Pat Kraft is already under the microscope, and Matt Campbell’s rough start has only turned up the heat.
Penn State’s first-year coach is 3-2 after a 34-13 loss to Northwestern on Friday night, and the Nittany Lions now look headed toward another 3-3 start with USC coming to Happy Valley in Week 6. That’s a nasty place to be after Campbell inherited a roster that was supposed to stabilize the program, not send it backward.
But the pressure isn’t landing on Campbell alone. It’s landing on Kraft, too - the athletic director who made the hire, then built a process that now looks shaky from top to bottom.
Kraft came to Penn State from Boston College and replaced Sandy Barbour after her retirement. For a while, his biggest moves were the push for a major Beaver Stadium renovation and the hiring of men’s basketball coach Mike Rhoades, a decision that has turned disastrous, though largely because of a lack of investment. The most successful Penn State programs under Kraft have mostly been the ones he inherited from Barbour: Cael Sanderson, Katie Schumacher-Cawley, and James Franklin.
Then Kraft made his biggest football swing. He fired Franklin six games into last season after a 3-3 start, just one year removed from a trip to the College Football Playoff semifinal. Now, after only two games in Campbell’s first season, Penn State looks worse than it did a year ago even as that previous season was unraveling from national championship expectations.
Campbell is taking plenty of heat himself. His conservative game management is drawing scrutiny, and so is the lack of talent on the roster, which is heavily made up of players who followed him from Ames. The loss to Northwestern only sharpened that criticism.
Still, the deeper issue is how Penn State got here. Kraft was so focused on landing a big-name coach that he passed on rising options like Will Stein and Bob Chesney while other programs locked up extensions for Curt Cignetti, Matt Rhule, Mike Elko, Brent Key, Clark Lea, Eli Drinkwitz, and Jeff Brohm. He then missed publicly on BYU’s Kalani Sitake.
That sequence left Penn State without a coach when early signing day arrived in early December, and Campbell had to scramble to piece together a 16-player class built mostly from Iowa State signees.
The hiring itself isn’t the only question. In a vacuum, it made sense.
Campbell had success at an under-resourced program and consistently outperformed expectations, so the theory was that bigger resources would lead to bigger results. The problem is that Penn State’s resources still aren’t close to the level of its biggest Big Ten rivals.
According to The Athletic, the Nittany Lions spent $29-32 million on this roster, while Ohio State and Oregon are spending around $50 million in 2026.
That gap matters, and it matters even more when Penn State is also pouring money into a $700 million renovation to Beaver Stadium while raising the price to watch a team that isn’t delivering on the field.
And if the Northwestern loss didn’t make that obvious enough, the details did. Penn State allowed over 400 yards rushing in Week 5.
Campbell did not onside kick down three scores with a little under eight minutes left. He also punted from the +43 with 6:55 left in the third quarter while trailing by 17.
None of that is ideal. None of it makes Kraft look better.
It’s still too early to label Campbell a bad hire, and there’s still a path for him to steady the program and build something better than what Franklin kept bumping into. But after this start, that path looks a lot narrower than it did eight days ago.
If this keeps going south, Kraft may be the one pushed out before Campbell. And at this point, that would probably be the correct order.
In Other News...
Penn State's Matt Campbell Era Already Faces One Uncomfortable Reality
Penn States 2026 season has already turned into a hard reality check at 3-3, with no interconference wins and problems showing up on both sides of the ball. The roster includes plenty of players who followed Matt Campbell from Iowa State, but the adjustment to Big Ten play has exposed a familiar gap: the Nittany Lions still do not have the kind of overall talent base needed to make a real push in this league.
The offense has had to manage without wide receiver Koby Howard, adding another layer to a unit already searching for answers. And while the season is still young enough for recovery, the larger concern is harder to ignore. If Penn State wants to be more than a respectable program with a familiar coach, analysts believe it will have to spend more aggressively and recruit at a higher level to build a true national-title roster. [Read more 🡒]
Penn States Young Left Tackle Is Trying To Fix A Bigger Problem
Malachi Goodman has settled in as Penn States left tackle in a hurry, winning the job and starting all six games so far this season. For a redshirt freshman, that kind of responsibility brings plenty of learning moments, and Goodman has already had a few early corrections to make, including subtle mistakes like tipping off plays before the snap. He has spent the season trying to clean those up while holding down one of the most visible spots on the line.
The bigger issue, though, goes beyond one young blocker. Penn States running game has not been as consistent as the staff would like, and Goodman pointed to technique and cohesion as the key places where the offensive line has to improve together. For a unit still building trust and rhythm, the challenge is less about any one player and more about getting five linemen working with the same timing and same level of precision. [Read more 🡒]
Penn State Heads To Michigan With Two Troubling Questions Up Front
Penn States trip to Michigan arrives with the same familiar concern hanging over the Nittany Lions: can the front control the game well enough to let the rest of the roster breathe? The matchup puts a spotlight on both lines, and Penn States recent issues generating a consistent pass rush have become hard to ignore. Against a Michigan front that has shown a stronger ability to heat up the quarterback, the Nittany Lions are staring at a test that could shape the whole afternoon long before the skill players get involved.
Rocco Becht and the Penn State offense will need cleaner pockets and more stability than they have found lately, especially with Michigan edge rusher John Henry Daley bringing real pressure off the edge. The other side of the ball brings its own stress point, because Penn States defensive line has not consistently won enough snaps to force offenses off schedule. For a team trying to survive in a rugged road environment, the questions up front are not side issues, they are the story. [Read more 🡒]