How good can Penn State football be in head coach Matt Campbell’s first season?
Penn State will have a new coaching staff for the first time in over a decade this season, and with it comes turnover across the roster. The Nittany Lions and new head coach Matt Campbell will have new offensive and defensive coordinators leading units that will look very different from last season. Both sides are set to have as many as 10 new starters each, leading to uncertainty on what the program will be in 2026.
Will the new starters — with a heavy influx of Iowa State players who followed Campbell — be able to elevate Penn State to the standard that’s expected with the program? Let’s take a look.
How good does the team need to be?
It’s understandable for fans to be excited about a new head coach who brought in a massive transfer portal class featuring some of the stars from his last job, but expectations should still be tempered this year. As far as how good does the team need to be, there are two ways to look at that. First, from that expectation standpoint, it would be reasonable to expect a minimum of eight wins from Campbell in his first season, regardless of circumstances. That’s the kind of bar that’s set at a program with the resources Penn State has.
The other way to look at it is through the prism of how good the Nittany Lions need to be to make the playoff. College football continues to shift more power to the Big Ten and the SEC and that’s good news for Penn State and every other school in those conferences who are pursuing the College Football Playoff. The conference should get at least three and likely even four teams in the playoff. And, in the first two years of the 12-team playoff, all seven Big Ten teams to get double-digit regular season wins made the bracket. So the Nittany Lions need to be good enough to finish fourth in the Big Ten at worst and get to 10 wins.
Is the roster talented enough?
The Nittany Lions are certainly less talented than they were last season, but that championship-caliber roster only won six regular season games. This group should be better despite that and will have the benefit of some high-level coaching and a defense that will not take nearly as long to adjust to as last year’s did. From a playoff standpoint, this group has enough talent to get there at some key spots, but will need young players to develop and get better at others.
Rocco Becht is a good enough quarterback to lead the team to the playoff, and the weapons on offense are there too, with Chase Sowell and Brett Eskildsen at receiver, Benjamin Brahmer and Andrew Rappleyea at tight end and a group of running backs that includes Carson Hansen and James Peoples. The same is true in the secondary on defense with Marcus Neal Jr. and Jeremiah Cooper at safety, Audavion Collins and Daryus Dixson at corner and Tony Rojas at linebacker. The issues are in the trenches on both sides of the ball, where the Nittany Lions are lacking proven high-end production across the board on the defensive line and don’t have experience at multiple spots on the offensive line. Those groups will be the ones that dictate how good this team will be this season.
Can they make the playoff?
In short, yes — but not because this is necessarily a playoff-caliber team just yet. Penn State is primed to rack up a lot of wins against what looks like a very light schedule. The non-conference play aligns with what it has looked like in recent years, with an away matchup at Temple, and home games against Buffalo and Marshall, which should all be wins. And non-conference play is about as favorable as it can be for the Nittany Lions. They avoid all three playoff teams from the 2025 season, with no games against Indiana, Oregon and Ohio State. In fact, their toughest opponent — USC — will have to travel across the country to Happy Valley to play. The most difficult game on the schedule will come against Michigan on the road, with the Wolverines going through a coaching transition of their own.
It’s possible teams like Wisconsin (at home) and Washington (on the road) could give Penn State some trouble, but those teams are not expected to be world-beaters in 2026. While expecting Campbell and the new coaching staff to make the playoff in their first year is setting the bar too high, the door will be open for them to get there if a couple of games break in their favor this season.
