PISCATAWAY, N.J. — The piped-in noise from practice, already deafening during a typical week for a road game, has seemingly been turned up a notch this week. It is an unsurprising development since Rutgers football is heading to one of the loudest environments in college football and in the Big Ten this weekend.
And given the struggles Rutgers has had on offense over the past month, the headache is both a literal one but also a metaphorical one for head coach Greg Schiano.
‘Happy Valley’ has been an unhappy place for Rutgers as the Scarlet Knights have been winless at Penn State since they joined the Big Ten in 2014. The last time they played at Penn State in 2021, Rutgers lost 28-0 in a game where the crowd noise, truth be told, didn’t factor in all that much.
Following Saturday’s struggles on offense, Rutgers is hoping to cut back on the self-inflicted wounds. In their loss at Iowa, Rutgers had seven penalties for 40 yards.
The major culprit? False starts by the offense, due in large part to crowd noise.
“Nothing was really effective Saturday after the first quarter. First quarter, you know, we’re moving the ball. We just shoot ourselves in the foot with those procedure penalties. It’s not going to be quiet this weekend,” Schiano said on Monday during his weekly press conference.
“So it was really loud at Iowa and guess what, at Beaver Stadium, it gets pretty loud. We are going to have to get over that and figure out how to operate in the noise. Poise in the noise.”
If Rutgers can get back to be the offense it was in the season opener against Northwestern, or against Virginia Tech or perhaps even in the second half against Michigan State, then it can hang in there and be effective against a good and quick Penn State defense.
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On Saturday, Rutgers managed just 127 yards of total offense. Iowa had more than triple that.
Even the way Rutgers played against then No. 1 Ohio State would be enough for Rutgers to hang in and make things interesting on Saturday. It certainly isn’t out of the question, but it comes down to execution.
Execution…and quieting down Beaver Stadium.
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With a capacity of 106,572, the volume and intensity of the Nittany Lions fanbase can make Beaver Stadium a brutal place to play.
“Well, when you look at last week, there was a period where I was very pleased with the offense – wasn’t pleased with the procedure penalties, but we were -I think it was like seven of 10 inn the first half. We were putting the ball where it needed to be, we were running the ball, but we had those penalties,” Schiano said on Wednesday following practice.
“And like I said earlier, we’re not good enough to overcome that. But look, we just need to run the ball the way, we do we need to throw the ball accurately. We need to avoid to having penalties we’ve been really good with penalties. The noise was a different thing and we’re gonna have the noise this weekend….It’s important that we have another opportunity to fix it.
“I got a splitting headache so it better work. Like having a jet engine for two hours in your head. But well worth it if it pays off.”