Over the last few days, Rutgers football has hosted several players who they have targeted out of the transfer portal. One of those players, Dymere Miller, signed with the program on Wednesday. But one or two of the other targets may have been scared off by the intensity of the program.
In particular, head coach Greg Schiano said, the program’s intensity on the practice field.
Schiano has consistently talked up Rutgers football as a developmental program, one that he likens to a pipeline where the talent flows out one end. A part of that is a culture of hard work that extends onto the practice field.
The expectations for practice under Schiano are tough and often unrelenting. It is not something that he said is for everybody.
“I don’t want guys that think they are coming to one thing and all of a sudden they show up and it’s something totally different. We are transparent with it,” Schiano told reporters on Wednesday.
“We had some visitors that come with Bowl practice, I really like it, we have some visitors come and I can tell you for — I think there was some guys that came and saw the way we practiced. It’s a little harder than they want to practice. So they went somewhere else and so that’s fine. Better now than later, right.”
Schiano, as would be expected, was unapologetic about the program’s mentality on the practice field. And it is hard to argue with the results.
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Rutgers finished this season 6-6 (3-5 Big Ten) for the most program wins since 2014. It is also the first time since 2014 that Rutgers is outright bowl-eligible.
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Those are two significant milestones in Schiano’s rebuilding of the program. Accomplishments made even more impressive considering that Rutgers played the second-toughest schedule in college football this year.
“This is the way we practice. And we don’t put out a recruiting practice so people can see, you know, high fives and chest bumps,” Schiano said.
“This is how we practice and if you want to do it this way, you’ll get better and you’ll end up in the NFL if you’re talented enough and you’ll get your degree. Those are good things. This is the way we do it here. That’s how we have to do it.”