Matt Campbell’s timeout usage is a huge red flag and his explanations don’t help

Matt Campbell took five timeouts in Penn State’s 31-23 loss to USC on Saturday night, his third loss in as many tries since the Nittany Lions began Big Ten play. Not a single one of them was taken in a late-half situation. 

Here are the situations Penn State spent its timeouts in Week 6: 

• 1st timeout came with 8:55 left in the 1st quarter on a second-and-8 at the USC 21 because a late substitution allowed USC to respond with a substitution to drain the play clock
• 2nd timeout came with 6:30 left in the 2nd quarter on a 2nd-and-11 from the USC 48. It’s unclear why the timeout was taken, but it was not due to the play clock running down
• Penn State did not need to spend its third timeout of the half because Rocco Becht got out of bounds on the final play before Ryan Barker’s 48-yard field goal tied the game at 17.
• 1st timeout of the second half came with 4:11 in the 3rd quarter, facing a second-and-1 from the USC 42 because of a late substitution. 
• 2nd timeout of the second half was spent with 9:44 left in the fourth quarter ahead of a 4th-and-3, which Penn State would ultimately convert after sending out a different formation after the TO.
• The final timeout was spent with 4:26 left and USC facing a fourth-and-4 from its own 13 when Lincoln Riley sent out Jayden Maiava behind center and split out his punter in the slot. 

That left Penn State without any timeouts left for the late-game scenarios. First, when it took over at its own 40-yard line with 4:08 left on the clock, trailing 31-23. Then, once Brett Eskildsen fumbled on the first play of that drive, it had no timeouts to stop USC from draining the rest of the game clock. 

To add to Campbell’s game-management missteps,  Penn State lost the game by committing a defensive delay-of-game penalty on a third-and-3 with 1:09 left by attempting to draw USC to false start with defensive line movement. 

Matt Campbell is a sub-par game manager, and that’s more important than ever

Campbell’s timeout usage in this game was malpractice, and his game management thus far through his Penn State tenure has made James Franklin look like Curt Cignetti in comparison. The biggest reason Penn State is 0-3 in Big Ten play right now is that Campbell was hired too late to construct a 2026 signing class and was behind the eight ball in the transfer portal, so he doesn’t have much Big Ten talent on his roster. 

Long-term, Campbell can fix that issue. He’ll need to if he wants to have any chance of a successful tenure, but he appears to be set in his ways as a game manager, and that’s alarming because, with the margins in college football as slim as ever in the NIL and revenue-sharing era, you need an elite game-management head coach. 

Campbell was asked about his timeout usage postgame, and his response was that of an overly conservative head coach trying not to lose games rather than taking the requisite risks to win them. 

“We kind of had our ‘punt safe’ group out. They kept the offense out there, and I just didn’t want to screw around with it to be honest with you. I wanted to make sure we secured the football if we had the opportunity to do it at the end of the football game.” 

Campbell then went on to describe “a couple of goofy moments in the game” that led to his other timeouts. 

To his credit, Campbell was aggressive on fourth down in this game, as Penn State went 5-5, which was one of the only reasons it had any chance of winning in the end, with a net success rate discrepancy of 13%. But Lincoln Riley knew he could get Campbell to waste his final timeout. He practically winked at the cameras inside Beaver Stadium after he did it. 

He was willing to risk taking a five-yard penalty backed up in his own end. Campbell wasn’t brave enough to dare Riley to snap the ball, so he lost the game of chicken. A lot of times, that’s what coaching boils down to, and in that department, it doesn’t appear that Campbell will have the upper hand in the Big Ten very often.

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