Andrew Rappleyea stood motionless during Penn State’s alma mater after Saturday night’s 24-20 loss to Wisconsin, staring down at the ground while the rest of the scene washed over him. He barely moved, except to spit.
That kind of loss is familiar to him. Rappleyea lived through last year’s late collapse against Oregon, and he was also on the field when Penn State unraveled against Northwestern a few weeks later in Beaver Stadium - the sequence that eventually ended with James Franklin’s firing.
This team was supposed to be different. Penn State entered the season built for a return to the College Football Playoff after a one-year absence, with a manageable schedule, a new head coach in Matt Campbell and enough proof in nonconference play that the group could handle adversity.
Instead, Saturday night dragged the Nittany Lions back into a scene that felt all too recognizable. The crowd went quiet, then scattered boos popped up.
The offense never found a rhythm. The defense held up for a while, then wore down after being stretched too thin.
Four games into the season, the whole thing already feels shaky.
Campbell didn’t sound rattled afterward. He leaned into the idea that the next stretch will show what this team is made of.
“Adversity is what college football is about - the ability to overcome adversity and the ability to unify and rally forward,” Campbell said. “And this will be a great test for us.
We’ll find out a lot more about ourselves here in the next six days from our coaching staff and our players. And the reality of it is, these are all correctable things if we’re remaining humble enough to be able to make the great correction.”
But the response has to come from more than the players. The coaching staff has plenty to clean up, too, and Campbell admitted he could have handled some of the biggest moments differently.
He let the first half drain away rather than pushing to add to a 17-7 lead. In the fourth quarter, he used a timeout before a second ticked off the clock on fourth-and-1, then punted anyway - making the timeout and the five yards saved from a potential delay of game feel pointless while leaving the offense with only two timeouts on its final drive.
Those choices will linger.
“I think we can put some judgment on the head coach right there,” Campbell said. “The fourth-and-1.
Should we have went for it, should we have not? I felt like we were playing such good defense there that I just didn’t want to put the team at risk.
I think that’ll eat at me.”
The offensive issues ran deeper than one decision, though. Offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser has to do a better job of putting receivers in position to help quarterback Rocco Becht, and Becht has to be better himself. After a strong start to the season, he looked much more like the inconsistent quarterback Penn State has seen in past years.
Becht didn’t dodge responsibility after the game.
“Not great,” Becht said when asked how he played. “I got to be better for the offense.
I got to be better for this team. I can’t put us in scenarios where our backs are backed up, and we got to have a big play.
We got to continue to move the chains, stay in front of the sticks, and I didn’t do my part today. I got to do better.”
The passing game’s struggles were new, and the absence of star wide receiver Koby Howard because of injury helps explain why. But the problems Saturday weren’t limited to one missing target. The offensive line started to crack, Becht struggled, and the run game disappeared, even though that has been an issue throughout the season.
James Peoples led Penn State with 14 carries for 67 yards, and after the game he walked off alongside running backs coach Savon Huggins, who had an arm around him. Huggins gave him a message the team may need to carry into the week ahead.
“He said, ‘What is one thing that you took from this entire week?’” Peoples recalled after the game.
“And I said that you got to approach every day like it’s your last. And I think, as a whole team, we can take that model and just run with it to understand that when we come back tomorrow, and we get on the film, that we got to approach every day like it’s our last.
Because this feeling sucks, but we probably needed it as a team. And we can come back better than before.”
Penn State doesn’t have long to sit with it. The Nittany Lions head to Northwestern next, and they’ll do it on a Friday night in a new stadium, with the Wildcats coming off a game that gave defending national champion Indiana fits.
And the stretch after that is even tougher: USC in the White Out, then a trip to Ann Arbor to face a Michigan team that will be just as desperate as Penn State to keep its playoff hopes alive.
Saturday night was supposed to be one of the easier games on the schedule, the kind you bank and move past.
Instead, it became Campbell’s first loss at Penn State and the team’s first real dose of adversity.
He has talked plenty about moments like this, about how a team responds when things start going sideways and what those failures reveal. Now he’s going to find out.
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If either one is unable to go, Penn State would have to lean on its depth in some key spots. Vaea Ikakoula is among the options at center, while Ben Brahmer and Gabe Burkle are in line to handle more work at tight end. The final word will come two hours before kickoff, leaving the Lions with at least one more nerve-wracking wait before the matchup is fully set. [Read more 🡒]