UNIVERSITY PARK -- Penn State needed this one, and it knew it.
Nobody in the locker room was shouting “must win” before kickoff, but the stakes were impossible to miss. Another loss would have taken even more air out of Matt Campbell’s first season, and the way things had been going, the slide could have kept rolling.
Instead, the Nittany Lions steadied themselves Saturday at Beaver Stadium and beat Purdue, 31-17, to give their season a pulse again.
Campbell stopped short of calling it relief, but he did say the team finally looked like “a real team.”
The biggest change came on the ground. After an extra week to reset, Penn State went back to the basics and made physicality the priority again. Campbell said “the two things we went to work on the last two weeks were running the ball and stopping the run.”
That showed up immediately in the numbers. Penn State rolled up 269 rushing yards and held Purdue to just 33, controlling the game by leaning into a part of the roster that had been missing for too long.
Cam Wallace led the way with 135 yards, while Carson Hanson added 96. Together, they averaged 5.9 yards on 39 carries.
“We needed that,” quarterback Rocco Becht said of the run game.
The offense still has work to do through the air, and the special teams took a step backward, but the defense backed up the effort with its most complete outing of the year. Penn State forced five punts, picked off two passes and kept Purdue to only 44 plays by helping the offense hold the ball for 43 minutes.
“It was almost frustrating as a defense because you want to be out there,” linebacker Kooper Ebel said with a smile. “We had fresh legs.
Credit to our offense. They made it easy on us.”
That was no small thing against a Purdue team that came in with the No. 8 offense in the Big Ten and a passing attack that can cause problems. Instead, Penn State got after quarterback Ryan Browne, generating more pressure than it had all season. The Lions finished with six quarterback hurries to go with the two interceptions.
“The pass rush was a big emphasis,” defensive tackle Armstrong Nnodim said. “We sat down, and it was a look at yourself in the mirror (moment).”
Campbell said he started to see a different edge in the loss to Michigan, one he believes carried into this game.
“At Michigan, I saw this group respond, and to me, it gained some momentum for itself,” he said.
That wasn’t the case earlier in the season, at least in his view. After losses to Wisconsin, Northwestern and USC, he said the team didn’t handle adversity the same way.
“I felt at different times in the second half of a couple of these games, when things were going against us, we folded,” he said. “We didn't have the ability to respond, for whatever reason, whether it was coaching or whatever.”
Penn State is now 4-4, and while Purdue is hardly a measuring stick that changes everything, the Lions are past the point of being picky about how they collect wins.
Campbell has kept an even tone through the rough patches, and he pointed again to the way the team has handled the strain of his debut season.
“We'll see if we can build on it,” he said. “This senior class has been through a lot, no matter how you slice it.
Whether they came here or they stayed here, it's been a lot of change. The reason why we're sitting here today in late October, ready to get to November, and you have a tough four-game losing streak, and some of those games you have every opportunity to win and you don't, this group has never wavered.
“They haven't … whined or complained. They've just gone to work and tried like heck to correct the areas and grow themselves forward. I wouldn't say everybody in that locker room has done it, but I'd say the vast majority has.”
Penn State did it Saturday without its top two receivers, Koby Howard and Chase Sowell, who was added late to the injury report. It also did it in front of a crowd with plenty of empty seats, though Campbell made sure to start his postgame remarks by saluting the people who were there.
“I thought, man, the energy in that stadium for our football team was awesome,” he said. “I really can't thank them enough.”
The fans who showed up got a team that looked more grounded, more physical and more connected than it has for much of the season. And for one afternoon, that was enough.
“It feels good to get a dub,” tight end Andrew Rappleyea said. “It's a good day.”
One that sure beats the alternative.
In Other News...
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Penn State opens against Bloomsburg at Rec Hall, and Haines status is one of the biggest early storylines around the program. A decision on whether he can compete this season would shape both the lineup and the ceiling for a team that already expects to be in the national title mix. [Read more 🡒]
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The timing also adds a bit more weight to a game that already carries some intrigue. Penn State enters at 4-4, Washington comes in at 5-3, and both teams are still looking to put a cleaner finish on uneven seasons. With kickoff now locked in, the focus shifts fully to what this one means on the field, and how much each side can still salvage in November. [Read more 🡒]