing.”
Before the 2025 season, one of the notable hires Franklin made at Penn State was defensive coordinator Jim Knowles on a three-year, $9 million contract. The DC was coming off a season where he led the Buckeyes to the national championship. Three of the defensive players Knowles coached at Columbus were top 11 picks in the first round of the 2026 NFL Draft. However, what is good on paper is not always good for the team.
Eventually, it turned out that Knowles was not the best fit for the Nittany Lions. From coaching the nation’s top defense, he coached Penn State’s defense that allowed 21.4 points per game and 5.3 yards per play. They allowed at least 30 points in four games, including a 38-14 loss to the Lions in Jim Knowles’ return to Ohio State on November 1. The worst loss came against unranked UCLA, when the defense allowed 42 points to a team that had just fired its head coach.
Knowles’ multi-layered defensive schemes seemed too complex for the Lions, who could not grasp the details of his defensive playbook in a short time. At some point during the season, Franklin admitted that the clash between players who were playing confidently and those who had to meet the demands of Knowles’ system had led to the team’s defensive woes.
“It’s both. Ultimately, it’s on us to give them enough that they can go out play winning defense,” he said to the press. “Because if it’s too simplistic, that’s going to be a problem as well. And it’s also those guys, you know, trusting their training and letting it fly. It’s a combination of both.”
While there are no questions regarding Knowles’ status as a top defensive coordinator, he just did not seem right for Penn State at the time. He was at Oklahoma State for four seasons before moving to Columbus, where he spent three seasons. Ultimately, he was not retained by Matt Campbell. As a result, he left the program and joined Josh Heupel at Tennessee.
James Franklin plans to stick with a 1-and-0 approach moving forward
In sports, some choose to approach games step by step, while others see the bigger picture and aim towards it. Franklin had always taken the step-by-step approach until the 2025 season, when he chose to lead his players to focus on the bigger picture. Looking back, that stance happens to be one of the mistakes he promised never to repeat.
“Even our approach, we were a 1-and-0 team, and I allowed us to talk about things other than 1 and 0, because I felt we’re going to have to do some things different to move the needle,” Franklin said to former Nittany Lion Breneman. “When you’re talking about a game away from playing for the national championship, we’re close. So, I felt like we needed to be bold and aggressive and do some things differently than our normal model.
“Again, the players talking about championships in a way we really never had talked about them before. And now, you lose a game, and all this negativity comes, and now you feel like is our goal still there? That’s why the 1-and-0 mentality is so important, because it allows you to be laser-focused on the tasks ahead, which by doing that is going to put you in the best position at the end of the season.”
That negativity surrounding lone results ultimately led to his exit from the Nittany Lions. After losing three consecutive games during the 2025 campaign, Penn State fired James Franklin. However, he has since begun a new chapter at the Hokies, and it starts with the return to the 1-0 approach.
