What They Said After the Penn State-USC Game

Nittany Lions coach James Franklin celebrated his team's comeback. USC's Lincoln Riley lamented another missed opportunity.

Penn State safety Jaylen Reed is congratulated by head coach James Franklin after defeating the USC Trojans in overtime at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

LOS ANGELES | Penn State coach James Franklin celebrated his team's rousing comeback, while USC coach Lincoln Riley lamented a third missed opportunity in the Trojans' first season in the Big Ten. After the Nittany Lions' 33-30 overtime victory over USC on Saturday, the head coaches discussed their big moments and major decisions in the game. Here's what they said.

Penn State coach James Franklin

On tight end Tyler Warren: Obviously, a big story of the game is Tyler Warren, 17 catches for 224 yards. A school record for tight ends and the second-most yards ever for a Penn State football player. That doesn’t even count what he’s doing in the running game, he’s got a pass, and what he’s doing blocking. I’ve been talking about him being the best tight end in college football, but the reality is, he’s now part of a conversation of one of the best players in all of college football.

On kicker Ryan Barker: Another great story, Ryan Barker. He walks on at Penn State, an opportunity knocks, and he’s ready. To me, that’s what our country is about. That’s what the game of football teaches. He earned a starting job, then lost the starting job, then comes here. He’s 4-for-4 on the road. Game winning field goal there in overtime. Ryan "Cold as Ice" Barker is what I’m calling him. So I’m just really proud of him and how the whole game went.

On quarterback Drew Allar: What I probably love the most about Drew, and it is probably reflective of our whole team, is it didn’t go perfectly for him today and he just ground through it. He flushed the bad plays and moved on. That’s what you have to do in college football. It’s not going to go perfectly. They have talented guys and our guys just battled through it. I think Drew’s a great example of that. I don’t know what his final stats were, but I also want to give Julian Fleming his flowers too. I think it was two huge fourth-down plays. That was big for us. I think Drew was just a really good example of what I think our team did all day long. They just kept battling and overcoming adversity.

On the overtime possession: We were going to run the ball in that situation, but you never know. You split one and score a touchdown, that’s what you prefer to do. You also want to be borderline conservative as well, because you’re already in field goal range, and you don’t want to do anything that’s going to take you out of field goal range. So that was managed really well. Stig [coordinator Justin Lustig] was standing next to me on the sideline and said, ‘Listen, if at all possible, we

prefer the ball either middle or to the left’. We were able to call a play to get us back into that sweet spot. Then they tried to ice [Barker], and he just went out and hit it.

On Allar bouncing back from two interceptions: The first thing I’d like to say is, our defense, after those turnovers, only giving up six points, that was huge. If they don’t do that, then it’s hard to have that ending that we just had. But Drew, he’s just growing up. Based on how he was recruited, and then when he shows up, the expectations are through the roof, right? Then last year, he’s a first time starter in the Big Ten, and his touchdown touchdown-to-interception ratio was a lot to a little.

People were still critical, right? And I get it, it’s Penn State. We have really, really high expectations. He’s just gotten better, and he’s gotten better at really every single area. One of the big reasons he’s gotten better is guys are making plays for him. The wide receivers are making plays this year in a way they didn’t last year. The tight ends are as well. We weren’t able to get the running game going today the way we had hoped, but I have a ton of respect for their defensive coordinator [D'Anton Lynn], who’s a Penn State guy. I have a ton of respect for their staff. That’s a talented team and that’s a talented staff. Coming on the road and finding a way to get a win was big for us, and Drew was a huge part of that.

On the comeback from a 14-point halftime deficit: You’re going to have to find different ways throughout a season to win. Some are going to be blowouts, hopefully more of them are blowouts, but some of them are going to be comebacks. Some are going to be home where you get the fans and they’re supporting you. Some are going to be on the road, where things are going against you, and you don’t have a whole lot of support in the stadium. Maybe weather, or whatever it may be, that’s big.I think the word ‘resilient’ was probably the best word to define our team today. It’s good to be able to go in and say, ‘Guys, we’re a second half team,’ but I prefer not to say that anymore. I prefer to be a four quarter team, a start fast team, a fourth quarter team, all of it. And we’re going to have to be that to continue to win the games that we want to win moving forward.

USC coach Lincoln Riley

On the game: Hard-fought game, you know, just a really difficult loss. There’s really no way to sugarcoat that. Or guys fought their ass off from beginning to end. As a coach, you can’t ask for anything more than the effort that our guys put on the field. Two good football teams going at it. Came down to the last play, and it hurts to not be able to get this done. We’ve had a few games like this, where we’ve had chances to win right there at the end - and to not make the plays, to not have some of the breaks bounce your way, it’s a gut punch. There’s no doubt about it.

We’re very disappointed with not finishing it off. I’m proud of the way that the guys fought. I’m proud of the way that the team played and gave ourselves a lot of opportunities to win it there in the end. We’ve got some work to do. We’ve definitely made some critical errors in some of these games that we haven’t won - where we’ve got opportunities to finish teams off, and that’s something that we all have to do a better job of. We’ve got to identify, we’ve got to coach it better, we’ve got to continue to progress as a team. We’ve got a united bunch of guys in that room that are hurting right now because they love playing the game with each other. I think you can tell that they love playing the game for each other, for USC, and that’s why you see us play the way that we play. And so they’re hurt, but we will, we will absolutely rebound. We’re excited for what’s coming up, and we understand the opportunities that are ahead for us, and we will be a hungry, motivated football team to go back to work and obviously dive into the second half of the season.

On the decision not to call timeout late in regulation: We talked about it a little bit. When we had the lost-yardage play on - I think it was the first down - at that point, started talking about, ‘Alright, do we need to use timeouts and stop the clock?’ I think it was a second-and-12, if I remember, right. We were talking about, ‘Do we need to use timeouts and stop the clock here?’ Because all of a sudden it’s second-and-12. If you don’t get anything there, then it’s third-and-12, and you just potentially bought

them a series, and we weren’t in field goal range yet. So, we went back and forth on, ‘Do we use them and stop the clock or not?’ Honestly, I felt so good about how Mike (Lantz) was hitting the ball that we said — when we got, I think it was a third-and-6 — ‘If we convert this, we still have timeouts, maybe got one more shot and then let him kick the field goal.’ So, with how well Mike was kicking it was the biggest reason I wanted to make sure that it was the last possession.

On Tyler Warren’s performance: Listen, he’s a great player. I mean it’s a guy that we knew was going to be a challenge coming in. We had a couple coverage busts on him, and I think that’s the thing we’ll look back on. When you play a really good player like that, you just want to make them earn it, right? If they make a play, you want to be like, ‘Hey, we were in coverage, we were in the right spot.’ Listen, the guy made a play. But we gave them a couple that we didn’t make them earn it. And that’s probably the thing that hurts the most.

On losing another close game: I think you could look at all sides. We’ve got opportunities on offense, we’ve got opportunities on defense. Offense had the ball with the chance to go score with two minutes and change and all the timeouts. Defensively, we got them to two fourth-and-longs on the series before, where you liked your chances on both of those, and they made two kind of crazy plays. So we’ve all had our chances. We’re all owning it. We’ve got to coach better. We’ve got to play better offense, got to play better defense in those moments.

On Penn State planting a flag at midfield after the game: I don't want to get caught up in all of that. That's all stuff outside the game. We're very proud of our program we don't take a backseat to anybody.

Penn State players just planted a flag at midfield. James Franklin told them absolutely not. Too late. pic.twitter.com/gFi8ccKOI2

— Audrey Snyder (@audsnyder4) October 12, 2024

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