Penn State vs. Ohio State will define the James Franklin era. Can he win at Ohio Stadium?

James Franklin has faced this foe before. Saturday afternoon he and Penn State will take on Ohio State for the 10th time in his career, but he’s still in search of just his second win over the Buckeyes.

Franklin and the Nittany Lions are 1-8 against them and 0-4 when they play them in Ohio Stadium.

This has not been a hurdle for the head coach and his program — it’s been a 50-foot wall.

And Saturday things will be very different. There’s even more on the line than the seventh win of the season, the team’s undefeated record, a chance at a Big Ten title and a potential College Football Playoff berth.

The game will define this era of Penn State football and will decide if the program has ascended into the ranks of the elite in the sport.

How they got here

The Nittany Lions have spent the better part of the last decade chasing the Buckeyes. There were close calls by outmatched teams (2014), upset victories by upstarts (2016) and great teams that just couldn’t close the deal (2017 and 2018). Those last two teams could make an argument that they were on Ohio State’s level.

Only one quarterback has led the team to victory over the perennial favorites in the Big Ten — Trace McSorley. The former Nittany Lion signal caller told the Centre Daily Times that the preparation never changed (a staple of the 1-0 mentality Franklin instills in his teams) and that was part of why those games were so competitive.

“I never felt like there was more pressure or anything like that,” he said. “Obviously there’s a lot more hype around the game that you know is there. You understand it, but I think the good thing about that whole 1-0 mentality is that you never build one game up too high or too low. You kind of go through your process every single week. I never remember feeling more gravity or more pressure or anything like that for that game. ... Game days I would try to feel the hype around it a little bit and kind of let that fuel me and motivate me and just kind of let that adrenaline go.”

McSorley had as much success as any recent Penn State signal caller against the Buckeyes. He led the team down the field prior to halftime in the 2016 game to score a touchdown that helped fuel the team’s comeback. He was the focal point of the offense in 2017 when Penn State led 35-20 entering the fourth quarter in Ohio Stadium, finishing the game as the team’s leading rusher and leading passer, while throwing for two touchdowns and running for one more. He threw for 286 yards and ran for 175 in 2018 when the team led 26-14 with eight minutes left in the game.

The former Nittany Lion had plenty of success against the Buckeyes, but his incredible performances ending in defeat show just how talented those Ohio State teams were.

They were so close that the losses never felt season-ending or like they were devastating, but more that an opportunity was missed.

“It was always one of those, like, you were frustrated because we competed with them so well every single year,” he said. “We had chances to win every single time. Obviously we won in 2016, 2017 we were up big and they came back in the fourth quarter, 2018 we were driving down to go kick a field goal to go win the game and got stopped on fourth down. It was more just frustrating losing to them how we did.”

McSorley’s final game against the Buckeyes led to a frustrated Franklin making comments postgame about the program needing to take the final step from being great to elite. Strides have been made since then, with a two-year speed bump in between from 2020-2021, and now the Nittany Lions are again knocking on the door that they tried to go through in 2018.

This matchup, unlike that one, will be on the road. But also unlike that year, this year’s team feels like it’s in better position than any other of the Franklin era to make the final step and get itself over the hump.

Why this year is different

Despite how much closer the Nittany Lions are, they still enter this year’s matchups as underdogs — by 4.5 points as of Tuesday night, according to FanDuel Sportsbook. But that number continues to trend toward Penn State. The Buckeyes were favored by as much as 10.5 prior to Week 1 and that has slowly drifted downward since.

The spread, though, doesn’t tell the full story here — the matchups do.

For years, Penn State’s offensive line has not been able to keep up with the best in college football. It was a spot where Franklin expressed optimism seemingly every offseason until prior to the 2022 season when he said he would let the group’s play do the talking. They took a step that year into being good.

Now they’ve taken the step to being great.

Olu Fashanu anchors the bunch at left tackle as the best offensive lineman in the country. The linemen are now at the point where no team should have a large advantage, no matter how good they are.

On defense, Penn State boasts arguably the best pass rush in the country with three defensive ends in Dani Dennis-Sutton, Adisa Isaac and Chop Robinson, who could start almost anywhere.

Those two fronts seem to be where this program has built its identity — as one that excels in the trenches. And identity, whatever Franklin considers it to be, is something that matters to him.

“For me, I think staying true to our identity and what has got us here, while still saying, OK, these are some areas where we have to improve, whether that’s on offense, defense, whether that’s on special teams,” Franklin said in his Tuesday press conference.” Again, I think I’ve said this to you guys before, studying the analytics are important so you’re aware of what those things say, but a lot of times those analytics and trends are there for a reason. It means you’re good at something. One of the big mistakes you can make is get to certain games that some people say are this or that and you try to be something that you haven’t been in the previous six weeks.”

That last part is telling. This isn’t a Penn State team that feels the need to adjust for the Buckeyes. Yes, it will have adjustments and find weaknesses in them — but it does not have to change who it is to have success.

That is surely the sign of a team that knows who it is and believes it’s good enough to climb the wall it has failed to in the past. It’s just a matter of whether the Nittany Lions can come through.

Because sometime shortly after 3 p.m. Saturday, the final whistle will blow in Ohio Stadium, and we will find out the answer — either Penn State will be among the elite, or it will remain a step behind the best in college football, with no discernible path to make the final jump.