The 2020 college football season has only just begun, but The Citadel punter Matt Campbell might have delivered one of the biggest fails we’ll see all year.
It’s not easy to play football and making it on a roster, even for an FCS program, speaks to a player’s talents. We didn’t see that from Campbell in Week 2 with a disastrous sequence that gifted South Florida a touchdown.
Midway through the second quarter. with his team facing fourth-and-15 from its 10-yard line, Campbell took the field hoping to help his team out. Instead of flipping the field, the junior punter made one of the biggest gaffes of 2020.
It’s one thing to completely whiff on the snapped football, that happens to every punter in their playing career. Campbell recovered quickly and picked up the football, but he somehow only made things worse for his team.
We’re not sure what led to his decision to try and kick it on the move, rather than just taking the safety, but attempting to be a hero backfired. Campbell shanked the punt off the side of his foot and the ball dropped right into a defender’s hands for the score.
It’s not like Campbell is an inexperienced player either. He earned First-Team All-Southern Conference honors the past two seasons and was named Phil Steele’s Freshman Special Teams Player of the Year in 2018.
For whatever reason, in this moment, Campbell delivered the sequence that college football fans won’t stop laughing at for quite some time.