Penn State’s Peach Bowl may have been over before it even started.

The game may have been decided before Caden Prieskorn’s two touchdown catches, Quinshon Judkins’ touchdown reception, or the several receivers left wide open in Penn State’s secondary. Before any of that, Penn State’s availability report listed 13 players as unavailable.

A few names were unimportant. Tyler Johnson, Liam Powers, and Jason Estrella weren’t going to be the Nittany Lions’ saviors Saturday afternoon in Atlanta. But other names stood out: Kalen King, Johnny Dixon, Chop Robinson, and Olu Fashanu.

A pair of those were surprises — King has yet to declare for the NFL Draft and Fashanu was coy about his involvement in the Peach Bowl. Even though Penn State knew who would and wouldn’t play in the game, James Franklin said the Nittany Lions’ were unprepared to face Ole Miss without them.

“Specifically to the game, just too many moving parts with the staff and with the players against a good team,” Franklin said. “Too many moving parts, staff and players, to have the type of success that was wanted to have today.”

Those moving parts were noticeable.

Several players of Penn State’s secondary got their first dosage of high-level college football. Missed tackles, missed assignments, and poor pass defense plagued the Nittany Lions as quarterback Jaxson Dart threw for 394 yards, 270 of which went to Prieskorn and Tre Harris.

Penn State’s defensive line started the game well without Robinson, but it struggled to replicate that success as the game went on. Dart had plenty of time in the pocket, and an Ole Miss team that didn’t need to run to win still recorded 179 yards, led by 131 yards from Judkins.

Franklin’s assessment wasn’t terrible. There wasn’t much of an excuse for Penn State’s offense, which didn’t see any opt-outs. But the defense lost three potential first-round draft picks, absences that would hurt any program.

Franklin also referenced the changes Penn State had at the coordinator positions. Franklin fired offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich after the Michigan loss and defensive coordinator Manny Diaz left the team for a head coaching job at Duke. Instead of having full-time coaches at the helm, Penn State was led by four interim coordinators, two each on offense and defense.

Whether interim co-defensive coordinators Anthony Poindexter and Robb Smith failed to prepare players or just put together poor play calls, the defense suffered without Diaz. The excited pass rush and clampdown secondary that was part of Diaz’ defense just didn’t exist against Ole Miss, whether that’s due to a lack of personnel or not.

Still, Franklin’s own players disagreed with him. Players felt the defeat lay on themselves, not on any opt-outs or missing coaches.

“Doesn’t matter who’s playing it’s next man up mentality,” linebacker and team captain Dom DeLuca said after the game. “We had to play our defense still — our game. It’s living up to the standard. It hurts to lose coach Diaz…just had to play to our abilities.”

DeLuca said it didn’t matter when the team knew about which players were opting out, Penn State should have played better anyway. He also said the team was undisciplined and had “lazy eyes.” Franklin said he wasn’t concerned with that.

“I didn’t feel like that was an issue from an energy and focus standpoint,” Franklin said. “We had significant players that have played all year long that weren’t in that game.”

Regardless, Franklin said the Peach Bowl will force Penn State’s coaching staff to reevaluate how it will handle opt-outs in future bowl games.

“You look at last year’s game and this year’s game,” Franklin said. “It was different and we need to have some healthy discussion about that as a staff and as a team and how we want to operate moving forward.”