The Rutgers football team fell to now No. 13-ranked Indiana last Saturday, and the tides turned in the turnover battle.
A week after generating seven total takeaways (six on defense), Rutgers didn’t get any. On the slip side, Scarlet Knights’ quarterback Noah Vedral threw three interceptions with two of them coming after he was hit. The other was a desperation late throw trying to make a play. Indiana scored 17 points off the turnovers which went a huge way in coming out with the victory.
“Two of them for sure his arm got hit,” head coach Greg Schiano said after the game. “That's why the ball went in almost an end-over-end trajectory. Those are hard when you get hit throwing the ball. It's usually a combination of things. Protection wasn't good enough. We got to have a clock in our head that we got to get rid of it. I didn't have the get-off times, we track it, but I didn't ask for them.
“It was a combination of the two things, but I could get the ball out, that would have been good,” Vedral added. “Maybe I could have moved with my feet too.”
Rutgers was able to capitalize on the Michigan State turnovers in the season opener and scored 21 points of them, but it finished with only 276 yards. Against the Hoosiers, it had 247. The Scarlet Knights’ 261.5 yards-per-game is last in the Big Ten.
I think we have to become consistent,” Schiano said. “We do some things to move the football at times that are exciting. That's a good defense, as you saw by the result today. Michigan State is a good team, too. We played two good teams. I think you all know this, but every week you play in the Big Ten, you're playing a good team. So get ready. If you're not ready to play at optimal level, it's going to be hard to move the ball, hard to stop them, hard to be effective in the kicking game. This is the top of the food chain. We have to learn how to live and perform at the top of the food chain.”
The bright side is Rutgers feels like it has improved. As Schiano stated, the offense is more exciting, even if it is not generating a ton of yards and points. The players move at a faster pace and offensive coordinator Sean Gleeson has implemented some trickery and different packages utilizing the skillsets of Vedral and fellow quarterback Johnny Langan, who caught a pass from the former this past Saturday.
“I think coach Gleeson does a great job,” Vedral said. “He gives us a great chance to win. It’s fun as a player and it’s fresh.”
Despite the questionable play-calling at times on offense., the defense has stepped up and gotten better, especially in stopping the run (79 yards on the ground per game with just one touchdown).
Rutgers was down 23-7 in the third quarter, but it cut the deficit to 23-15. It was aggressive going for one (almost two) onside kicks and it went for it on fourth down four times.
“I think the same thing I learned in the win: when things didn't go well, they kept chopping,” Schiano said on what he learned from his team. “Tonight things didn't go well for a long period of time, and they just kept playing hard.”
The biggest example of the team continuing to chop was the 4th-and-32 play that resulted in a frenzy of eight laterals and a touchdown at the end by receiver Bo Melton. The play was eventually looked at and called back due to an illegal forward pass by receiver Shameen Jones that arguably was too close to overturn.
Rutgers, even if it had scored the touchdown, likely still wasn’t going to win, but it didn’t just lay down either.
“We practice that play. That's one of our end-of-game plays,” Schiano said. “It never plays out the same. The beginning starts the same, but who knows where it goes from the pitch fest. I couldn't tell you if that was a forward pass. How do I know?
“I do know this: they really executed it about as well as you can. They refused to go down with the ball, which is not easy to do. How many times do you watch a game and see a guy go down with the ball? You see it all the time. They refused to go down with the ball. I thought it was a tremendous effort.”
After two games, Rutgers is 1-1, which already is a big step up after not winning a Big Ten game in three years. The rebuild is going to take time, but the culture is set.
“I didn't come back here to lose. I'm not saying we're going to win every game or we're going to win 'em all right away. We're going out there and we're playing to win,” Schiano said. “If it means going on fourth down, if it means going for two, whatever it means, that's what we're going to do. I promised these kids that. As hard as they work, they deserve that.”
Follow Chris Nalwasky on Twitter @ChrisWasky.
