What did Rutgers Football accomplish during its bye week?
Following the close loss at home to Northwestern on Oct. 20, the Rutgers football head coach Chris Ash said the main few areas that would be addressed in the bye week, which just finished up, was recovery and development of players, and recruiting.
"You know, we've got a plan. We have to go deal with some recruiting but we have to let these guys rest up. It's been an eight-week grind. We have some guys that are banged up. We have some guys that are hurt,” Ash said two weeks ago. “We'll practice. We have some guys to develop and we'll keep some younger guys working to get them better. But our guys have been playing. They need some rest.”
Speaking at his weekly press conference on Monday morning, Ash reiterated that plan.
“Obviously coming off a bye week, it was a much needed bye week after eight straight weeks of games. Gave us a chance to rest and recover a little bit. We were kind of banged up,” Ash said. “Hopefully we get some extra guys back for this next game that we hadn't had.”
During practice, the team and coaches focused on the basics and getting the younger players in the program, something Ash’s has been hanging his hat on for a while now, better.
“Had a chance to practice three times last week. The focus was on some fundamentals and situation work, as well as some developmental work for some of the younger players,” Ash said. “I thought we had good energy, good spirit at the practices and got a lot of good work done and now obviously got an opportunity to recruit a little bit, too.”
One of the more interesting nuggets about the bye week however was the fact that the players and coaches really looked in the mirror at themselves. Everyone in the building knows 1-7 isn’t going to cut it.
Ash felt that form of evaluation was worthwhile.
“(The bye week gave us) a chance for us to go back and review and reflect on the first eight games, both as coaches and as players. We went back through, did a very thorough self-scout evaluation of us on offense, defense and special teams. Then we had our players go back and study themselves with a point of attack plays that they were in in the first eight games and base fly give their evaluation of what they saw, and I thought it was a really good exercise for everybody in the program,” Ash said.
This Saturday, the Scarlet Knights will travel to Madison, WI. and take on the Wisconsin Badgers, who own a 5-3 overall record (3-2 within the Big Ten).
“Wisconsin is a very good football team. They are a big, strong, physical football team. They have got good coaches and they have got good players. They have a winning culture that they have had for a long, long time,’ Ash said. “Camp Randall is a tough environment, one of the toughest game day environments in all of college football. It's going to be a tremendous challenge, but one that we're looking forward to.”
The Badgers are coming off a 31-17 loss at Northwestern, the same Northwestern team that Rutgers nearly beat two weeks before falling short down the stretch by three points.
Ash has said numerous times that there are a handful of plays each game that prevent Rutgers from really breaking through and he stood by that notion on Monday. However, he didn’t put any stock in the fact that the Wildcats beat the Badgers the way they did and that his team almost pulled a win against them.
"I've said probably over and over and over, and nobody really wants to probably believe me, is I don't think we're that far away. We are details away from where we need to be, but we're not light years away from where we need to be. We are details away from where we need to be. I don't get into score comparisons a whole lot because the situations are completely different. That is a rivalry game between Northwestern and Wisconsin. If you look at the history of that game, especially in Evanston, that has been a game that Northwestern has played well in quite a bit. They are a well-coached football team. They have got good players, and they play Wisconsin every single year. They know their style. They know what they need to do to try to defend them and try to move the ball, and they did a very good job of that last Saturday.”
The third-year head coach knows that Wisconsin, a team he used to coach for, will look to take its anger out against the Scarlet Knights led by running back and New Jersey native, Johnathan Taylor.
“The team that we will face this Saturday in Camp Randall Stadium will be a completely different football team,” Ash said. “It's a different environment, different attitude, when you play that football team at home. They lost a game, and I'm sure they are going to go back to work and they are hungry to get back in the win column, also. I expect a completely different football team.”
At this point of the season, Rutgers doesn’t have much to play for. The bowl game appearance that Ash hoped for in the summer for this year is not even in question. It hasn’t been really since week No. 4.
Meanwhile the Badgers are in the hunt for the West Division title in the conference as they are in second place behind Northwestern. Rutgers should realistically play free and have the mindset to just beat Wisconsin and create a roadblock to a Big Ten Championship game spot, but Monday, Ash back tracked on that again mentioned the fundamentals and playing hard.
In other words, more coach speak.
“Our focus isn't just going to beat someone. Our focus is to get better on ourselves, get our execution better. If I'm just focused on beating somebody, we're missing the point,” Ash said. “We need to get better at our fundamentals, our execution, our effort. That's our focus. And if we do those things, then we'll have a chance to win a game and get the results that we want. We want to get the type of behaviors and play that are consistent with the results that we want, and that's what we're missing right now and we need to get that done.”
Wisconsin leads the all-time series 2-0 and have outscored Rutgers in those games, 85-10.
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