Laviano faces pivotal moment in Big Ten opener
PISCATAWAY >> Chris Ash didn’t spell it out in fine print, but the writing is on the wall.
Chris Laviano’s status as Rutgers’ starting quarterback grows more precarious by the week.
“I’m not going to talk about that,” Ash said Monday in response to a question about the junior’s job security, before opening up more. “Chris has earned the right to be our starting quarterback. Does that mean that he is exempt from being evaluated and potentially lose his job? No, it doesn’t.
“Chris is right now in a competition to see if he’s going to continue to be the starting quarterback here at Rutgers. That’s been the way since we’ve gotten here.”
In three nonconference games, Laviano committed three turnovers (two interceptions, one fumble) while passing for 457 yards and four touchdowns on 89 attempts. His 51.7 completion percentage is down 9.2 points from last season. And his 20.6 total quarterback rating, which values quarterbacks on a 0-100 scale for all play types while adjusting for the strength of opposing defenses faced, is the worst among 14 Big Ten signal-callers.
Entering Saturday’s Big Ten opener against Iowa at High Point Solutions Stadium, Laviano stressed the need for more consistency.
“Just executing every single play better as an offense,” he said. “There’s a lot of miscommunication on the offensive side of the ball that we need to figure out. It comes down to simply just throwing and catching better.”
The junior’s performance last Saturday against New Mexico was a mixed bag.
Laviano didn’t turn the ball over, but he completed only 40.7 percent of his pass attempts — second worst in 14 career starts. He connected with Jawuan Harris on a vertical go route for a career-long 75-yard touchdown to ignite Rutgers’ 21-point comeback, yet threw wildly behind Janarion Grant on a third-down slant route in the slot for the Knights’ second straight three-and-out to start the game.
“He’s got to throw the ball better at times,” offensive coordinator Drew Mehringer said. “There’s a few passes out there that were easy completions that he could’ve made, and there were also a few out there that, potential pass plays that would’ve changed the look of his performance if we had either picked up a pressure better, if we had run better routes or been in the right place. That’s something that as an offense, starting with myself, we have to improve. And it’s a big focus obviously for this week.”
Iowa certainly won’t be the easiest of test runs for improvement.
The Hawkeyes returned three of four secondary starters, including 2015 Jim Thorpe Award winner Desmond King, to a defense which ranked fourth in the Big Ten last season in pass defense efficiency during conference games.
What will Rutgers’ in-game evaluation process of Laviano entail? When would the Knights consider resorting to another option?
TCU transfer Zach Allen quarterbacked a fourth-quarter series last week “to calm Chris down,” Ash said. Junior Gio Rescigno and freshman Tylin Oden saw action against Howard the week before. That was in a blowout, but Oden’s redshirt for this year, barring an injury, is now gone.
Suffice to say, all eyes will be on Laviano come Saturday. But Ash can promise fans this: The first-year head coach will continue to extract the most out of his arsenal.
“If we felt like there was somebody that could go out and play the game better than Chris and give us a chance to win, guess what? We’d be playing him,” Ash said. “If we just go around and pull the hook on every player that struggles, does that mean we’re necessarily going to put a player in there that gives us a better chance to win? I don’t know.”