Brent Pry and James Franklin might be in two different conferences now, but their friendship is still moving strong. Pry is finally a head coach for a D1 program, after working under the PSU HC for many decades. The two have created a lot of good in the 10 years they worked together, which is something Pry holds very close to his heart. The Hokies coach revealed some fun and heartwarming thoughts on his and Franklin’s years as colleagues.
Pry and Franklin went on to create a significant period for Penn State. Both coaches also have individual achievements in their bags that prove how good they are at their job. When the duo was at Vanderbilt, Pry helped develop linebacker Oren Burks, who won the 2024 Super Bowl with the Philadelphia Eagles. In his very first year at Penn State, as the LB coach, he helped Mike Hull earn the Big 10 Butkus-Fitzgerald Award. And in the years to come, he would prove to be a great asset to James Franklin.
In a June 27 video of Bobby Bones Sports, the now Virginia Tech HC shared an interesting tidbit about how James Franklin and he started off. “He played quarterback for my father in college, and I was a young coach in my first job. This was at East Stroudsburg, little D2 school in the Poconos. And so we’ve been friends a long time. We came up in this business,” he said. Franklin also joined as a defensive secondary coach for East Stroudsburg in 1996. But after that, he and Pry went their separate ways until Vanderbilt.
“He’s a great leader, you know. Obviously we had a lot of success at Vanderbilt that they hadn’t achieved prior to that. You know, we had good staff, good people, and I loved our players there. We had really good teams. Never the most talented, but better teams,” Pry remarked about their Vanderbilt tenures. He and Franklin started with a 6-7 record with the Commodores and then ended with 9-4 in 2013. At Penn State, they’d been through it all. Brent Pry was able to help Franklin claim the Big 10 conference title in 2016.
And then came 2021, when Brent Pry accepted his first head coaching job ever at Virginia Tech. He told Bones that when he informed Franklin about the news, he responded with a dramatic, “What do you mean?! I thought we were gonna coach together forever!” “I’m like ‘James, it’s a head job at Virginia Tech. I’m not gonna turn this one down,” Pry recalled. Pry’s departure saw the arrival of Manny Diaz, who regards Franklin as the man who saved his doomed career.
“I was excited to jump on board with him and join forces at Vanderbilt and Penn State for a bunch of years. It was tough to leave, even for a head job like Virginia Tech. You know, I loved working with James, and we accomplished a lot at Penn State and Vanderbilt,” the Hokies coach said. At Penn State, the duo created stellar defenses for six years, out of which one helped Franklin win the Big 10 title.
A look at the highlights of Brent Pry’s defenses under James Franklin at PSU
After winning the Big 10 championship, Pry continued giving James Franklin defenses that ranked in the top 10 in stats. In 2017, for example, his defenses were able to prevent opponents from scoring in one half of the game seven times in the season. They finished 7th in overall defense in the regular season and stood 2nd in the conference. Three members of that defense were selected in the 2018 draft: Troy Apke, Marcus Allen, and Christian Campbell.
In 2018, as well, the numbers kept coming. The Nittany Lions racked up sacks, finishing first in the country. In 2019, he created another Butkus-Fitzgerald Award winner in Micah Parsons, who also went as a first-round pick in the draft later on. And in 2021, before he accepted the HC job at Blacksburg, Brent Pry was nominated for the Broyles Award, given to the best assistant coach.
At Virginia Tech, Pry is taking the HC job seriously. After a rough start in 2022, he took the Hokies to a 7-6 score, at par with a standard set in 2019. 2024 once again dipped to 6-7, but Pry is only 3 years into the system. Down the line, he sure is primed to put forward better records, especially after riding with James Franklin for all these years.
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