During his first tenure as head coach of Rutgers football, it took Greg Schiano five seasons to get his team to a bowl game. Now in his fourth season back at Rutgers, Schiano has the program bowl-eligible.
He has this rebuild thing down flat, doesn’t he? At this rate, Schiano 3.0 will have his team bowl-eligible after three seasons.
It isn’t to say that everything lines up symmetrically like it did 18 years ago, but the signs of progress are certainly seen on the field. Rutgers is 6-2 (3-2 Big Ten) and is certainly trending in the right direction. There is momentum for Schiano to be the Big Ten’s Coach of the Year and there is some intriguing buzz about where Rutgers could end up in a bowl game.
But in terms of his measurements for the program’s growth, Schiano sees it coming not by wins-losses but rather the overall talent level of the program.
“The similarity is we are building a program. I keep talking about the pipeline and just like then, the pipeline wasn’t full yet. We’re getting closer,” Schiano told reporters on Monday.
“I think this (2024) class, once we get them here, will fill the pipeline. So then when you ask me questions about depth, we’ll have more experienced depth and when you ask me about our front-line players, they will have cumulative representations. We have that in some areas, but not all yet. That’s part of building a program the way we do it.”
Schiano’s four recruiting classes at Rutgers have seen a nice balance of instant starters and contributors, some under-the-radar players and several contributors who provide depth and versatility. Very few of the players who have come in are highly-ranked recruits.
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Instead, Rutgers has worked to develop them and tapped the transfer portal to bring in additional talent.
It is a stark contrast to Ohio State, this weekend’s opponent. The Buckeyes consistently have a top-five recruiting class in the nation.
Ohio State has the No. 2 class in the nation. They have four recruits rated as five-star players.
Rutgers, in its history as a program, has just one recruit ranked as a five-star (Darius Hamilton, who is part of the Rutgers coaching staff). This current recruiting class is ranked No. 34 nationally by Rivals.
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“We don’t get ready-mades like the team we are playing this week. They get some guys that come in that are five-star guys. We don’t get a lot of those but that’s okay. We know who we are,” Schiano said.
“That’s the key to being us at Rutgers is we develop guys, they believe in what we’re doing, they believe in the development, and we’re getting close to having the pipeline full and that’s where things get fun when that pipeline gets full. So we are getting close.”