In Saturday’s 16-14 win at Temple, penalties were an issue for Rutgers football. And while head coach Greg Schiano wants to cut back on the mistakes, he is keenly aware that if his team is to play with an edge, some penalties will be inevitable.
Nine penalties to the tune of 80 yards were a major issue for Rutgers against an opponent that the Scarlet Knights were heavily favored to beat comfortably. But Rutgers, as has been the case all season, has struggled with untimely penalties that either stall drives on offense or extend a fresh set of downs to the opposition.
In talking with reporters on Monday, Schiano talked about this fine line he wants his team to walk in terms of being aggressive but not teetering in the turf where penalties can be debilitating.
“I don’t want to be No. 1 in least penalized because I don’t think you’re trying hard enough if you’re doing that. But I don’t want to be down in the bottom, either,” Schiano said on Monday during his weekly press conference.
“Somewhere, obviously in the top half but maybe more towards the top quartile. We have too many penalties.”
After Saturday’s game, Schiano was asked about the penalty situation and he likened it to telling a child not to touch a hot stove. Inevitably, you talk about it consistently and yet, the child will reach up and touch that stove.
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Schiano pointed to a learning curve for his young defense
“Now when you look at it, some of them are young players that haven’t played and some of them are true freshmen that haven’t played. You learn,” Schiano said.
“The whole thing, as I said to you last week, all of us, you’re told, don’t touch the stove because it’s hot, you’re going to get burned but sometimes you’ve got to touch it. Hopefully, we run out of those stove moments and we start cleaning things up.”
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