PISCATAWAY, N.J. — It wasn’t a flat and dispiriting performance from Rutgers football on Saturday night. After a week of hype and hope that the program’s rebuild of the past two seasons had finally moved beyond the foundational phase, the Scarlet Knights came up short in a 27-10 loss to a very good Iowa team.
A Hawkeyes team (3-1, 1-0 Big Ten) that, coincidentally, is still very much in the mix for a spot in the Big Ten Championship Game.
The truth is, and it is a sobering truth, that Rutgers football is not yet ready to compare with that top-tier of the Big Ten. Keep in mind that in the preseason, Iowa was receiving the most votes of any non-ranked team in both the USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches Poll and the AP Top 25.
Rutgers, by spotting 14 points off defensive touchdowns, dug themselves a hole that they simply are not built to dig climb out of. The offense remains behind the offense in this rebuild, and Saturday night was Exhibit A, Exhibit B and Exhibit C in that case.
But what was deflating about Saturday for most of the fifth-largest crowd in SHI Stadium history was that after a week of hype and hope, the splash of cold water from Iowa in the first half showed that Rutgers football remains a work in progress.
The fans turned out on Saturday night and were engaged, loud and bathed chunks of the stadium in scarlet. The team, however, wasn’t ready or mature enough yet to meet those expectations against a very good Iowa team.
“It was really good to see it, for sure, right? That’s what we aspire to build in this program, and we’ve had it that way where it’s week-after-week-after-week is that way,” head coach Greg Schiano said after the game.
“Are we quite ready to perform the way we needed to tonight? I guess not, because we didn’t do it. Now, there’s a lot of reasons for that. Some of it’s inexperience. Some of it’s not executing. Some of it is coaching. There’s a whole bunch of reasons.”
To say that Rutgers didn’t show up against Iowa is disingenuous and simply not accurate. The Scarlet Knights did open the game with a scoring drive and had some promising moments on offense throughout the night. The defense did well throughout the night and made things difficult for the Hawkeyes.
But mistakes, miscues and some naivete doomed them against a program that has been among the best in the Big Ten over the past decade. Iowa is not the type of program that any team in college football can make mistakes against and hope to win.
And Rutgers on offense made three big mistakes that cost them the game.
Call it a big moment in this rebuild for Rutgers football, a reminder that despite the gains of this year (including a Power Five road win to start the season), that there is still a lot left to be done.
That Rutgers football, while being able to produce excitement among the fanbase, is also still capable of being a disappointment.
Will that change with time? Schiano’s track record in his previous go-around points to the fact that this program can be re-established. But it wasn’t until his fourth season in 2005 that he got Rutgers into a bowl game.
Now in season three this time around, he is perhaps a bit ahead of expectations but clearly not there yet.
“But I do, I do want the fans to know, like I said when I took the job, we don’t need you when we’re Top-10, right,” Schiano said.
“Then everybody wants to be here. They are part of building this just like we are, and I believe that our fans are awesome, and they are going to stick by us and they are going to get better, and they are going to see a lot of good football. But it’s a growth process for everybody. Fans included. We’re growing up. The whole program is growing up.”
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