On Sunday night, Rutgers football head coach Greg Schiano made the call to move on from Sean Gleeson as offensive coordinator. In his place, Schiano has elevated tight ends coach Nunzio Campanile.
Now, the Jersey-born and bred Campanile will be asked to turn around an offense that has scored a combined 33 points in their last three games.
A graduate of Montclair State University, Campanile not only has a very strong resume, but he also has the requisite experience for this role. In 2019, Campanile was elevated to interim head coach after Chris Ash was fired as head coach at Rutgers.
He was most recently the tight ends coach for Schiano.
Now, he is being called on once again to take on an elevated midseason role, this time as offensive coordinator.
“Well, he is a candidate and he has got a seven-week job interview as the coordinator. Why Nunz? I think that he is a very talented quarterback coach. The development of our quarterbacks is going to be an integral part of us being successful on offense,” Schiano said on Sunday night.
“And I think he’s got a lot of experience at running offenses, at coaching quarterbacks. I think he was the man for this time.”
It was a decision that was clearly difficult for Schiano as the Rutgers head coach had repeatedly spoken glowingly about the young offensive coordinator. Gleeson was, by all accounts, a tireless worker and unrelenting in trying to turn the offense around.
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It simply didn’t work, as is sometimes the case in this business.
“Certain things over time build-up and I gave it a lot of thought obviously since the end of the game, Friday night. But it wasn’t a result of Friday night that this occurred,” Schiano said.
“I really gave it a lot of thought all day Saturday, Saturday night. Well into Sunday. I just felt that, at this time, it was the right thing to do, what we needed to do for our football team.”
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