Andy Kotelnicki’s reflection on Penn State’s 2025 collapse is not an excuse. It is almost more interesting because he refuses to make it one.
Kotelnicki is not returning to Kansas as a coach untouched by failure. He is returning with a fresh scar from one of the more jarring Penn State regressions in recent memory.
At Penn State, 2024 looked like the breakthrough.
Kotelnicki’s first season as offensive coordinator helped the Nittany Lions reach their first Big Ten title game since 2016 and win College Football Playoff games against SMU and Boise State. Penn State came within a semifinal loss to Notre Dame of playing for a national championship.
Then 2025 happened.
The expectations did not just grow. They swallowed the program.
Kotelnicki admitted Penn State probably did not do enough to remind itself how narrow the 2024 climb really was.
“We probably should have done a better job of reminding our team how close we were to not winning some of those games in that season,” Kotelnicki said to On3’s Pete Nakos. “We had to beat USC in overtime, and we had to go on drives at Minnesota and Wisconsin. We had to face adversity, and we got battle-ready as a team.”
That is the part that should resonate with Matt Campbell as he prepares to take over at Penn State after a decade at Iowa State. His Cyclones endured a similar warning.
Iowa State’s 2024 season, much like Penn State’s, created a dangerous illusion. The Cyclones won 11 games, played for a Big 12 title and looked like a program that had found the next level who had Big XII Championship and College Football Playoffs aspirations of their own in 2025.
The numbers backed up the strength of that team. On PFF, Iowa State’s 2024 offense had high-end production from Jayden Higgins, Jaylin Noel and Rocco Becht, while the defense had multiple top-line performers in Domonique Orange, Myles Mendeszoon and Beau Freyler.
Then the follow-up season showed how fragile those margins can be.
Iowa State’s 2025 offensive stat sheet tells the story of a team that still had pieces, but not the same force. Becht remained solid, Abu Sama III graded well as a runner and Carson Hansen still provided value. But the top-end receiving production of Higgins and Noel was gone.
The 2024 offense had two elite wideouts sitting at the top of the grading sheet. The 2025 offense looked more scattered, more patched together and less explosive.
Penn State dealt with a similar problem. Kotelnicki and company never found an adequate replacement for tight end Tyler Warren, who repeatedly bailed out the Nittany Lions’ offense when it needed him most in 2024.
That is the parallel with Penn State.
Regression does not always happen because a coach suddenly forgot how to coach.
Sometimes it happens because a program mistakes survival for dominance. Penn State’s 2024 team was excellent, but it was also living on thin margins. Iowa State’s 2024 team was excellent, too, but it also had veteran playmakers and high-end performers who could not simply be assumed into the next season.
Kotelnicki seems to understand that now.
“There were a lot of questions about people’s futures at Penn State, mine included,” he said. “Everyone knows I want to be a head football coach, so those kinds of opportunities were coming across my desk.”
That is the modern college football reality. Coaches are being courted. Players are weighing the portal. NFL decisions hover over rosters. NIL and expectations change the emotional temperature of a locker room.
A team can go from chasing a title to managing noise before it realizes the season has shifted beneath its feet.
Penn State’s 2025 season became a case study in that.
The offense was expected to be the unit that carried the Nittany Lions. Kotelnicki had Drew Allar, Nick Singleton, Kaytron Allen and a roster built to win immediately. But instead of becoming the final piece to a championship run, the offense became part of the larger disappointment.
Add Nittany Sports Now as a preferred source in Google! Click here to add us.That is why his words matter.
“I’m not about making excuses,” Kotelnicki said. “The difference in the decisions that you make throughout the whole year is that they’re so small and subtle.”
That is probably the truest explanation of Penn State’s regression.
It was not one play, one game, one coordinator or one player. It was the accumulation of small things. The assumption that a close playoff loss automatically becomes fuel. The assumption that veteran returners automatically create leadership. The assumption that a team that almost won it all knows exactly how to finish the climb.
Iowa State learned a similar lesson.
The Cyclones’ 2024 season was not fake. Neither was Penn State’s. But 2025 exposed how hard it is to bottle a special season and carry it forward untouched.
That is why Campbell’s next chapter becomes fascinating.
He comes to Penn State with a reputation built at Iowa State, where he helped create one of the sport’s great turnarounds. But he also arrives with the memory of what happened at Iowa State, where talent, expectation and continuity still were not enough to build on a program-record 11-win season.
The question is not whether Campbell can coach. He can. His track record at Mount Union, Bowling Green, Toledo and Iowa State proves that.
The better question is whether he can take the hard lessons from some of his valleys at Iowa State and apply them at Penn State.
Penn State does not need a coach who believes last year’s problems were someone else’s fault.
Penn State needs one who understands that success has to be rebuilt, not assumed. It needs one who knows a team coming off regression cannot be coached like a team coming off a coronation.
Kotelnicki sounds like someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about that.
The Oregon game still sticks with him. Penn State tied it late and believed it was going to win. It did not. From there, the season and the expectations surrounding it became a reminder of how unforgiving the sport can be.
“It just stinks,” Kotelnicki said. “I feel bad because it’s like, man, the expectations are so high, and we missed them terribly, but it’s also good in the sense to go through and be reminded of what the real world really is. What competitive athletics at the highest level really is.”
That line may be the bridge from Penn State to Kansas, and from Iowa State to Penn State.
Kotelnicki is not returning to Kansas as the genius who solved everything. He is returning as a talented offensive mind who just lived through the cost of assuming that close automatically becomes closer.
Campbell is not arriving at Penn State as a coach immune to regression. He is arriving as a coach who has seen how quickly a breakthrough can turn into a warning.
Penn State learned that lesson painfully.
Iowa State did, too.
As Campbell prepares for the summer and his first season looms, much like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, he is not in Ames anymore.
At Penn State, regression seasons are not accepted. It is playoffs or bust.
Now Campbell’s job is to prove he learned that lesson better than anyone.
