Matt Campbell is trying to thread two needles at once as Northwestern approaches: figuring out how much game performance should count in playing time decisions, and how aggressive to be when a lead is there to be finished off.
On the first point, Campbell has long made it clear that practice habits matter. But he said Wednesday that what happens on Saturdays is part of the same evaluation, not something separate from the rest of a player’s body of work.
“I think it’s all relative, right?” Campbell said Wednesday.
“You’re evaluating every piece of the puzzle to make the best decisions for the team. How you practice, how you prepare, what you do outside of football - certainly what you do in the game - but it’s all going to matter if you’re going to build a team.”
He wouldn’t pin that down to any exact formula, or say whether game production and practice work split things evenly.
“It all matters,” he said.
Campbell is also dealing with the fallout from Penn State’s 17-0 lead over Wisconsin slipping away quickly, a game that sparked questions and criticism about some of the play calls afterward. He backed those decisions again on Wednesday after doing the same on Tuesday, saying he did not want to “screw it up,” and invite unnecessary risk.
At the same time, he said Penn State was still trying to finish the job and did attack downfield when the chances were there. The issue, in his view, was execution.
“We took some of those shots down the field that we tried to and had the opportunity to do. We’ve just got to make the plays in the moment,” Campbell said Wednesday. “I think you have a group of kids in this program - that’s why I think I’m so excited about what I’ve witnessed - our kids want to do it right, and it’s just a matter of the consistency of doing it and having the confidence to get it done.”
Campbell pointed to Rocco Becht’s mistimed throws and said the running backs were still “a hair off,” but he said that wasn’t a reason to question the team’s ability.
“I think it’s more of a mental approach than I think it is a physical approach or a play call approach,” Campbell said. “I don’t think there were times where we weren’t trying to go win the game.
I think we were uber aggressive in some moments to try to go put the dagger in. We just didn’t make the plays in the momentum moments to get the momentum back on our side and put the dagger in.”
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