Matt Campbell arrived at Penn State with the kind of early goodwill every new coach dreams about. He brought humility, respect for the program’s history and an appreciation for its people, from the legends to the lettermen to the broader community. For a while, he looked like the right reset after James Franklin.
Then the Big Ten schedule hit, and the conversation changed fast.
What Penn State has shown in its 0-2 start to conference play is hard to ignore. The defense has been shaky, the offense has been even worse, and special teams have been merely adequate, with reliable kicker Ryan Barker even missing a couple. The coaching staff has not had the answers, getting outschemed at the start of games and halves while also lacking much sideline fire.
If you count the late touchdown pass to Chase Sowell against Northwestern, the Lions have managed one TD drive in two Big Ten games. That’s the kind of number that forces everyone to look straight at the head coach.
Friday night at Northwestern was especially ugly. The Wildcats rushed for 413 yards, with gains of 30 yards or more four times, 20 or more six times and 10 or more 12 times. The Penn State defense, after helping set up two touchdowns against Wisconsin, fell apart in Evanston and, frankly, would have been better suited for a matador competition.
That kind of performance puts the burden squarely on Campbell to turn things around quickly. Football success reaches far beyond the field at Penn State and across Central PA, and this start has already put the program under a harsh spotlight.
Campbell did walk into a tough situation. He was hired late, James Franklin took a dozen players to Virginia Tech, and others left in the current free-agent NIL landscape.
That’s part of the reality here. So is the pressure on athletic director Pat Kraft, who, as the source reporting notes, mangled the search and has become a polarizing figure with price increases and his overall comportment.
In some ways, Kraft may need Campbell to stabilize things even more than Campbell needs the spotlight to ease.
Still, the early results have been rough enough to unsettle just about everyone. Even compared with the 2003-04 teams, which went 7-16 and won only three Big Ten games but were usually competitive, this version of Penn State did not look like a team ready to battle most Power-4 opponents. If Northwestern is a good team, the Lions looked overmatched against a lot more than just the Wildcats.
The roster construction was supposed to give Campbell a fighting chance. The two dozen transfers from Iowa State are mostly upperclassmen who already know him and his staff, which created the sense that there would be some immediate traction. That hasn’t happened yet.
And while social media is doing what social media does, the bigger picture still matters. No hire should really be judged for two or three years, and Penn State has seen slow starts before.
Joe Paterno lost six of his first 11. Bill O’Brien dropped his first two before turning things around.
Franklin, too, opened his first two seasons at 7-6.
There are also real roster concerns ahead. Senior quarterback Rocco Becht is struggling, and he leaves after this season anyway. Like most modern college rosters, this one will keep changing, which only makes the climb steeper.
So no, it is too early to call Campbell the wrong choice. But it would also be premature to act like a 2-0 start would have proven he was on his way to Big Ten prominence.
This is going to be a project. Coaching changes in this era usually come with a step or two backward before anything starts moving forward. And Penn State’s current reality is sobering enough on its own: the program has lost nine of its last 12 Big Ten games.
Campbell is not responsible for all of that. But on the field, he has already used up the easy part.
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