STATE COLLEGE | Penn State dominated at home in the first round of the College Football Playoff, slamming No. 11 seed SMU 38-10 on Saturday. It was James Franklin’s 100th career win at Penn State, and a resounding one at that. For SMU coach Rhett Lashlee, it was a humbling defeat to cap what was a great first season in the ACC for the Mustangs. 

Penn State coach James Franklin discussed his team’s defensive dominance, the crowd and his love for linebacker Dom DeLuca, while SMU coach Rhett Lashlee lamented what he considered a missed opportunity. Here’s what they said after the game. 

Penn State coach James Franklin

Opening statement: I want to thank the fans. It was phenomenal. The environment was phenomenal. The turnout was unbelievable. We have the second-largest stadium in college football, fourth-largest stadium in the world, and 99 percent of the stadium was filled up with our fans, and it made a huge difference.

A lot of the other [first-round playoff] games had some built-in advantages in terms of the distance between the two teams. So the fact that we filled that thing up with 106,000 fans, predominantly all of ours, is significant. I don’t want that to come off the wrong way. I’ve got a ton of respect for SMU. I’ve got a ton of respect for Coach Lashlee. But it was impactful today, and it’s really like that all the time. From the spring game with 75,000-plus all the way through this season, we get tremendous support, and we don’t take that for granted.

On linebacker Dom DeLuca’s two-interception game: Dom is just — he’s a baller. You talk about a guy who was Pennsylvania Player of the Year, won a state championship on a torn ACL, gray-shirted to be able to come here, came as a walk-on, earned a scholarship. What a shame that there may not be more stories like this in college football with the 105 [scholarship] rule. Dom DeLuca may not happen at Penn State. I love Dom and Mom and Dad. I think he’s a tremendous example for all of our players on the team.

On adjusting to SMU’s offense and containing quarterback Kevin Jennings: The combination of them and how they run their offense and what they do, did a great job, and we needed to get settled down. We didn’t face that a whole lot this year. We tried to simulate in practice by going good-on-good, but it’s one thing to go six plays doing it. It’s another thing to do it against that type of team who does it for a living, and obviously their head coach does a phenomenal job with it, and that’s his reputation. We just had to get the guys settled down, get their cleats in the ground, get the calls in, execute the calls. Then once we did that — I thought although we didn’t get [Kevin Jennings] on the ground as many times as I think we could have, we impacted him dramatically.

On Penn State’s failed fourth-down attempt at its own 19-yard line: We fumbled the snap. That’s why we didn’t pick that up. But that was huge, right? I told the guys we were going to call the game aggressively on offense, defense, and special teams. I wanted them to play aggressively. I wanted [defensive coordinator] Tom Allen and [offensive coordinator] Andy Kotelnicki and [special teams coordinator] Justin Lustig to call the game aggressively. Don’t play on your heels, play on your toes … We’ve got to be able to pick up fourth-and-1, and I’d call it again. I’d call it again.

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SMU coach Rhett Lashlee

Opening statement: Disappointed for our team, we don’t get to keep playing and that we didn’t get to show maybe our best today, even though Penn State deserves a ton of credit. I mean, that’s going to be a hard out for Boise and whoever else gets to play them. But wish we would have put our best foot forward a little bit better than we did today. 

On the crowd impact: We got what we expected. I don’t think we burned timeouts because of the crowd per se, but I thought 95 percent of the game we handled the crowd great. First half we didn’t have any issues. It was that third quarter we got down on the end zone where the student section was, and I think we had the ball inside the five two different times. We settled for a field goal on one. We missed a field goal on the other. I think when you couple that with the drive in the first half, we had the ball probably inside the 10 or 15 three times and had an interception, a field goal and a missed field goal. The crowd was definitely a factor there, and it showed.

On falling behind: This was a tough matchup the way they can rush the passer. You get behind the way we did, you know, you have to be able to stay balanced. You have to be able to run it and throw it and not be in must-pass situations, and when you get to that point where you’re down 21-0 or more, it’s really hard in this environment against that defense. So, yeah, it may have had a great bearing on the game, but guess what, we had the opportunity to do that and didn’t do it, so we have no one to blame but ourselves on that.

On finishing drives: We needed to be able to play with tempo and play with balance. The few drives we did that, we moved the football. Statistically, the game’s not that lopsided, but those third and ones and the way those turnovers went, it had a huge impact on how the game ended up unfolding. Like I said, when we got behind the way we did, it made it hard for us to play the way we needed to to hang in this kind of game and play good team football. It just did, and credit to them for making those plays, and like I said, we have no one to blame but us for allowing it to go down that way.

On whether he considered pulling quarterback Kevin Jennings: Yes, after Kevin threw the last
touchdown, felt like that was a good way to finish — as good a way to finish the day as we could, the way it went, and we talked to Preston [Stone, who is in the transfer portal]. It was his option and, look, I get it. Just like at that point, we didn’t want Kevin to go back in and get hurt. You know, we don’t want him to go into the offseason hurt. Preston’s about to have an opportunity to go play somewhere else and in fairness to him, it would be a shame to roll him out there for a drive or two that doesn’t have an impact on the game and him get hurt, so it was a great conversation with he and us and we just decided to let Keldric [Luster] go with it. Keldric’s going to be part of this team next year. It was good to get him out there. So, yeah, it was all positive things as far as that goes, but it’s just no reason to put him at risk for his future, either.

Penn State defensive tackle Dvon J-Thomas

On the Nittany Lions’ defense: I believe, truly believe that we are the best defense in the country by

far, by any means, and I think today was just another opportunity for us to show that. There’s no other way that I wanted to go out of Beaver Stadium than to put on a defensive performance like we did.

Two pick sixes, and we stopped the run. We stopped the passing game. We shot everything down.

SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings

On the Beaver Stadium atmosphere: We prepared all week at practice, the two weeks we had to practice and prepare for it, so we were really all right with the sound. But you know, it was a big impact for sure, though, and they showed out and came out there and just, you know, kind of disturbed our offense a little bit.