In the aftermath of the Week 5 clash between No. 6 Oregon and No. 3 Penn State, a storyline will emerge.

If Dan Lanning leads the Ducks to victory, it will add to Penn State head coach James Franklin’s reputation of struggling against elite competition and only winning games he is supposed to win. If Franklin and the Nittany Lions defend home turf, it will be another road loss for Lanning that will revive concerns about his ability to prepare his team for tough road games.

Ahead of a game that will land near the top of both coaches’ vastly different resumes, it is worth reviewing how they got to this point.

When Franklin took over the Penn State job in 2014, Lanning had just stepped into his first role as a position coach, overseeing defensive backs at Sam Houston State University.

By the time Lanning came to Eugene in 2022, Franklin had amassed 91 wins between Penn State and his previous stop at Vanderbilt University, and the Nittany Lions finished that season with a Rose Bowl win over No. 8 Utah.

The coaches began on somewhat similar career paths, although Franklin saw more success both in his playing days and his transition to coaching. 

In his senior season playing quarterback for Division II East Stroudsburg University, Franklin was nominated for the 1994 Division II Player of the Year award after setting school records for both passing yards and total offense.

He took his first coaching job the next year as wide receivers coach at Division II Kutztown University, before returning to East Stroudsburg to learn how to coach the other side of the ball as its secondary coach.

Lanning had a more modest playing career, finishing third in total tackles for Division III William Jewell College in 2007, while recording one interception and four sacks. He also made an effort to learn the opposite side of the ball early in his coaching career, but did so at the high school level as the wide receivers coach at Park Hill South High School in Missouri.

Both coaches worked their way up the ranks by succeeding in graduate assistant and position coach roles. Franklin’s journey included a stop in the NFL as the Green Bay Packers’ wide receivers coach in 2005, and, while Lanning hasn’t yet reached that level, he collected national championships at the University of Alabama in 2015 and the University of Georgia in 2021.

Franklin came to Penn State off the back of two top-25 finishes at Vanderbilt. He began with two middling 7-6 seasons, but broke out in 2016, achieving an 11-3 record, a win over No. 2 Ohio State and a Big Ten Championship. 

Since then, rising expectations have gradually caught up with Franklin, with 11 wins going from an excellent outcome for the program to making fans and media wonder if this program could contend for the Big Ten Championship more often under a different coach.

Although Lanning started stronger than Franklin, going 10-3 and 12-2 in his first two seasons, similar questions lingered around both programs at the beginning of the CFP era in 2024. Lanning had amassed six ranked wins, but dropped three away games to Washington and one to Oregon State, prompting the same storyline of stalling out in rivalry games.

By the time of their first meeting in the 2024 Big Ten Championship game, the narratives around both coaches had shifted. Lanning had eased the concerns about winning big games with a home win over No. 2 Ohio State, while Franklin needed to recover from another loss to the Buckeyes, but finally had a chance to do so in the postseason.

Lanning took home the conference championship by a score of 45-37, but Franklin eventually got his postseason redemption in the new format by leading Penn State to the CFP semifinal while Oregon crashed out in the second round. While Lanning set a new standard for the Oregon program and Franklin indicated that he could succeed in the new format, both coaches ultimately came out of the season with more to prove.

Penn State came into 2025 with its highest preseason AP poll ranking of Franklin’s tenure, at No. 2. The Nittany Lions won their first three games — none against Power Four teams — by blowout scores, and come into the Oregon matchup off a bye week.

The Ducks similarly have not been tested early in the season, but Lanning has done an impressive job getting the talent on Oregon’s roster to show through despite its inexperience.

Neither coach has said that this game alone will define their season. The losing one, though, will have to contend with that in the aftermath.