Penn State moves Marcus Neal Jr. to linebacker

Campbell had been hinting at this for 2 weeks. On Tuesday he made it official: the bye week was spent turning Neal into a linebacker.

Audrey Snyder

@audsnyder4

Marcus Neal Jr. is playing linebacker now, Matt Campbell said. Was one of the things they worked on during the bye week.

This is not a short-term move. According to the beat, Campbell called linebacker a long-term fit for Neal, not a package or a few snaps on third down. That's a big statement about a guy who arrived as a safety and whom Campbell knows better than almost anyone on the roster. Neal followed Campbell from Iowa State, where he was All-Big 12 in 2025 with 77 tackles and 11 tackles for loss. He earned the nickname "Shark" in Ames for the way he hits people.

Things had gone wrong for him at safety. He played 39 snaps against Wisconsin and 35 against Northwestern. Then he didn't play a single defensive snap in the 31-23 White Out loss to USC, and he had only a limited role against Michigan. Campbell said he picked the safeties for coverage and skill-matching over tackling, and Neal's style was always more downhill than that. At 6-foot-1 and 216 pounds he has the frame for a linebacker, and he had already been showing up in linebacker drills before the bye.

There's also a simple numbers problem. Alex Tatsch is out for the season with an undisclosed injury, so the room behind Tony Rojas is thin. The depth behind Rojas is Iowa State transfers Kooper Ebel and Cael Brezina. Penn State's 4-2-5 only uses 2 linebackers, but when one of them goes down you need a real backup.

And the run defense badly needs help. Penn State is 105th nationally against the run at 172.3 yards per game, the worst in the Big Ten. Northwestern ran for more than 400 yards on this group. D'Anton Lynn's unit has also gone soft late, fading in the second half of recent Big Ten games.

kylegolikfb

@kylegolikfb

My latest for @NittanySN - it seems D'Anton Lynn is facing a tougher task of ironing out inconsistencies and those have cost @PennStateFball dearly this season:

Nittany Sports Now

@NittanySN

Penn State knows how to stop the run. So why can’t it do it for four quarters? D’Anton Lynn admits the inconsistency. But at 105th nationally against the run, explanations aren’t enough. @kylegolikfb latest column ⬇️ t.co/zekTYV9XeI

Inconsistency is the word that keeps coming up. Lynn has said his defense has shown it can stop the run, but not for 4 straight quarters. That fits a team that's 3-4 and 0-4 in Big Ten play. Some of that is scheme and effort. Some of it is personnel: missed tackles, edges that don't hold, and runs that should go for 4 yards going for 40. Moving a physical, proven tackler closer to the line of scrimmage is a pretty direct answer to that.

Now we wait for Saturday. The questions are how many snaps Neal actually gets at his new spot, whether he pushes Ebel and Brezina for the job next to Rojas, and whether 1 position change can make a dent in a run defense this bad. If it works, Campbell will look smart for letting the Shark hunt again. If it doesn't, the 2nd half of this season gets a lot longer.