Noah Vedral excited for bowl opportunity with Rutgers Football
When Rutgers lost the regular season finale to Maryland and then saw other teams win to prevent itself from backing its way into a bowl game at 5-7, it thought its season was over.
But a couple weeks later and things changed drastically.
The pandemic surged ahead in a bad way and Texas A&M was forced to cancel it’s trip to the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl. The Scarlet Knights took the Aggies place and will face Wake Forest on Dec. 31 at 11 a.m.
“It was cool. It was almost like ‘Is this real?’ It’s never been done before,” Rutgers quarterback Noah Vedral said on Sunday afternoon. “Super excited. We were texting each other saying it might happen. We were excited even with just the idea. When coach (Greg Schiano) gave us the message that we were playing, it was fun. A lot of excitement.”
Vedral was spending time with his family back in Omaha, NE. when he got the confirmation. Flights were being cancelled all week long due to COVID, but Vedral was eventually able to make it to Piscataway in time and safely.
“It was a little bit hectic,” Vedral said. “We had a couple days notice which was good. The flights being cancelled with the COVID surged complicated it a little bit, but I was able to get a flight and got back on time.”
Many on the outside don’t expect a team with a losing record to beat the No. 17/20-ranked team in the nation on short notice, but never say never.
“It’s weird. It’s kind of one of those things when you’re in it, you don’t see the magnitude of it. Now that we’re here, it’s chop the next thing,” Vedral said. “We’ll get to Jacksonville and enjoy it, but we’ll have a job to do too. We’ll look back though and think it’s super rare and super weird. It’s week 13. Maybe it is Cinderella-esque.”
Just a week ago, Vedral and his teammates were thinking that their next game was going to be in September at Boston College. Everyone had to flip a switch and fast.
“It’s definitely weird especially with Christmas in between. You’re on, but you’re technically still off for a couple days for the holiday. You squeeze in your workouts early, and then you spend time with your family,” Vedral said. “Coming back here helps flip that switch. We had a long day today just doing football. It’s been a month since we had a game, but we had been breaking down tape and stuff. It’s just knocking the rust off.”
The team had been doing workouts still until just recently, but now the team had its warmup practice before ramping up and heading down to Florida mid-week.
“I think we'll be able to get our timing back,” Vedral said. “We’re getting our legs back, but I think we’ll get up to speed pretty quickly.”
While Rutgers hasn’t been practicing and preparing for the bowl game like Wake Forest has, it has gotten a chance to rest up.
“We’re healthy, which is nice. We obviously had guys who had surgeries, but for the most part, we’re feeling good,” Vedral said. “Like myself I did rehab and treatment. We’re fresh. The energy was great. We have a bowl game coming up.”
The Demon Deacons feature a potent offense that scores 41.2 points per game and averages 473 yards per game. Rutgers will need to match what Wake Forest does offensively in order to have a chance, and Vedral knows it.
“Absolutely. They are a talented offense,” Vedral said. “They have a good quarterback, great skill players, and a good offensive line. We’ll have to keep pace and we need our defense to slow them down.”
This will be Vedral’s second bowl appearance as he went to the Peach Bowl in 2017 as a freshman at UCF.
“It’s going to be cool,” Vedral said. “We don’t have school, so it’s just football and whatever activities they have planned for us. I’m super excited for it.”
The upcoming bowl game can be looked at as a reward for the chaos that has been the last two years with COVID and also the challenges that many of the players endured during the last handful of the seasons.
“We would have loved to win six games this year and punch our ticket, but we do take our academics seriously and the guys work hard,” Vedral said. “We put ourselves in position as a 5-7 team. To get this chance, something came from that hard work.”
TKR's Richie Schnyderite contributed to this article.
Follow Chris Nalwasky on Twitter @ChrisNalwasky.
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