Is the revolving door of QBs here to stay at Rutgers?
Evan Simon and Gavin Wimsatt both saw snaps at quarterback in Rutgers Football's season-opening victory at Boston College.
Johnny Langan, a tight end, did as well. In fact, he technically started the game. Even wide receiver Josh Youngblood took a wildcat snap too.
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Noah Vedral was out for the game with an injury, and he's being considered week-to-week, but there's a chance he also plays when he returns, whenever that may be.
Nothing is off the table. Rutgers might have plans to have more players taking snaps as the year goes on.
"Anything is," head coach Greg Schiano said on Monday. "We don't have to answer this too many more times going forward. This will be a blanket statement for the whole year. Whatever gives us the best chance to win is a possibility, so then basically, anything is a possibility if it gives us a chance to win."
Vedral traveled with the rest of teammates up to Boston College for the game. A captain, Vedral is still seen as a leader on and off the field despite him not playing because of his injury.
And while he isn't practicing, he's still acted as a mentor to Wimsatt, Simon, and the other walk-ons on the team.
"He has been great with the younger guys," Schiano said. "He has coached them. Noah wants to go into coaching when he is done playing. He has done an awesome job.
"He has helped me. He has helped Sean quite a bit. He is handling it well, but he is like a caged animal. He wants to play. This is very frustrating to him. But we'll just week-to-week and see how it heals."
When it came to the multi-quarterback system in the first game, one QB would go in for one play and another would come in for the next. There wasn't -- at least from the outside looking in --- parity of sorts. Wimsatt, a redshirt freshman, and Simon, a third-year sophomore, each played an almost equal number of snaps. Wimsatt had 35 plays while Simon had 31.
The two combined for just 110 yards and an interception by Wimsatt, who was able to record 51 rushing yards to Simon's seven.
" Well, ultimately, personnel is my decision. I listen to all my coaches. I watch the video with them. I watch it separately. I get a lot of reports come to me, but at the end of the day that's my job as the head coach.
"During the game, I give my coaches latitude based on what they want to call, who they want doing it, and I thought Sean and the offensive staff did a good job, really good job, of managing that. But some of that is subjective, right? I mean, how do you know? You don't know. They're human beings. You don't know how people are going to react."
Rutgers hasn't been afraid to use more than one signal caller in a game dating back to Schiano's and offensive coordinator Sean Gleeson's arrival in 2019, and it doesn't seem like that'll stop any time soon. Unless one really shines that is.
"Neither one of those quarterbacks have played a substantial amount of football, so you're getting to see it just as we are. We see it in practice, but the games are different. We all know that. So we're learning about them just as everybody is.
"When are you going to name a starter? You know, again, when it gives us the best chance to win."
Wimsatt and Simon appear to be all in when it comes to rotating. They are doing whatever it takes for the team to win. Schiano and others have mentioned how unselfish the quarterback room was in the spring and summer, and you're seeing that now.
“Both of us, we just want to win,” Simon said.. “At the end of the day that’s all that matters and we’re more than willing to do what it takes.”
“I feel like it wasn’t too difficult because every play we were focused on chopping,” Wimsatt added. “So no matter what the circumstance is we just got to chop and do our job and that’s what we made sure we did.”
Follow Chris Nalwasky on Twitter @ChrisNalwasky.
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