Everything Matt Campbell Had To Say Ahead of Marshall

Penn State head coach Matt Campbell had his first weekly regular season press conference where he previewed Marshall and gave updates at key positions.

Here is everything he had to say from today’s press conference.

Question: Taylor (Mouser) indicated that you guys want to try to play Alex Manske. How would that look, having two quarterbacks involved during the course of a game, and what would he bring to the table?

Matt Campbell: I think the first thing is Alex has certainly deserved the right to be able to get on the field. Even a year ago, if you watched us play, we were able to find ways to get him into the football game and impact the game in a positive way.

Alex does a lot of things well. Obviously, each week is game-plan specific. We try to figure out where he can plug in and where he can give us an advantage in the football game.

 

Question: You guys have put a ton of faith in Rocco (Becht) over the years. Why should Penn State fans be confident in his leadership on the field as they get to see him for the first time Saturday?

Campbell: I think it really comes down to a couple things. One of my favorite things to say about Rocco — what makes him special and, to me, what makes great quarterbacks special — is when they know who they are and they’re confident in who they are rather than trying to be somebody else.

I think that’s hard in the quarterback world. In recruiting quarterbacks today, in the world of Elite 11 and all this stuff, I think you can get lost trying to be somebody else — the next this or the next that.

Rocco even had that unique challenge at his last institution: being the next Brock Purdy. What I’ve always loved about Rocco is that he’s never trying to be anybody else but the absolute best version of himself.

I think you’ve seen that in really critical, hard moments. He has stepped up in key situations and won football games with the ball in his hands. That aspect of it has been earned.

Then there’s the other aspect of who he is as a leader and who he is as a human being. I think you guys have gotten to see that a little bit over the last seven months. Even greater than the football player is the man, the human being and how he goes about his process to be his best on Saturdays.

 

Question: Can you go back to when you first walked into Beaver Stadium and looked around? You seemed a little bit in awe. What do you think your emotions will be like this week, and will you have to manage that?

Campbell: Yeah, I probably will. I’ll be honest with you. A former defensive lineman — that doesn’t ever leave you at times. Sometimes I wear my emotions on my sleeve, which is maybe not my greatest quality, so I’ll apologize for that early.

But the reality is, when you love the sport and you love to watch your guys, and you’ve seen how much they’ve sacrificed for these moments, I’m probably more excited for that — to be able to watch our football team grow forward starting on Saturday.

I know I said this last week: They’ve earned the right to get in the stadium. They’ve earned the right to get on this field and continue to define what they’re going to be and what kind of team we can become.

My excitement level really generates from there.

Obviously, there’s a great sense of gratitude to be here and to be part of a great place like this. To be part of one of the cathedrals of college football is awesome.

But I think the greater reward is watching a group of young men that you’ve been a part of for the last seven or eight months start to really come together and chart their own journey. Who are they going to become, and what do we have the ability to be?

That part I’m really excited about.

 

Question: Three guys you mentioned coming into camp as maybe being available or maybe not being available for Week 1: Jeremiah Cooper, Alex Tatsch and Gabe Burkle. What kind of progress did they make during August, and do you have a sense of whether they’ll be available Saturday?

Campbell: They’ve all three made great progress.

I’d say Jeremiah Cooper is probably in the probable category. In terms of his ability to play, he’s probably the closest to being able to play this week. He’s had a really good week and a half of practice.

I think slow and right has got to be the answer to that.

I think Gabe and Tatsch are probably on track for Week 2, so I would say they’re doubtful this week. We’re still early enough in the week to see where they’re at, but that’s my best guesstimation right now.

All three guys are back on the practice field. All three guys are progressing themselves forward. It’s just making sure they’re absolutely prepared to step back on the field.

I’d say Jeremiah Cooper is probably the closest to that.

Question: What’s the most important thing you want to learn about this team Saturday?

Campbell: When you turn the lights on and it’s game day — and obviously there are only 12 guaranteed opportunities — we live in a world where that’s just a different challenge. That’s another unique set of circumstances that infiltrates the team. How do you handle all of it?

Obviously, for all of us, this is new: new staff, new players, new environment. I think that’s what I’m looking forward to seeing. How do we handle the challenges?

Number one, you’ve got a good Marshall football team. You’ve got a really good Marshall football program that has stood for what’s right in the world of college football in terms of playing great football. They’ve got a great coaching staff and some really talented players.

They’re going to put us in challenging situations. How do we respond to that? How do we handle the crowd? How do we handle our own ego and our own leadership? What do all those things look like from coaches and players?

There’s just so much that we’re going to learn about ourselves.

First games are challenging. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been somewhere for 10 years or if this is your first time around. I think first games of the season are always tricky and always challenging.

I’m excited to get into this moment because it’s going to tell us a lot more about where we need to continue to grow, with a big challenge at hand on top of it.

 

Question: Can you give us an update on special teams and the kicking game — Ryan Barker, the punter, the snappers and maybe your top coverage players?

Campbell: When you look at the specialists room, we feel really confident that that group had a really good fall camp.

Start with the punter. Nathan Tiyce had a really good finish to camp. Again, it’s about what he does well and how we put him in a great position to be successful. I think he’s got an extremely strong leg. He’s got the ability to do so many different things.

We’ve been really proud of his progress through fall camp. He’s a guy who’s done it in games, so it’s not like you’re asking a rookie to go out there and do it.

You hit on Ryan Barker. I think he’s been a catalyst, and he and Blaise Sokach-Minnick have both played meaningful snaps for Penn State and have been in critical moments. Both guys have shown veteran leadership in that room.

When you talk about the return units, I think it’s going to be really interesting. We’ve got a bunch of guys back there. Koby Howard and Zay Robinson have both emerged as really exciting ball handlers as punt returners and certainly in the kick-return game.

Then in the coverage units, I feel like that’s probably one of our areas of great strength. We’ve got a lot of guys. Brett Eskildsen, Audavion Collins and Zion Tracy are some early names of guys who have had elite reps covering punts and covering kicks.

We’re excited about what those guys bring to the table.

Question: How did you feel about the offensive line coming out of camp? Have you settled on a five, and where are you with the depth?

Campbell: We certainly have.

Malachi Goodman will start at left tackle. He’s had a really tremendous camp. We’re excited about the growth he’s made and the consistency he’s given our football team.

Across the board, you’ve got Trevor at left guard, Brock Riker at center and Cooper Cousins. Somebody asked me last week about the MVPs of camp, and I probably left Coop out because I think he’s made the most monumental growth.

He’s lost 15 pounds. I think he’s physically as dominant as I’ve seen him, at least from the videotape I was able to watch from a year ago and what I watched in the spring. I thought he had an unbelievable camp for us.

I feel really good about what that group looks like.

With the twos and rotational guys who are earning reps, we were really excited about that group early in camp, and then we got bit by the injury bug a little bit.

I think we’ll hopefully be back close to full strength.

Owen Aliciene had a really good camp. We lost him for about a week, and he’s been back the last five days. I’m excited about what he brings to the table.

Garrett Sexton has had a really good camp. I think he can do a lot of different things on that offensive line. He can almost swing between guard and tackle in a lot of different areas.

Obviously, Dom Rulli is huge to get back. We missed him for a couple weeks, but having him back is huge for our football team. He brings veteran experience and has played a lot of football.

Vaea is another guy we lost early. He got injured in the summer, and we didn’t have him through the early part of fall camp. He’s been back here the last week, and we’re really excited about what he brings to the table.

We feel like there’s really good growth there. We feel like there are a lot of options.

I think it’s going to be exciting to get into the start of the season and see how we rotate guys through and what that looks like. The depth of that group has a chance to continue to grow each week this season.

Question: We didn’t really get a chance with Taylor to go through the tight end room. There were some guys missing here and there. Where does that room stand now?

Campbell: I think that group is probably similar to the O-line group. You go through a physical fall camp and some guys have been dinged up at times.

Holistically, that’s probably been a positive for us because a lot of guys got great reps.

Ben stayed healthy throughout camp and had a great camp. We’re excited about where he is.

Rapp was great early on, got dinged up a little bit in camp, has come back and has been back here for the last week. He looks really good, and we’re really excited about what he’s done and the progress he made through the offseason.

The guy who’s probably been the most exciting for me is Finn. Finn Furmanek has played a lot of really good football and has gotten a lot of critical reps. He stayed healthy, so it was huge to watch his growth and development.

We’ve talked about Falzone. He’s kind of been force-fed some critical reps. I do think he’s done a nice job growing into that position and certainly has some areas where I think he can be an asset to the football team.

Then we’ll be excited to get some of these guys back. Obviously, getting Gabe Burkle back will be a huge addition to that room.

That’s probably my synopsis of the tight end position.

 

Question: Jake Waters said a couple weeks ago that with the quarterbacks, he tries to coach them to “let it rip,” and that’s an extension of Taylor Mouser’s philosophy as a play caller. How have you seen Taylor keep Rocco and Alex upbeat and not afraid to make a mistake?

Campbell: I think that’s hard.

Rocco has had to go through some tough moments with that. I think that’s the nature of the position. Coaching it and watching Brock go through that same process, you can cut it loose and have great success, and then you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders.

Then there’s almost this feeling where you try not to screw it up.

Sometimes coaches get like this. I’ve gotten like this as a play caller and as a coach at times. It’s a fine line, and it’s not easy.

I think those are holistic cultural points of view. How do you navigate that journey with the team, and how do you navigate it with the quarterback?

One of Rocco’s greatest qualities — and we talk about this a lot — is you don’t have to make every play on Saturday, but you’ve got to make great decisions on Saturday.

When you can go with that mindset and understand that one play is one play — it’s got a life of its own, you live it, breathe it, understand it and go to the next play — I think that’s one area where Rocco has excelled.

You’ve seen it even when mistakes have happened. His ability to flush it, correct it and come back and play the next play.

When you have confidence that the leader with the ball in his hands can live that way, I think it allows you as a coach to live that way, play that way and call the plays that way.

 

Question: We’ve heard the word “trusted” used a lot by Taylor and some of the other assistants when talking about players. What does that mean to you? What does a player have to do to enter that trusted category?

Campbell: I think that’s really big.

From the first team meeting I ever had here to the start of fall camp, every kid and every parent in our program wants to know who’s going to play.

The No. 1 value is that you have to be trusted.

There are six categories of who plays, but the first one is trust. I think trusted means your ability to do everything right on and off the football field.

Again, you’ve heard me say this a lot: We’re not going to win at all costs. We’re going to win the right way. We’re going to win with guys who do things the right way.

They carry themselves the right way on the field, but they carry themselves the right way off the field.

Because if not, you’re only going to get beat anyway. At some point, in some moment when we need you the most, if you can’t live to that standard, you’re going to cost the football team.

That value carries really heavily in our program. We talk about it on a daily basis.

It’s why we put standards and expectations in academics, nutrition, strength and conditioning. We do it all for these moments.

You get 12 games of 60 minutes that are guaranteed to you, and you’ve got to win the moment. You’ve got to win more of them than you screw up.

College football is the greatest game of screw-up known to mankind. You’ve just got to screw it up less than the team across from you.

When you talk about it that way, trust is a critical value in our football team.

Now, some guys are great playmakers who may not be trusted all the time. You have to find that great balancing act and understand that when you put a guy on the field, that guy has had to earn the right to be on the football field in one of those values, but trusted is certainly the most important.

Sometimes it’s not even about who starts. It’s who’s in those critical moments when it matters the most.

That trust value is really big for me. It’s why we grade every practice and why we hold high standards in everything we try to do within our football program.

 

Question: Are you expecting anybody to be on a pitch count this week, whether it’s Tony Rojas, Max Granville or any guys coming back from injury?

Campbell: Those are things we’ll usually talk about a little bit as we get into Thursday and Friday and see where we are.

I think it’s hard to probably answer that today as we work ourselves through practice. That’s certainly a possibility.

But it’s one of those things where Wednesday’s practice and Thursday’s practice are critical to knowing where the health of our football team truly is and what’s in the best interest of the young men on our football team.

 

Question: In Week 1, you’re facing a team where there isn’t any 2026 film yet. Brad Lambert is a longtime defensive coordinator who wasn’t in football last year but has been at Marshall before. How do you balance studying a coach’s history with the possibility that he developed something new during the offseason?

Campbell: That’s a great question, and I think that’s why Week 1 games — the first game of the season — are nerve-racking for any coach in America.

You’re balancing the thought of what may come at you. It’s certainly unique.

Coach Lambert has a great background as a coordinator. He’s had tremendous success at Wake Forest, success at Marshall and was at Kentucky for a little bit.

Then Coach Gibson — we’ve competed against Coach Gibson. He’s one of the best defensive minds in the country. He’s had unbelievable success, whether it was at West Virginia or NC State.

You know they have a history.

What you know is they’re going to play really hard because that’s the guarantee of what they’ve stood for. They’re going to run to the football.

Then I think it comes back to asking, what do we have to do well to play good football?

Game ones are always about fundamentals. Can you tackle? Can you be sound? Can you take care of the football? Can you get 11 guys out on the field? Can you play clean football?

All those things have to matter.

Then can you design a scheme, really in all three phases, that your guys can go play confidently in? You don’t want them playing reactive. You want them to have the ability to play with some confidence.

Those things are a little bit tricky when you’re unsure of exactly what you may get.

The great thing is we’ve seen a lot defensively from our own defense — a lot of different fronts, a lot of different blitzes, a lot of different coverages. We’re going to have to lean into our recognition of what we’ve seen.

Then we’re going to have to be great adjusters as a coaching staff.

I do think that’s one nice thing from our end. We’ve been together, and the ability to make game adjustments will be really important this week, in this game and through the entirety of the season.