The Biggest Question Facing Penn State Football as Week 1 Approaches

Matt Campbell has been on the job at Penn State for eight months. He went through the chaotic and relentless roster-building weeks last January, spent the winter installing his team culture, led a deliberate teaching process in the spring and pivoted toward training camp with the roster he wanted: experienced, tough and bought-in.

And yet, about two weeks before the Nittany Lions open the 2026 season against Marshall, Campbell remains unsure what kind of team he'll bring Sept. 5 to Beaver Stadium.

"I think we’re going to keep learning about this football team, I hate to tell you, through the first part of the season," Campbell said Thursday after practice.

Penn State underwent its biggest offseason of change this year since 2012, a year when the program had its first new head coach since the 1960s and learned it would play under a debilitating set of NCAA restrictions. But even that team overwhelmingly was the same as the one that finished the 2011 season at the TicketCity Bowl in Dallas.

But that was another era of college football, and Campbell took over Penn State roster that would go through a substantial overhaul. He brought in 55 players who were not Nittany Lions last season. Forty of them played for 17 other schools, including 24 at Iowa State.

The players came from the Big 12, Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Division III. Some are playing for their third school. Receiver Chase Sowell is playing for his fourth. Defensive lineman Siale Taupaki, who transferred from UCLA, is playing college football for his eighth season.

So it's little wonder that Campbell said he's unsure what Penn State will be when it hosts the Thundering Herd. He has a picture, which guard Cooper Cousins clearly defined as "dominant, nasty and accountable" for the offense, but hasn't seen it fully form on the practice field yet.

"What's your greatest fear? It's the fear of the unknown," Campbell said. "We're all going through each phase of this uniquely for the first time."

Campbell thrives in this landscape.

Getting inside the program

Penn State coach Matt Campbell on QB Alex Manske's two-year journey through elbow surgery, heart surgery and his return to football.

"It's a miracle, it's a blessing and we're all really grateful."https://t.co/GegjxtOApL
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— Mark Wogenrich (@MarkWogenrich) August 20, 2026

Campbell often references the "storm" that awaits every athlete and team. He went through it during the 2021 and '22 seasons at Iowa State, when the Cyclones went 11-14 after winning the Fiesta Bowl in 2020. One thing he noticed about the years that followed was how his players stuck with him.

Many of them are at Penn State now, including quarterback Rocco Becht, tight ends Ben Brahmer and Gabe Burkle and linebackers Caleb Bacon and Cooper Ebel. He drew some parallels between them and the Penn State players who returned following their 7-6 crash of 2025.

"I think the reality of going through a season where you don't reach your full potential is, why did some of those things occur from their viewpoint?" Campbell said in a preseason interview. " And then taking that understanding and also paralleling it with, these are some of the things that we've been through. Did you feel that? Did you see that? Here's what we used to get ourselves out of that. And having the opportunity to have authentic conversation, I think those things have helped us immensely."

Penn State also went through a stilted set of spring practices, with more than 20 players limited or out for various reasons. "I think we've come a long way from spring ball, which was hardly football in my opinion for what the standards are, and they've done a good job [in training camp]," offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser said.

So who is Penn State?

Penn State Nittany Lions football coach Matt Campbell during a practice session inside Holuba Hall. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

There's a lot riding on Campbell's first season at Penn State, not the least of which is the specter of the second. Penn State released its season-ticket prices for 2027, when the renovated Beaver Stadium debuts, and some fans could be paying triple their current rates if they retain the same seat locations. Penn State needs positive momentum to continue the sales push into next year.

Meanwhile, Campbell has one of college football's most enigmatic Power 4 rosters. It's loaded with experience, fielding the most cumulative starts of any Big Ten team, but also with plenty of untested talent in the conference. No wonder outside analysts consider Penn State's season "seemingly impossible" to predict.

Training camp has brought the expected combination of standouts, rising stars and consistency concerns. It also has left Campbell with some of the same questions he had before camp started. His combination of parts has fused well so far, but now Campbell and his staff have to weld it even tighter.

We can predict the depth chart pretty effectively. But we can't predict how that lineup will play in September. Campbell remains at that point as well.

"All this stuff is great, but it’s just preparing you for the lights," Campbell said. "It’s preparing you for the stadium, it’s preparing you to play a different opponent, and we’re going to have to work through all those things together, too.

"… Every single day we’re learning a little bit more about ourselves: who can do it, who can do it to the standard that we want to play the game of football with and play to the standards that we’ve set around this program of what it takes to play championship football here."

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