Nunzio Campanile was blindsided not once, not twice, but three times in less than a week.
The interim Rutgers football head coach and offensive coordinator was thrown into the fire so to speak just like a true freshman starting his first ever collegiate game after Chris Ash and John McNulty were both fired last Sunday.
All of sudden, Campanile had to oversee the entire program as well as formulate an offensive game plan. Then, he lost sophomore quarterback Artur Sitkowski on Thursday after it was announced he wasn’t going to play on Saturday at home against Maryland.
To make matters worse, star running back/slot receiver Raheem Blackshear opted to also sit out the game. Both players are going to preserve their redshirt status.
The Scarlet Knights lost to the Terrapins in front of a sparse crowd, 48-7. It was close for about 20 minutes until the wheels fell off.
“Obviously not the result we were looking for but I think our kids had a really tough week, a couple of events popped up as the week went on that were pretty difficult to deal with, and I think our kids did a really good job of staying focused and doing the best they could under really tough circumstances,” Campanile said after the game.
“So I'm really proud of the way they played. I thought they competed really hard. We did some good things. You know, obviously not enough, not even close to enough, but I think we have a lot to build on. The biggest thing is we kind of tried to rebuild an offense in four days. That's not really going to get all the results you want but there were some good plays out there.”
While no players have requested to transfer as of yet, it’s inevitable at this point. It’s possible that other veterans on the team could ask to be redshirted as well and wait and see what happens in terms of the new coaching staff that’ll come in.
“Am I disappointed by it? Incredibly. Do I understand it? I guess so. I guess that's the way the world is now,” Campanile said. “I think that this is a game about your team, you know and it's about sacrificing personal accomplishment for the success of the team. But that's the world they live in and they have got a lot of people telling them, you know, worry about you, worry about you. I get it.
“But I'm raising two boys. I'm trying to raise them about being willing to sacrifice some of the things they want for what's good for the people around them. I get it. That's the world that we are living in, and he's a great kid and we'll see what happens in the coming weeks.”
It’s been a wild week to say the least.
“It was a really stressful week, but the kids, being around a team, to me, is probably the most comforting thing,” Campanile said. “So I think that it was a stressful week, but playing the game obviously is hopefully the payoff for all the work everybody does during the week. Was it stressful? Yes. But I kind of enjoy that, you know, part of the job. I think that in the end, a lot of that is fun.
While fans have checked out, and so have some players, Rutgers still has seven more games to go. Linebacker Tyshon Fogg, a captain, talked about keeping the team together with TKR last week.
After a tough week and a rough game, how will the players respond this week and beyond?
“I just told them, obviously we don't like feeling this way, but the only answer is to stick together and keep playing hard. You know, there's no way it gets fixed the other way,” Campanile said. “To me, the way that we conduct ourselves is we just make sure that we stay together. We have some really good leaders on this team, and guys that care a lot about each other, and they have to keep doing that. I mean, they are all sick of this result, for sure. It's not going to be easy, but you know, nothing worth doing in life is easy, so I'm really -- like I said, I'm excited to see what we do in the coming weeks. We have some games that we have an opportunity to improve on and that's what we have to do.”
With everything on his plate, Campanile is busier now more than ever. Who knows, maybe he’s sleeping in office this very second.
“You've got to do what you've got to do,” the coach said. “I live kind of far from here. I live about an hour from here. I'm not going to drive home at 1:30 in the morning to be back here at 5:00 (a.m.).”
With Campanile take over, it was expected that he was going to tweak the offensive scheme and make some adjustments (by the way, Rutgers has now had 11 offensive coordinators in 11 years) and he did. There were more RPOs and quarterback runs.
Johnny Langan, who was coached by Campanile at Bergen Catholic (Oradell, N.J.), earned the start behind center in place of Sitkowski. The redshirt freshman completed 13-of-25 passes for 163 yards with two interceptions. He also ran for 59 yards and a short touchdown which tied the game early in the second quarter at 7-7.
“I thought for a kid as a freshman in college playing in his first game in a Big Ten, I thought he handled himself really well,” Campanile said. “Obviously a couple turnovers and stuff like that, but the first one he got hit in on. The second one, probably just trying to make a play. But I think he plays really hard and he'll give you everything he has and I'm really proud of him.”
All in all, Rutgers tallied 314 yards of offense and held the ball for over 34 minutes of play, but only had seven points to show for it.
“Johnny came in theoretically on Thursday. So yeah, it definitely was (a major overhaul). But you know, I think you're going to make the most of the situation and build off it every week, I told our guys, I didn't think that we were going to go out and score 50 points today. That wouldn't really have been realistic. We haven't been doing that, anyway. It's not going to change overnight,” Campanile said. “But hopefully there's some things that we have to build on and then we don't have all the answers yet. I mean, I think as we build the offense more to the way I would envision it, hopefully there are more answers. They did some stuff to us there at the beginning of the first quarter that normally we'd have built-in answers for that we just really -- it would have been unfair to ask a freshman quarterback in his first game to handle three straight zero blitz plays. That's part of the process but we'll get there.
“I think that we have to be able to -- we're not a team that's going to line up and just mash you. So I think we have to get some elements where the quarterback can be an extra blocker for us in the run game and in the pass game and we have to get a little more comfortable in some of the RPO stuff and the quick-game stuff. We have to improve our screen game. But they are all things that I envision us having the ability to do over time. I think it will take a couple weeks. ...Those guys are really bought into doing it. They are really excited about it. So you know, I'm really appreciative of their effort and their attitude.”
Follow Chris Nalwasky on Twitter @ChrisWasky.
