Penn State football has a quarterback dilemma.

The team suffered a fourth consecutive defeat at the hands of Michigan on Saturday. Starting quarterback Rocco Becht not only committed three back-breaking turnovers that led to all 21 points by the Wolverines but was also outplayed in the second half by Michigan backup quarterback Tommy Carr.

The game, in which many have pinned blame on Becht for his shoddy play, has sparked an uproar over the quarterback position and whether Matt Campbell should make a change.

With Penn State entering its bye week, there’s no better time to evaluate whether Becht should remain the starting quarterback or whether it’s time to look toward the future.

Pro: Seeing What You Have In Alex Manske In A Lost Season

I vehemently hate the idea of a season being “lost” in college football. There is no tanking, no benefit to bottoming out, and no “meaningless wins” like the ones fans cry about when their 1-14 NFL team wins in Week 17.

That said, in the grand scheme of things for Penn State in 2026, it is a lost season.

It planned to use an easy schedule to sneak into the College Football Playoff, but 3.5 disastrous games, dating back to the blown 17-0 lead against Wisconsin, have torpedoed the team to a 3-4 record and its first four Big Ten losses in a row for the second consecutive season.

Things have gone worse than almost any reasonable person could’ve anticipated in year one of the Campbell era, especially for its starting quarterback.

Becht has struggled considerably in Big Ten play, throwing for just 913 yards with three touchdowns and five interceptions in four games. His only strong performance came against a porous USC defense that struggled to even contain Louisiana or Rutgers.

A former All-Big 12 signal-caller, his regression has been jaw-dropping on a team that actually has had more receiver talent than previous Penn State rosters.

His inability to read Big Ten defenses has been shocking for the most experienced returning quarterback in college football. You can make the case that his mistakes against Wisconsin and Michigan were the No. 1 reason Penn State lost those games.

The problem that Campbell has on his hands is that he does not have a single player who has started a Division I game on his roster behind Becht. The most experienced backup, Connor Barry, transferred after a strong season in Division III.

The team’s current backup is four-star redshirt freshman Alex Manske, who followed Campbell from Iowa State after being his highest-rated quarterback recruit ever.

The Algona, Iowa, native was the No. 305 player and No. 25 quarterback in the Class of 2025, according to the 247Sports Composite rankings, but open-heart surgery limited his training camp participation ahead of his first season in the blue and white.

That has likely kept the coaching staff apprehensive about using him.

Benching Becht likely won’t increase Penn State’s chances of winning going forward, but it would let the team properly evaluate the quarterback position heading into a crucial offseason.

If you’re going to make a change to a young, inexperienced quarterback ever, this is the time to do it.

Penn State is entering a bye week, meaning it’ll have two weeks of practice to get Manske up to speed. It’ll also face a mid-level opponent in Purdue at home in Beaver Stadium, not the trial by fire we saw last season when Ethan Grunkemeyer was thrown in against Iowa at Kinnick Stadium.

It also gives Manske at least five games to sort through growing pains. If you make this change later, you risk not getting an adequate sample to truly tell what you have in him. Playing him against different types of opponents at varying levels of talent is much better for evaluating him than throwing him at Rutgers and Maryland at the end of the year.

This evaluation is also critical. This isn’t your father’s college football anymore. Very few teams contend via developing a player they recruited out of high school.

Until Becht arrived in 2026, which feels like an asterisk because he followed his coach, Penn State was one of two Power Four programs that had never started a transfer quarterback, with Clemson as the lone exception, and Dabo Sweeney continues to ignore the changing landscape.

While homegrown quarterbacks are littered across the sport, many contenders rely on guys they picked up in the portal. The days of building a sustainable system of sitting underneath a guy and developing are almost dead, with only elite high school prospects like Julian Sayin, Bryce Underwood, and Keelon Russell getting the opportunity.

While it would be nice to see Campbell get good results from Manske, as he did with Becht and Brock Purdy at Iowa State, the odds are against him becoming the quarterback who can rise above the rest and lead Penn State back to contention. That’s just a fact of life.

The worst thing this coaching staff can do going forward, even with wins and losses, is ignore that and go into next season with Manske as the penciled-in starter with no collegiate experience. This is a sport that eats the inexperienced alive at this level, and if he isn’t producing right away, you’ve lost another season.

These five (or six) games will let Penn State evaluate Manske in Big Ten play and see whether he shows enough traits to earn a starting job next year.

In a world where James Franklin isn’t fired, what happened with Grunkemeyer down the stretch last year would’ve been exactly what Penn State would want in this scenario: a redshirt freshman quarterback proving he can ball.

If he can’t? That means you emphasize a veteran quarterback in the portal. It might not feel right, but this sport is long past the good feelings. You either win, or you feel good. That’s it.

Con: Setting A Poor Example Going Forward To Start An Era

In the sense of the College Football Playoff, the rest of the season is “meaningless.” But if a season’s meaning is only defined by winning a national championship, we’ve lost the plot.

For most of college football history, at most five teams would have a shot at a national title by November. The 12-team playoff has expanded that number, and the likely 24-team playoff will too, but that is still a small minority of the 138 FBS teams.

For most teams, hope of a national title is in mid-October at the halfway point of the season. So what’s the point? Should they all throw the last five games away and just give up?

While building for 2027 down the stretch has merit, Penn State is trying to establish a culture and set a standard. As disastrous as this season has been, there is still stuff to play for.

Seniors still want to finish their careers strong. There are still players working back from injury (like Koby Howard) who want to have an opportunity to prove their worth to the world. There’s bowl contention.

Most importantly, the coaching staff wants to get its feet under it after being repeatedly knocked down the last four weeks.

Benching Becht would decrease Penn State’s odds of getting back on track and making a bowl game. Even if you believe he hasn’t earned the right to keep starting, he is the best quarterback on the roster. If you want Penn State to maximize winning, he is the best choice.

What does maximizing winning now do?

It shows the Nittany Lions didn’t give up. That was the big rallying point around Terry Smith last season, as he got a group of guys with one foot out the door to focus long enough to finish the season on a four-game winning streak.

While winning five in a row certainly looks optimistic right now, it’s entirely possible if the team comes out of the bye week with the right mindset. Giving up on your best quarterback to evaluate the future goes the other way, especially in the more-than-possible world where Manske sinks, and the team finishes with fewer than six wins, leaving the foundation shaky and the vibes as low as ever.

There is also the case that benching Becht because of the losing streak would send a bad message to both current and future Nittany Lions.

Becht has been tied at the hip with Campbell ever since he became the starting quarterback at Iowa State in 2023. He trusted him enough to bring him to Happy Valley after a torn labrum in his shoulder to usher in a new era of football in 2026.

How heartbreaking would that be to him and the locker room if Campbell abruptly ended his four-year signal-caller’s college career in the middle of his senior season? At this point, you have to consider the human element and go beyond managing things like you’re playing CFB 27.

It might also shake confidence in Becht’s potential successors down the line.

If you’re a prospective transfer visiting Penn State this offseason, how would you feel about going to a coach who ditched his long-time quarterback midway through the season due to media and fan pressure? If he wouldn’t be loyal to Becht in the face of adversity, why would he be loyal to you?

In an era where you might have a bunch of similar NIL offers from elsewhere, that could be a dealbreaker.

Campbell wants to build an old-school culture at Penn State, one where everyone is family and has each other’s backs, and where ego doesn’t creep in and destroy everything. It would send a bad message if he went against that family aspect by ditching someone he’s relied on for so long, with so much football left to play.

All told, it appears unlikely that a quarterback change will be made during the bye week, but the talk about it will not stop in the coming weeks as Penn State’s goals grow further and further away from reality.