James Franklin will step into the upcoming season following an impressive 13-3 finish last year. However, his dream of a national championship win stopped short in the semifinal loss to Notre Dame. Despite having shaped Penn State into the program it is today, there are always debates on whether the head coach is overrated. The man completed 10 years in the program, with 4 years seeing some poor records. But just because of a rocky graph, is it enough to deem the veteran coach overrated?

Despite Franklin’s CV being somewhat constant, there’s no doubt that PSU wouldn’t be where it is today without him. He’s yet to hold a national title and has just one conference championship under his belt. But Franklin continues to show up every season, doing his best to put up a great season. Josh Pate dismissed the negative chatter immediately, saying that it was “ridiculous.” “My truth about James Franklin is, as I’ve said many times, he is the most properly rated head coach in America.” Pate ends the confusion right there.

Pate also had an answer for those who came up with a rebuttal armed with stats. “He is one in 19 versus AP top five teams. He’s overrated. At which point I would have asked you, what is he rated? […] The first thing we need to know is what is it rated? What are they rated? Because before that, we can’t know.” He highlighted that the very nature of rating is relative to so many unrelated aspects.

Pate then broke down the 1-19 stat. “[S]o, he’s losing to the top five teams, right? Yeah. He’s not favored to win those games in most cases, right? No, he’s a point-spread underdog. So it sounds like, from a point spread perspective, he was properly rated because he wasn’t favored to win the games. Has he also been losing a lot of games he’s favored in? No, no. He’s mainly just lost the ones he’s an underdog in,” Pate concluded. Just like everything else, if you look at Franklin from the necessary perspective, you’d arrive at another understanding of him, too.

Pate also thought Franklin was nearly around the elite group of highly rated coaches. “Has anyone out there told me James Franklin’s a top-five coach? I’d argue he’s not far from that. I’d argue he’s kind of on the precipice of that. But my point here is I haven’t heard anyone say that James Franklin belongs above Kirby Smart when Saban was around. I never heard anyone tout James Franklin as being greater than Nick Saban.”

When it comes to other coaches, Franklin has also been correctly rated. Franklin is no Smart or Saban. He’s just Franklin, who has a unique brand of his own.

James Franklin is in a unique spot with his WRs

The Penn State HC is not giving much attention to these rating debates because he has a lot of work ahead to do to build his WR room for 2025. TE Tyler Warren is now running for the NFL. Receivers Omari Evans and Harrison Wallace III departed for other programs. Franklin is now left with an interesting pool of talent to build the offensive support for Drew Allar. With the returnees, it doesn’t look so good.

Inconsistencies riddle returning receivers Liam Clifford and Kaden Saunders. They also don’t have the numbers with which they can compete with Ross and Hudson for the more important positions in the depth chart. They’re still options worth taking a look at but will likely fall below the transfers in the room. The main attractions are USC and Troy transfers Kyon Hudson and Devonte Ross.

Insider Dylan Callaghan Croley said, “Kyron Hudson and Devonte Ross, as I’ve stressed before, are going to be huge additions to the room, not from maybe a production standpoint, but they’re going to significantly raise the floor of the room.” Hudson produced 462 receiving yards and 3 touchdowns on 38 catches during his USC stint. Ross, on the other hand, comes with 76 receptions, 1,043 yards, and 11 touchdowns. Franklin might have turned up lucky with them because they had experience and the numbers to prove their reliability.

James Franklin does not have a commanding career graph. But it’s well enough to say that he’s a seasoned coach. The chatter around him being overrated has long been simmering. But if he was an overrated coach, would a 13-3 season finish come from someone who’s all talk and no show? For this season, his most pressing issue is the WR room. He has the required talents; all they need is a little polishing before the season begins.