Penn State fans’ honeymoon with Matt Campbell ends with Wisconsin loss [opinion]
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STATE COLLEGE – The honeymoon between Penn State football fans and Matt Campbell officially ended at 8:28 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26.
Oh, the boobirds let their feelings known before the Nittany Lions’ stunning 24-20 loss to Wisconsin ended perhaps because they saw signs it was coming.
After Penn State went up 17-0 in the first half and 20-10 in the third quarter, the Badgers scored two touchdowns in the final four minutes to end a six-game losing streak against the Lions and get their first win in State College since 2003.
Longtime fans can debate if they’ve seen other losses equally as bad or worse, especially at home, but it stings nevertheless.
This wasn’t blowing a 27-17 lead in the final four minutes against a Tom Brady-led Michigan team in 1999. Or a 26-14 lead in the final seven minutes to an Ohio State team that won the Big Ten championship in 2018.
With all due respect to the gutty Badgers, they’re not on the level of either of those two teams.
This was not what Penn State director of athletics Pat Kraft had in mind when he fired James Franklin in midseason last year because, in his words, he was interested in winning national championships.
The hundreds of empty seats in the upper decks of the north and west stands Saturday night for the Big Ten opener had to be concerning or even alarming to Kraft and other Penn State officials.
The fans who were there saw an offense that couldn’t sustain a touchdown drive all night, that couldn’t pick up a first down in four consecutive series in the second half and that clearly was missing injured wide receiver Koby Howard.
When Wisconsin’s Colton Joseph threw his third interception into the hands of linebacker Tony Rojas with 8:11 left, Penn State had a 10-point lead, the ball at its own 45 and a chance to bury the Badgers.
On first down, Rocco Becht underthrew wide receiver Brett Esklidsen inside the Wisconsin 20. On second down, Becht fumbled the exchange with center Brock Riker. On third down, he threw another incompletion.
After Wisconsin drove 75 yards for a touchdown that made it 20-17 with 3:31 to go, James Peoples ran for 3 yards, Becht found tight end Ben Brahmer for 3 and then nearly threw an interception, forcing another punt.
Becht was accurate for three games against non-conference opponents and not accurate against Wisconsin, going 12-for-29 for 114 yards and his first interception at Penn State. The offense gained just 233 total yards.
Admirably, Becht shouldered much of the blame.
“We never got into the flow of the game in the first half and it led into the second half,” Campbell said. “We just struggled. We had a lot of opportunities to make plays and we just didn’t make some of them.”
Maybe that’s why Campbell decided not to go for it twice on fourth-and-1 inside Penn State territory. The first time was late in the first half when he allowed the final 30 seconds to run out with timeouts in his pocket. The second was on the first play of the fourth quarter when he called a timeout after he saw the Badgers’ alignment and punted.
They were conservative decisions that paved the way for the Lions to cough up the 17-point lead.
“That will eat at me,” Campbell said.
The defense played well until the final four minutes when it allowed Wisconsin to drive 75 and 85 yards for touchdowns.
On third-and-10 from the Penn State 11, Joseph found Eugene Hilton Jr. to make it a three-point game. On their next series, the Badgers faced second-and-19 from their 6 and picked up 25 yards on a screen to Darrion Dupree.
Then they scored the game-winning touchdown on third-and-13 when burly tight end Jacob Harris collided with safety Marcus Neal Jr., who fell down, caught a low pass and rumbled into the end zone for a 72-yard score.
Wisconsin outgained the Lions by an astounding 208-37 margin in the fourth quarter.
“We just gotta finish,” defensive tackle Armstrong Nnodim said. “This defense is elite. I believe we’re elite. We have to be better in the fourth quarter.”
Penn State coaches and players will find out a lot more about themselves in the next three games, starting Friday night at Northwestern in its first game at its new stadium.
Maybe the four-man rotation at running back will end. Maybe Becht will be more accurate. Maybe the offensive line will be stronger. Maybe the defense won’t tire at the end.
But it’ll be hard to move forward after such a crushing loss in Campbell’s first Big Ten game.
“We have a whole season to play,” safety Jeremiah Cooper said, “so it’s about keeping our heads up. We have to put this loss behind us, finish the film Sunday and go to work.”
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