Schiano discusses Iowa, RU offense
PISCATAWAY — Rutgers football has a major opportunity ahead of it on Saturday, but taking down Iowa is not an easy task.
Especially this time of year, when the Hawkeyes have seemed to be playing at their best.
“You look at their last 15 games, they are 12-3,” Scarlet Knights coach Greg Schiano said Monday during a news conference at the Hale Center, “and you look at what they have done over the last four years in the month of November, they are 15-1, which is astounding.”
For Rutgers to hand Kirk Ferentz’s team a rare November loss, it’s going to have to find a way to move the ball against one of the nation’s top defenses (which it did in Saturday’s loss to Ohio State) and continue to play at a high level defensively with the hope of stymieing a lackluster Iowa offense.
Iowa’s defense is yielding just 13.7 points per game, which ranks fourth in the nation.
One player to keep an eye on is linebacker Jay Higgins, who has 113 tackles through eight games.
“They have a philosophy of how to play defense and they stick to it,” Schiano said. “It’s not that they don’t tweak anything from time to time, but they know how they want to play. They train their people in the program. They’re a very developmental program, as well, and they develop their players and they develop them in the system, and they are a lot better at doing it when they are there four years than they are at one year but they just keep getting better and better.”
Schiano also made an interesting comment when asked if he sees any similarities between Rutgers and Iowa, particularly the way both programs play defensively.
The Hawkeyes, who are 7-2 and leading the Big Ten West, have had a lot more time to build under Ferentz.
Schiano wondered what might’ve been had he not left for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers following the 2011 season.
“I have nothing but great respect for Coach Ferentz and the way that he’s built his program over the last 25 years,” Schiano said. “You know, had we stayed, had I made the right decision and stayed here, it would be very similar I think. But we didn’t. We took a nine-year break. So we are playing catch-up for sure.”
Here are more topics that Schiano discussed:
The growth of the offensive line
The unit has clearly gotten better under Pat Flaherty — especially with run blocking as running back Kyle Monangai is 97 yards away from becoming the first Rutgers running back to eclipse the 1,000-yard mark since 2012.
The offensive line as a whole still isn’t where the
Scarlet Knights need to be, but the incremental progress has been important for an offense that has improved in total offense (+48.8) and scoring offense (+9.4) since last season.
“If you look at it in sheer numbers, offensive line makes up 5/11ths of your offensive football team,” Schiano said. “If they get better, then a large portion of your offense gets better. But I think we are just kind of moving along, like I’ve said to you all along, it’s a developmental program. We are developing guys.”
The return of Reggie Sutton, who missed most of the 2021 season and all of last season recovering from a serious knee injury, at right tackle has helped stabilize the line.
The Scarlet Knights still have to take caution during the week to not overload him.
“We have to really do a good job managing his workload, and he’s got to communicate honestly with us, which he does,” Schiano said. “He’s great with that. We’ve got to find that happy medium between too much is no good, right, but you’ve got to have enough so you’re sharp and can go play at the level. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter.”
Quarterback Gavin Wimsatt’s accuracy and the offense
While Wimsatt has improved, his completion percentage of 49 percent still isn’t what it needs to be. That’s not all on Wimsatt — the line and the wide receivers play a big part in that.
While Schiano said Wimsatt still “does much to help our offense” in other ways, he acknowledged his accuracy “absolutely” has to improve.
“At the end of the day, we need to be more accurate with the ball for sure,” Schiano said. “So we’re working on it. But like everything else, we are developing, and I’m sure he’s going to get better at it.”