Why Penn State's Matt Campbell Believes He Can Get Through Another 'Tailspin'

Penn State coach Matt Campbell has been here before. He has watched teams succumb to what he called ego and entitlement, felt them underachieve instead of overachieve and tried to pull players and staff from silos within his football building. This part isn't new.

Most of his roster has been here as well. A year ago this week, Penn State's 50 returning players practiced for the first time without head coach James Franklin. They lost six straight games and retreated to their own silos, some feeling an "overwhelming sense of guilt" about their coach's firing.

Tight end Andrew Rappleyea was on that team. Now, as the Nittany Lions seek to end a three-game losing streak, Rappleyea called Campbell the right coach to lead them out of it.

"He’s a coach you want to play for," Rappleyea said after Penn State's 31-23 loss to USC. "Coach Campbell, he's a football guy. He loves us, he wants the best for us. Obviously, you run into roadblocks like this, and it brings out a lot about what you have in the locker room.

"I mean, we've been in this situation. I was here last year. The guys pointed fingers, the guys turned on each other. It's all about how you're going to respond. ... And I promise you, that will not happen, because we have a great coach leading us in that locker room."

For Penn State, this losing streak certainly could linger. The Nittany Lions are culture-rich but talent- and depth-poor and head to Michigan as underdogs for the first time this season. The Wolverines are 6.5-point favorites over Penn State, according to DraftKings, despite being 0-2 in the Big Ten and ranking 17th or 18th in four offensive categories.

But Campbell has his own problems. When they've surfaced before, here's how he handled them.

'Our kids stayed the course'

At the time, Iowa State's 2020 season was among the best in school history, even after a loss to Louisiana in the opener. The Cyclones went 9-3, beat Oklahoma at home for the first time 60 years and Texas on the road for just the second time. Campbell was named Big 12 coach of the year for the third time in four years.

Then the program fell through a hole. The Cyclones went 7-6 in 2021 and 4-8 in 2022, Campbell's second-worst season at Iowa State.

"When success happens, everybody wants the credit," Campbell said in an interview before the season. "You probably didn't realize that until you came back in '21 and '22. I think you let silos start to form within the program, you let ego and entitlement start to settle in, maybe even personally let some of those things settle in. And you had to cross-check it really fast, because you started to get into a tailspin. You started to underachieve rather than overachieve."

Then there was the 2023 Iowa gambling probe that impacted his program. When all of that happened, Campbell retreated to the people who cultivated him: Keith Wakefield, his coach at Perry High in Ohio, and Larry Kehres, his coach at Mount Union College.

"I did a lot of soul-searching personally," Campbell said, "and using those mentors from coach Kehres to Keith Wakefield to my dad, people that you respected in the profession, I kind of just really self-reflected on, where are we, what are some of the things that have happened that you don't agree with? And then it's having the courage to make some of those changes."

Campbell made multiple staff changes before the 2023 season, including firing his best friend, and reclaimed his role as the demanding head coach. That didn't lead to further fractures. To the contrary, it was the kernel of Iowa State's 11-3 2024 season, the best in program history.

"I think the great thing that you never lost was the belief of the players in the program in you, and that was really huge," Campbell said. "I think you saw that because we never had a mass exodus. Our kids stayed the course.

"A lot of the guys playing here now — Rocco Becht, Ben Brahmer, Gabe Burkle, Caleb Bacon, Kooper Ebel — they came to us either when we were in adversity or they were a freshman through that adversity. They stayed the course, and they demanded to lead ourselves forward from that."

'I've been here before'

Penn State's roster is full of players who went through losing streaks and coaching changes last year. As Rappleyea said, 50 returning Nittany Lions know about losing. The 24 Iowa State transfers lost four straight games last season before winning their last three.

UCLA transfers Siale Taupaki and Keanu Williams played for a team that fired head coach DeShaun Foster after three games. So did Armstrong Nnodim, who was at Oklahoma State when it fired Mike Gundy after a 1-2 start.

"I've been here before, and it sucks," Becht said. "But God works in mysterious ways. He's going to continue to fight for us, but we've just got to stay calm and let His journey unfold because I know there's success at the end of the road, and I'm going to continue to follow it."

Upon arriving at Penn State, Campbell sat down with the returning Penn State players and asked them to put their "scars" on the table about last season. He did the same about his. Campbell also had Penn State lettermen share stories about the scars of their playing days.

Former Penn State quarterback Todd Blackledge, who called Saturday's game for NBC, talked about the disappointment of a 1981 loss to Alabama that led to the 1982 national championship. Mike Mauti went in depth about the 2012 season.

Campbell concluded spring practice by taking his team to the State Theatre in downtown State College to watch the documentary "Saving the Roar" about those 2012 Nittany Lions. He called that night "really powerful."

"That's the great thing about college football," Campbell said. "It creates so much adversity and so many setbacks along the way that, if you're willing to learn from them, then you will grow forward from it. I think that's been one of the things that I've always tried to do, success or failure, is ask, 'What did you learn?' and, 'How do we apply that to grow ourselves forward to become the best version of us we can be?'"

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