The 2022 Rutgers football season is officially here. The Scarlet Knights take on ACC foe and former Big East rival, Boston College, on Saturday at noon up in Chestnut Hill, MA.
Head coach Greg Schiano, already in his third year back with the program, is looking forward to gameday as are the players.
“We had a good training camp,” Schiano said on Monday during his weekly press conference. “As I always say to the players, you have a good summer program that gives you a chance to have a good training camp. We have a good training camp, it gives you a chance to have a good season. We've had a good summer and good training camp.”
Despite coaching for many years, Schiano still gets butterflies, though they are more because he is excited than nervous. Coaches will always say there is work to do, but he feels his team is prepared for the first game of the year.
If you don't, it's probably time to (hang it up). It's excitement. I always tell our players all the time, there's no reason to be nervous unless you're unprepared,” Schiano said. “Now, excited is kind of a similar feeling to nervous. But excited is a positive. Nervous to me is a negative. And I don't want any of our players to be nervous. I want them to be excited. So those butterflies to me are the excitement. I believe that.
“But if you're not prepared, you can't fool yourself. I talk to our players all the time about that. There's only one way to be truly prepared. That's to put in the hard work and get prepared and do the things that you know you're supposed to do. And that's when I say go let it fly. That's what I mean. You should play the game with no apprehension, no fear. I should coach it with no apprehension, no fear. Unless you're not prepared. Then you've earned the fear.”
Schiano’s second tenure at Rutgers has been anything but easy. He’s had to rebuild the program from scratch while playing in the Big Ten -- in the East Division no less -- and then COVID happened and threw a wrench in the timeline as well. But with most of the roster and of the course the coaching all his, the program his continuing to change in his third season back.
“Anytime you continually go through cycles and the same people go through them you get better. We had some coaching changes on the defensive side of the ball. So you don't get that. But then maybe you gain a little bit of new ideas, things like that,” Schiano said.
The players that have been through it for two or three years, I think that's the key. They now have the culture. They are the ones who share the culture with the players on the team, the younger guys, the new guys. That to me is the key. When you talk about culture, and people want to use the word "tradition," tradition isn't singing a song and ringing a bell. Tradition is what the older players pass down to the younger players.”
Speaking of tradition and culture, there are a number of coaches on the opposite sideline for the Eagles that either coached under Schiano at Rutgers or with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or were Scarlet Knights themselves as players. Jeff Hafley, the head coach, is a Montvale, N.J. native who spent the 2011 season as the defensive backs coach at Rutgers under Schiano. He then went on to coach the secondary with the Bucs and later replaced Schiano as the Ohio State defensive coordinator in 2019 before taking the BC job.
Tem Lekabu coached the outside linebackers at RU from 2010-11 and then was with Tampa as a defensive assistant from 2012-13. John McNulty had two stints at Rutgers from 2004-2008 under Schiano as the wide receivers coach and then the offensive coordinator before he was the QB with the Bucs. He also was the OC for the Scarlet Knights under previous head coach Chris Ash from 2018-19.
Former Rutgers quarterback Steve Shimko and running back Savon Huggins -- one of the top recruits Rutgers has ever landed -- are assistant coaches at those respective positions as well. There are more ties from Ohio State too on staff.
There's a lot of good friends on that sideline, you're right. I'm really proud of Jeff,” Schiano said. “I knew Jeff would be a head coach. Jeff was great for us here at Rutgers. He was also great for us at Tampa Bay. You talk about Tem Lukabu, who was with us in both places, and John McNulty, who was with us in both places. Those are really good football coaches and good people.
“There's others too. There's some of our former players. Savon Huggins, he's up there, doing a great job. I'm proud of him. And Steve Shimko, who coached in the NFL and is back in college. So it's really good. And there's a guy that worked with me at Ohio State, was my graduate assistant there, Matt Thurin, who handles the special teams and works in the secondary. He's an excellent young coach. So there's a lot of familiarity. It will be a little strange because I care about those guys, but when you're playing in a game, you're competing, and you're trying to win.”
Rutgers plays a gauntlet of a schedule in Big Ten play, and normally teams open up against an opponent that is “easier”. However, Boston College presents a tough challenge from the get-to being a Power-5 opponent, and one that Rutgers battles for recruits with in the area.
“Whatever the schedule is you play it,” Schiano said. “I guess the pros would be, people would say, there's an urgency you're playing. But I always thought opening game there's always an urgency. I don't care who you're playing because you haven't played together as a team. It's college football. This team is quite different than the team last year. And you only get, unlike every other sport, you only get 12 opportunities to do it. So every opening game I've ever been a part of, no matter who we played, I've been incredibly excited.”
Rutgers played another regional opponent and former Big East rival Syracuse last season in the second game of the year. This time, Rutgers opens up on the road a similar team in the Eagles. Schiano, though, doesn’t believe there’s much nostalgia in that like the fans have. The contract against those teams were formed before Schiano came on board.
No, I guess the answer is supposed to be yes, and the old -- not really. We play in a very, very demanding league, a new league,” Schiano said. “One that as you guys know I believe that's where we've belonged. So when you get out of conference, it really i's different. You're preparing for the Big Ten schedule. So whoever we have -- I didn't have a choice in what happened in the past. I do going forward. And I certainly have a scheduling philosophy that I believe in. But this is all done well in advance.”
The last time these two programs met, Boston College won 30-16 in 2019 in Piscataway. The Eagles are also 20-6-1 all-time versus the Scarlet Knights, but three years ago, they hadn’t met since 2004. Boston College has won 11 matchups in a row, and Rutgers last won, 20-13, in 1991.
But Rutgers is a much different team than it was in 2019. Schiano was hired that December.
“We're excited,” Schiano said. “It’s going to be a good year.”
******
No depth chart was released with the game notes. Schiano said they have yet to go public with a decision on who will start at quarterback between Noah Vedral, Evan Simon, and Gavin Wimsatt.
"No, we haven't settled yet on who will start," Schiano said. "I think they all had good training camps. We're going to do whatever it takes to win. I don't know how many you'll see. Whatever it takes to give us the best chance to win.
"Sean (Gleeson), myself and the offensive staff, if we feel that's the best way to win a game, then we'll play multiple guys. If not we'll just play one. We're such a young team and we're figuring out who we are -- we have three practices this week that are really important. You get 25 practices leading up to the first game. So this is about an eighth of our practices we still have left to prepare for this game. They're going to be very important."
Follow Chris Nalwasky on Twitter @ChrisNalwasky.
--------------------------------------------------------------
• Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
