The bye week will provide first-year head coach Matt Campbell and his staff a chance to zoom out to the 10,000-foot view of the Penn State football program. With four ticks already in the loss column, it’s fair to argue that the final five games of the season should be all about evaluating the roster for next season. Campbell doesn’t see it that way.
“I think you’re just constantly trying to evaluate,” Campbell said when asked how he thinks about roster retention at this point in the year, “my belief is, you still have to earn the right to be on the field. We’re not just going to play players because you hope that they’ll stay around. We’re not in a hope business; we’re in a matter-of-fact business.”
To that end, Campbell has been adamant that he won’t entertain the idea of benching his longtime starting quarterback, Rocco Becht, to get a look at redshirt freshman Alex Manske.
At Iowa State, Campbell typically had high retention rates, and many of his former Cyclones followed him to Happy Valley. While he acknowledged that in this modern landscape it’s worth thinking about retention, it doesn’t appear to be his focus. If it were, he should probably start with these 5 players.
5. Daryus Dixson, DB - eligibility remaining: 3 years
Terry Smith continues to be fantastic at his job. Does that mean he would have been great at the head job? Not necessarily, but as a cornerbacks coach, he’s providing plenty of value to this program. The cornerbacks are the best thing about this team; that’s not just late-blooming redshirt senior Audavion Collins or true freshman Josiah Zayas, it’s also former four-star Daryus Dixson, who has been excellent opposite Collins, even if he missed a key tackle on Bryson Kudzal’s touchdown run on Saturday.
4. Alex Manske, QB - eligibility remaining: 3 years
For as much as Campbell and his staff seem to like Manske, there’s no guarantee that he’s good enough to lead a Big Ten program. That’s why it’s so important to get him on the field down the stretch of this season, something that doesn’t appear likely to happen as Campbell scrambles to salvage bowl eligibility.
Regardless, Penn State needs to keep Manske unless this staff is willing to go way out of its character and pay up for a proven veteran on the transfer market. Even that may not be in the program’s best interest, considering how talent-deficient this roster currently is and how much of it they’re going to need to overhaul with the resources they have available.
Playing him should be Step 1, but even without that, Campbell can’t let him walk out the door cause it appears all the eggs are in his basket.
3. Tony Rojas, LB - eligibility remaining: 1 year
It seems likely that Rojas would test the NFL Draft waters after 2026, especially considering the year he’s had so far, but he does have a year of eligibility remaining, and with Collins out of eligibility after this year, he would be the undisputed best player on the defense, and maybe on the team.
Rojas hasn’t had much help from his partner at linebacker, either Kooper Ebel or Cael Brezina, but he’s still been incredibly impactful at WILL linebacker and could be even better if he’s playing next to Alex Tatsch or Cam Smith in 2027, another year removed from his season-ending injury in 2025.
2. Josiah Zayas, CB - eligibility remaining: 4 years
Campbell and his staff have always been adept at uncovering hidden gems on the recruiting trail, and they’ve done it again with Zayas, who has emerged as a budding star at nickel for the D’Anton Lynn defense. While they can’t build the entire program on the belief that they can evaluate underrecruited talent better than the rest of the country, hitting on players like Zayas will be key as they look to expedite this rebuild after being put behind the eight ball by athletic director Pat Kraft’s extended coaching search.
The key when you find a player like Zayas is to keep them in-house and not allow them to price themselves out of the program, which is unlikely Zayas will do, even after a breakout freshman season.
1. Koby Howard, WR - eligibility remaining: 3 years
Koby Howard was put on ice in his freshman year by James Franklin and Terry Smith, and when he finally emerged as the WR1 for Campbell and offensive coordinator Taylor Mouser, all the hype that had come out of Happy Valley for two offseasons suddenly made sense. Howard is the most dynamic playmaker on this roster, and a field-tilting force that Mouser’s unit has desperately missed since he suffered an injury back in Week 3.
Even without seeing Howard play a single snap against Big Ten competition this year, it’s safe to say that keeping him in town will be the biggest priority as far as retention goes this offseason.
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