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James Franklin previews matchup vs. Wisconsin in special FOX appearance
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Penn State travels to Madison to take on Wisconsin in their 2021 season opener on Saturday, with a kickoff scheduled for 12:00 PM ET.
Nittany Lions head coach James Franklin made an appearance on the FOX pregame show on Thursday ahead of the Minnesota-Ohio State game, and talked about the plan for the opener, as well as his thoughts on his quarterback.
🙌 @PennStateFball Head Coach @coachjfranklin joins the show to talk about the growth that came from last season and how they plan to start this year strong Saturday against Wisconsin pic.twitter.com/ej7jstgEnz
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) September 2, 2021
Franklin talked about how the Nittany Lions are planning for the Badgers.
“We want to be able to create space in the running game, we want to create explosive plays,” Franklin said. “We’ve done a lot of what we’ve done in the past, we just packaged it a little differently.”
Watch for the Nittany Lions to come out firing, with plenty to prove to everyone that they’re for real in 2021.
“We have to remind everybody that two years ago we won 11 games, won the Cotton Bowl and last year obviously there were a lot of challenges.”
Talking about Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford, Franklin thinks it’ll be a big season. “Sean’s done an unbelievable job with preparation since he showed up on campus.”
“To me there’s a strong correlation between investment and preparation, it goes hand and hand with confidence level and he prepares as well as any quarterback I’ve been around,” he said of Clifford. “I think he’s going to have a huge year for us.”
A season opener with a pair of Top-25 teams is a good start, and the Badgers will certainly be a good test out of the gate.
Scott Schultz covers Michigan State Football, along with Breaking News for B1G Football & Basketball for Saturday Tradition. He also serves as an Automotive News Editor & Writer, and Softball Writer elsewhere on the web. Follow him on Twitter @SRSchultz.