Balancing huge expectations with 1-0 mentality will be key for Lions

It's very difficult, even impossible you might say, to get James Franklin to discuss big-picture goals with the Penn State football program.

For the longest time, if Franklin was asked anything about stuff beyond the next game, he would have his silly, canned response of "Northwestern, Northwestern, Northwestern, Northwestern, Northwestern," or whichever opponent was coming up.

Thankfully, Franklin doesn't do that anymore. Still, he's not going to talk publicly about things like winning a Big Ten championship or national championship, because doing so would go completely against his sacred 1-0 mentality.

But lately, with expectations soaring for the fall, some Penn State players have been speaking their minds about what they hope to accomplish.

There's nothing wrong with Olu Fashanu saying that. Or with safety Jaylen Reed telling reporters Tuesday, "I want to win a national championship."

Hey, everybody wants to win a national championship, right?

But to hear Penn State players in this era talking about that kind of stuff is a bit different. That's because they've all been so extremely well trained by Franklin to deflect, deflect, deflect when it comes to overall goals and to only discuss the next game.

But the next game is five months away, so with little else to talk about now, it's only natural for guys on a team that will be ranked in the preseason top 10 to bring up the national championship stuff.

Whether Franklin wants them to or not.

The coach was asked Tuesday after practice if it's too early for everybody to be talking so much about expectations.

"No, I mean, that's what everybody does in the offseason," Franklin said. "Again, we finished the season well, we got a ton of talented players coming back; we still have some question marks. But that's what the offseason is about, those types of conversations. I get it.

"But we're just trying to get better today. We had a good practice today. We gotta be ready to play well against West Virginia (in the opener) and see where it takes us."

Again, there's nothing wrong with players talking about winning a title. But for a coach like Franklin, who stresses day-to-day improvement and the 1-0 mentality so, so often, he has to make sure none of the players on the team are getting ahead of themselves in pursuit of the lofty goals.

"Yeah, I love that. That's great," he said of the championship aspirations. "But I'm gonna leave here and tell them they better focus on West Virginia.

"To me," he continued, "you spend all these times talking about goals and things way down the road, and that's fine to maybe talk about once or twice. But then you better spend most of your time and focus on what you need to do to get there. That's all that really matters. Are you willing to do what it takes to get there? We spend very little time talking about results and goals."

The biggest area of concern with this kind of stuff comes with younger players, and Penn State has a lot of good ones. Because the goals are so big, and because there are so many young guys in key spots, it can be easier for some of those players to lose sight a little bit about the work that still has to be done in order to achieve any of the goals.

Case in point: The team went 11-2 last year and won the Rose Bowl. There are some younger players who didn't really face much adversity because pretty much everything went their way. But nothing comes easily in college football, and anybody thinking the team will just easily repeat what it did last year could be in for a rude awakening.

Franklin knows that. He's a veteran coach. He's surely seen it happen before that players get overconfident and cocky to the point where they lose sight of the task at hand.

That's a big reason why he clings so much to his 1-0 mentality -- because for the most part, it works and is a great way to keep a giant group of 18-22 year olds focused on what has to be done each and every week to win.