It's been quite a while since the Rutgers football team has had the same offensive coordinator for at least a full two seasons in a row.
In fact, you have to go back to Kirck Ciarrocca a decade ago. But now, Sean Gleeson is back for his second season "On the Banks" as the play caller on the offensive side of the ball, and the Glen Ridge, N.J. native, whose wife just had baby in the middle of the 2020 campaign, talked about returning to Rutgers.
"All they had they had to do, I think the first day I got here, coach served up an eggplant parm for lunch. I hadn’t seen an eggplant parm in like 12 months, so I was fired up to be back home," Gleeson said on Tuesday. "I am raising my family here. We are really happy."
Not only is Gleeson back, but the assistants are all well, which is just as vital.
"I think the more important retention is all of our offensive assistants as well. (Wide receivers coach) Tiquan (Underwood) mentioned to me the other day how fun it has been installing this offense with the young guys now having a year under his belt. I think that whenever you can kind of keep the band together so to speak and not have to worry about getting other people up to coordination, you are in good shape."
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Before Gleeson's arrival from Oklahoma State and Princeton before that, Rutgers ranked 128th or 129th out of 130 FBS schools in total offense in all four years under former head coach Chris Ash. Rutgers had the second to last scoring offense in 2019 and was last in that category in 2018.
Passing attack previously had been particularly brutal with the Scarlet Knights having not thrown for 100 yards yards or more in 18 of their 48 games since 2016. They threw under 50 in 10 games.
But in 2020, Rutgers averaged 339.1 yards per game as an offense and put up 26.7 points per game, reaching the 20-point mark eight times in nine games after achieving that 12 times total in Big Ten games since joining the league in 2014. Rutgers as 91st in passing offense with 198.4 yards per game through the air.
The improvements on offense helped Rutgers to a 3-6 record during a Big Ten-only schedule. Oh, and there was also a pandemic that caused Rutgers to not hold spring practice and a true training camp. Much of the installation of the offense was done virtually.
Going forward, Gleeson said the most important thing is fine tuning the execution.
"I don't think that we ever really held back installation. When we think about mentally forming these players I thought we did a great job in this technological space and teaching them," Gleeson said. "We got off the ground really, really quickly. Spring break, we were kind of like stepping out into the unknown. We didn't know how these virtual meetings would go, but we learned how to kind of create what would be a whiteboard, we learned how to play video effectively, we use strategies for quiz taking and things of that nature. I never felt like the mental side of it was really lagging, there's just the execution side that we'd like to kind of improve upon. I really just think that the focus now needs to be on improving our execution, blocking better, running the correct routes, ball security. We improved in some ways. I thought the defense did a really nice job with that as well. We'll come up with some good ideas."
Throughout the year, Rutgers shocked teams with various "trick plays". You saw quarterback Noah Vedral faking like the snap went over his head and running back Isaih Pacheco taking the ball and rushing for a big gain, Vedral throwing a touchdown pass to left tackle Raiqwon O'Neal, and Bo Melton taking a long lateral throw from Aron Cruickshank to the end zone on a punt. There was many more.
"I think that I am a pretty organized guy and I have done a lot of work as it relates to how much offense we should bring into a game and that is trick-play related as well. We are always going to have those things on the call sheet," Gleeson said. "They are staples, the same way you would have a Third-and-medium play or a certain number of goal line plays. We never want to have too much or too little of something because I think it related to the burden that is on your players as they go into a game. You don’t want them studying like madmen and then not using the things that you are learning about or practicing on the practice field.
"We try to take a balanced call sheet into the game, and that’s years of research I have done on what should be contained in those game plans. But tricks are no exception to that. I try to not refer to them as trick plays. They are football plays. They still award you points if you score. We're just trying to put points on that scoreboard. This time of year if you can really evaluate who on your team deserves to play and you can shape your offense to that direction."
Being back for back-to-back years is one thing, and improving on offense is another, but Rutgers is still clawing its way into even the middle of the pack of the Big Ten after being in the basement.
The trick plays and scoring points are nice, but according to Gleeson, he's focused on one thing.
“To be quite honest I just want to win,” Gleeson said. “Whatever we have to do to win. I know yards per play, points per possession and I like the statistics as much as anyone else, but we just have to keep winning. What that means is and coach always talks about it, we just need to have a bigger number than the other team. We are going to play complimentary football. I think we have really smart coaches and smart kids, the points are going to come. We just have to stay the course, but ultimately we are just trying to win games in this really tough league and ultimately take Rutgers to another level. There is a human nature battle right now, we did some good things, but in the grand scheme of things there is a lot of room for improvement. So who do you want to listen to?
"Everyone is telling you, you’re back for a second year coach Gleeson and they haven’t had retention in your position or you scored more points in the Big Ten then they have in a long time. If you listen to those things, then you don’t take steps forward or have the growth that we want. I’m pretty sure coach Schiano is going to head our team in the right direction as it relates to work and we just got to follow his lead and get this thing going."
Follow Chris Nalwasky on Twitter @ChrisNalwasky.
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