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For a third straight game this past weekend, Rutgers football scored 13 points. It isn’t surprising then that the Scarlet Knights have lost all three games.
The offense, or lack thereof for Rutgers in recent weeks, has certainly been a concern for a program that is now winless to start their Big Ten season. Rutgers is 3-3 on the year, with all three losses coming in the conference.
And the struggles of the Scarlet Knights to move the ball effectively over the past three weeks is something that will need to be corrected ahead of Saturday’s game at Northwestern.
From looking at the tape from this past Saturday’s 31-13 loss at No. 9 Michigan State, head coach Greg Schiano sees an offense that he believes is a play or two away from being far more effective at moving the ball.
“Well, definitely looking forward right? That’s, that’s number one. I’m not going to look back. We studied the tape. We have opportunities on film that we have to cash in in and if we do that, we’re going to score points. And if we don’t, we won’t. It’s really not more complicated – and it’s not just you know, easy ones are the deep balls that you missed,” Schiano told reporters on Monday.
“But there’s some runs that if you get one block done correctly, it’s going to be one-on-one with the safety and that’s what you ask for, right? You get to 12-13 yards deep in the secondary one-on-one with the safety, see what happens. So, there’s plenty of plays out there that you know we’re not that far off. But that’s coach-speak, you got to you got get the job done. We got to coach better, we got to play better. That’s what we’re going to try to do.”
The good news for Rutgers is that Northwestern is allowing 27.2 points per game, second-worst in the Big Ten.