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Saturday afternoon was a rough day at the office for Rutgers football and head coach Greg Schiano. In the near term, it was a tough loss and one that certainly stings.
But in the long-term, Schiano talks about building a foundation for the program that extends beyond a single Big Ten loss or even this season. Unlike his predecessors, Schiano is able to talk like this because not only has he rebuilt a program before, he has rebuilt this very same program before.
That lets Schiano stand up on Saturday night following a home loss to Rutgers where nothing went right, and speak about the direction of the program. In doing so, the most successful head coach in program history acknowledges that there will be bumps and bruises along the way.
“We’re building something here. I didn’t take this job and think it would be this linear ascent to the top. We knew what it was going to be. We’ve done it before,” Schiano told reporters after the game.
“This is disappointing after the way we played rush defense last week. It was disappointing to me. But, again, they did some things that, you know, got us a little off kilter and then it was — and then they wore it out. They did a good job until they could fix it. They kept running it.
“So, again, really good people doing it to us, too. That was — you know, I can’t not say that. Because that’s not giving them credit. It wasn’t — it wasn’t totally us just not performing, it was them performing.”
Saturday’s 52-3 loss to Wisconsin is going to sting in the same way that blowout losses to Ohio State and Michigan State at home stung earlier this season.
Yet what Schiano speaks of is born from the truth of his own experience here at Rutgers, building a program as he has done in the past. He took over a program in 2001 that was likely the worst in college football, devoid of talent and simply a mess.
In his second season, Rutgers was just 1-11, a modest step back from a 2000 season where the Scarlet Knights were 2-9 under Schiano. They had blowout losses – boy did they have blowouts.
Nine of their losses in 2002 were by 20 or more points. Three were by more than 30 points.
Then as now, Schiano is sticking to the script of solid recruiting and player development. By the 2002 standard, this second season under Schiano is ahead of plan. Rutgers is 4-5 (1-5 Big Ten) and still has some winnable games left on their schedule.
Weekends like this hurt for Rutgers fans. But remember, remember the ghosts of 2001. Four years later, the Scarlet Knights were in a bowl game.
The loss this week came after Schiano spent the preceding days asking for a strong fan turnout, for the Scarlet faithful to show up early and create a home-field advantage. His football team came out slow and then got steamrolled.
“I’m trying to do the same thing. You know, I was brought back here to turn a program back to what we had,” Schiano said.
“And I need, and we need, this program needs all the help we can get. I felt like as many people as we could get here, that would help us.”