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James Franklin reflects on how Don Brown has influenced his coaching approach
By Andrew Olson
Published:
James Franklin is getting ready to face a familiar foe in Week 7. Franklin’s Penn State faces a UMass team coached by Don Brown.
Franklin and Brown worked together at Maryland. More recently, Brown was Michigan’s defensive coordinator during Franklin’s tenure as Penn State head coach.
“From a UMass perspective, Don Brown, the coach, I go way back with Don,” Franklin said in the opening statement of his Tuesday press conference. “Don was the defensive coordinator at Maryland when I was the offensive coordinator, so we’ve got history. Obviously been at Michigan and a ton of other places, as well. Well respected head coach as well as defensive coordinator.”
Franklin shared that working against Brown’s defense in practice influenced how Penn State goes about installment.
“Don did a really good job of getting the defense to understand his system, to buy into his system and play extremely hard,” Franklin told reporters.
“The other thing that I learned on the other end of the spectrum, and I mean this in terms of as a head coach, is Don has always run an unorthodox system, and as a head coach, I’ve got a very structured way of the way we install and the way we teach, and a lot of that comes from Don, to be honest with you.”
Franklin reflected on the challenge of installment practices as Brown took a unique approach to defensive scheme.
“When you’re trying to install a defense or when you’re trying to install an offense, I don’t allow the offense when we’re doing install during spring ball or training camp, that Manny has got to teach his defense, and then also he could get empty, he could get unbalanced, he could get motioned and shifts. We don’t do that,” Franklin said. “It’s like, on this day you’re going to get this from the offense and on this day you’re going to get this from the defense, and that was always a challenge with Don because Don — that is his base. It’s like, okay, we’re trying to run it against a base defense. Well, he doesn’t really have a traditional base.”
“But to be honest with you, that’s a big part of how we do things here is based on some of the challenges that he presented as a defensive coordinator when I was a young offensive coordinator,” Franklin added.
A former Florida beat reporter, Andrew writes for the Saturday Tradition News Desk.