Matt Campbell Details His Plan for Penn State Football After Spring Practice

Penn State football coach Matt Campbell walked directly from the Beaver Stadium field to the media room Saturday afternoon, still drenched from the Nittany Lions' rainy final practice of spring. He didn't want to waste much time, because there were recruits to meet, film to watch and an offseason to begin.

Campbell evaluated his first spring at Penn State as productive, during which the Nittany Lions fused 52 returning players with 51 newcomers (24 from Iowa State) as their primary order of business. Players called that the key accomplishment of spring.

"In the beginning it's hard," said quarterback Rocco Becht, who transfrred from Iowa State. "You have to adapt to the Penn State players that stayed, what they're teaching, what they're preaching. We sat back and followed their lead. We're one team now, we're Penn State now. I'm excited to call each other Penn State and not call each other Iowa State transfers anymore."

Having melded different groups into a roster, Campbell now turns to the evaluation period. Penn State's coaching staff already has met with the strength, training and nutrition staffs to baseline where every player in the program stands.

Then this week, Campbell will meet individually with more than 100 players in the program to gauge their spring progress and summer goals. Following finals during the first week of May, players largely will have off for a few weeks before returning either for the summer session.

"I think the key is everybody being aligned to, where is the growth, what do you have to do?" Campbell said. "Then our coaches will go recruiting. When we come back at the end of May and all of June, we'll put a lot of time and effort schematically into, where does our growth have to go?What do we have to be prepared with as we come back in July and August and really try to pound a way forward as we get ready for the early part of the season?"

'Players, formation, plays'

Spring might be over, but Coach Campbell & the Nittany Lions are just getting started.#WeAre | @PennStateFball pic.twitter.com/akKqs0uihv
— ROAR+ (@ROARPlusPSU) April 27, 2026

Campbell's favorite phrase to describe his coaching model is "players, formations, plays," which he learned playing and coaching for Larry Kehres at Mount Union. Penn State spent this spring learning about its players, particularly on defense, where new coordinator D'Anton Lynn assessed a very new group.

Penn State largely kept its base offensive and defensive formations simple this spring while evaluating its new roster. The Nittany Lions worked through those formations situationally this spring (particularly with some red-zone work they conducted at Beaver Stadium) and will expand deeper into the plays when training camp begins in August.

"We have done baseline pass protections, baseline run-game schemes, baseline pass-game schemes, and t's no different on defense," Campbell said. "We’ve done a great job keeping it really simple: Here’s our base defense, he’s our base fronts and coverages, now where do we expand?

"How do we take these into situational football, like third-down, goal-line, red-zone short yardage, all that stuff? I think what we’ve had to do is be really simple throughout the spring to be able to identify [what works]. Iif you’re trying to scheme each other and win the day or look great on Saturday [at practice], I think you’re in for deep trouble.

"But if you can really evaluate your team now and have a chance to really go to work and put the right pieces together, I think it will give us the best opportunity going forward especially in a unique year like this."

The last thing Campbell left players with was this: Prepare to confront adversity, because it's coming.

"The end piece of it is probably most important: The storm's coming," Campbell said after the final spring practice. "We're going to have adversity. Are we as close-knit, tight-knit of a football team that, when the tough days come, can we fight through down 14? Can we fight through adversity, a bad quarter, a bad half? All of that stuff's coming, right?

"The key to our success is, are we together enough to be able to fight through hard? I think those are great growth opportunities for us. We'll have to continue to pound through as we work through the rest of the summer and certainly fall camp."

Penn State Nittany Lions running back James Peoples (23) runs with the ball during the Blue-White Practice at Beaver Stadium. | Matthew O'Haren-Imagn Images

Sign up to our free Penn State Nittany Lions newsletter and follow us on social media.

Add us as a preferred source on Google