Penn State's Matt Campbell Showed He Had No Clue What to Do Against USC

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It's unfathomable that Penn State is playing this kind of football, a very concerning sign for a program expected to be one of the best in the country when it hired Matt Campbell. 

Not to say everything is falling apart already or that Campbell needs to be fired instantly, but until changes are made for this Penn State team, there will be far too many questions about what can improve. 

That's ultimately something that Campbell is going to have to figure out, though it still doesn't feel like he's in a great spot to get the job done in the immediate future. 

At the very least, Penn State might have an ideal season next year. 

I don't want to say this year is done in the simple sense that the team can't make a bowl game or win out, but when Penn State is already eliminated from the College Football Playoff, barring something insanely drastic happening, there's really no reason to say that the year isn't done.

As for how Penn State looked against USC, it continued to struggle on defense. I understand USC has one of the best offenses in America, but giving up 430 yards on your home field and 31 points is just not ideal.

Campbell said USC threw some confusing packages at Penn State and that his defense needs to improve for things to change in the future.

“I think those situations, especially against who those guys are offensively, they‘ll spread you out,” Campbell said, per USA Today. “They're going to try to get their athletes in space. I think from our end of it, how multiple could we be in a football game to try to play man, but not sit man the whole football game, while trying to help our DBs out. I think that was really our thought process going into it

“When you talk about the pressure piece of it, we're going to have to continue to find ways to get creative. I think that's an area for us, especially those third down situations. They had time to be able to make the plays and extend the play, and I think that’s what you’re talking about on the three-man rush and we have to find a different way to be able to get off the field on the third down.”

Kudos to USC for what it did on offense, because there's no debate that what Jayden Maiava and others did was very impressive. 

However, I still see this as more of an issue for the Nittany Lions than a reason to give kudos to anyone else. Something has to change defensively, or Penn State won't become the team it wants to be in the future, even if things eventually get figured out.

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