Everybody reading this knows James Franklin’s mantra.

1-0.

Franklin is always focused on going 1-0 each week. Lose a game? Review the film and focus on going 1-0 against whoever’s on the schedule each and every week. Rinse and repeat.

Yet, after losing to UCLA in possibly the worst loss of his Penn State career, Franklin was a little scrambled up at his weekly press conference on Monday.

He usually opens the press conference with a breakdown of the week’s opponent after a quick recap of Saturday’s game. He’ll talk about the third down and penalty battles and shout out some performances, and then speak on noteworthy players on the next team that the coaching staff has been impressed with.

Yet, he simply glossed over that entire part on Monday. He did mention Northwestern sparingly throughout the presser, but he didn’t go in-depth on the Wildcats until he was asked to do so.

Franklin said he and the coaching staff were “focused on the last game as much as we possibly could”, then admitted that he should have done his weekly breakdown of the team’s next opponent. It was all just a bit of a strange break from routine. His media availability was even 17 minutes shorter than usual, clocking in at 28 compared to the typical 45.

Franklin is one of the most front-facing head coaches in college football. He always has been. 1-0 is plastered underneath the tunnel at Beaver Stadium, and it’s placed everywhere inside the Lasch Building. If Franklin has wired that sentiment into his and the team’s heads, why is the UCLA loss any different?

The UCLA loss represents the pent-up disappointments and frustration from the last 11 years of Penn State football under Franklin. Obviously, Franklin helped get the program back up and running after the Jerry Sandusky scandal and the sanctions that came along with that, but Penn State fans are officially fed up. Dropping a game to a winless Bruins team with a rookie playcaller as the No. 7 team in the country has alienated the fanbase beyond repair.

Franklin reiterated his belief in the team and the coaching staff and ultimately took responsibility for the loss. However, he’s always been adamant about flushing past losses, focusing on the next opponent, and not creating excuses. Yet, he did exactly that following the stunner at the Rose Bowl.

“Obviously, we did not handle last week’s loss well,” Franklin said postgame about Penn State’s White Out loss to Oregon. “We also lost some players in that game during the week, and then everything else. Everything else. Travel. Everything else.”

While it’s clear that Tony Rojas’ absence certainly impacted Penn State’s defensive game plan, it shouldn’t have ever even been in a position where the Bruins ran all over it all game. Sure, Rojas would have served as the spy on UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava, but Penn State’s preseason hype was based on the roster’s talent from top to bottom. To partially attribute an inexcusable loss to an injury is disrespectful to Iamaleava’s performance and the rest of the squad.

Furthermore, what’s this with travel? Everybody travels. The Nittany Lions did the exact same trip to Los Angeles around the same time last season and still managed to beat USC, albeit in a last-gasp overtime shootout.

Franklin said at practice last Wednesday that the Nittany Lions were taking a similar travel approach to their game against the Trojans, leaving out possibilities of unfamiliarity. While the team’s circumstances were definitely different stepping into the Rose Bowl on Saturday compared to the Coliseum a season ago, to chalk up this loss to something like “travel” is farcical.

Kaytron Allen sure had no issue with the travel. He said traveling cross-country changes nothing but the time zone at his media availability last Tuesday. If the players aren’t worried about the travel and Franklin himself took steps to eliminate the possibilities of the travel’s effects on the team, why is it suddenly popping up following the loss?

He also said the energy wasn’t right as the Nittany Lions took the field and got the game underway. As the head coach of a football team coming off a devastating loss, that energy is on Franklin to get underway and get the players pumped to take the field week in and week out, no matter the situation or the opponent.

However, what piques my interest in Franklin’s postgame quote was his repetition of “everything else”. It’s no secret that Franklin and Penn State were put on national blast after the team’s excruciating double-overtime loss to Oregon. Franklin’s always talking about tuning out the noise and focusing on the game at hand, but his shaken-up demeanor following Saturday’s loss signals that something’s just off now.

Could “everything else” be all of the noise that he’s trying to tune out? Certainly. Could it be his own frustration and personal disappointment with the same old story of losing big games that’s plagued him in his time at Penn State? Certainly.

Whatever “everything else” is, specifically, is killing Franklin inside. And, quite frankly, it’s hard to look at Penn State football’s future in the 2025 campaign after its loss to the Bruins. He was extremely adamant all week before UCLA about not letting one loss turn into two – as he’s done many times before – but a different coach and a different squad took the field against the Bruins. A broken program. A broken Franklin. It’s certainly apparent in the dejected stare-offs he’s done into space after both of Penn State’s recent losses.

Franklin said after the loss that it’s hard for him to admit that Penn State has the best mix of talent and coaching in the country, like he said it did prior to the season. While honesty is necessary in Penn State’s current position, that answer is very un-Franklin-like. It’s just not front-facing, not productive, and not who he’s established himself to be as the leader of the program.

He’s even changed his weekly tweets meant to rally together the fanbase for Saturday’s game.

Game Week! Let’s do this TOGETHER Nittany Nation. We need EVERYONE – students, faculty, lettermen, alumni & fans worldwide – locked in on being 1-0 against UCLA Saturday! #WeAre

— James Franklin (@coachjfranklin) September 28, 2025

He followed his typical format for the UCLA tweet, signaling EVERYONE to come together for the team.

Game Week! Let’s do this TOGETHER & go 1-0, Nittany Nation. Northwestern, Northwestern, Northwestern!!! #WeAre

— James Franklin (@coachjfranklin) October 6, 2025

One week later, he’s dropped the whole middle portion of his tweet. It all circles back to his break from routine. No Northwestern breakdown and a shortened tweet. It might not seem like much, but with a head coach like Franklin, a little means a lot.

With most of the Penn State world calling for his firing since Drew Allar threw the game-losing interception against the Ducks and his notable discomfort and foggy mental focus following Saturday’s beatdown, “everything else” is surrounding Franklin from all sides. Perhaps stepping off the field at the Rose Bowl was the moment “everything else” finally caught up to him.