Greg Schiano didn’t sugarcoat anything after Rutgers got rolled by Indiana, and there wasn’t much reason to. The Scarlet Knights were battered 47-15 by a Hoosiers team that controlled the field from start to finish, leaving Schiano with the kind of postgame tone coaches dread and fans know all too well.
“They're a heck of a football team,” Schiano said. “Well coached, good players. I expected us to play better.”
Rutgers heads into a bye week with plenty to sort through, and the first issue is obvious: the ground game never got going. Antwan Raymond managed just 31 yards on 11 carries, and the Scarlet Knights finished with only 59 rushing yards as a team. For Schiano, that wasn’t nearly enough.
“Antwan tried to push himself tonight, but he wasn't himself,” Schiano said.
The bye comes at a useful time, because Rutgers clearly needs a reset. The effort and urgency that showed up in the win over Howard never carried over against Indiana, and the gap between those two performances was hard to miss. Rutgers looked out of sync, outmanned and repeatedly picked apart.
“I love the coaching staff, I love the players,” Schiano said. “It's not going to be any of that.
It's going to be, ' What can we do better? We have to improve.
I thought we did improve the last two weeks, and we didn't improve this week.”
The frustration around the program is growing, especially after Rutgers took its first loss of the season against UMass and then kept stumbling from there. The Scarlet Knights are already sitting with four losses, and the leap many expected in the Big Ten hasn’t materialized.
“This is 2026,” Schiano said. “It's not 2025.
We'll play. But I know what we have.
We have six games. We got one after two weeks.
That's the only thing that I'm going to focus on.”
There were a few small positives in Friday night’s defeat. The kicking game was the one area that held up, and the receivers combined for 195 yards. But Indiana’s defense still had the upper hand, especially with Rutgers unable to find a real answer at quarterback.
For Rutgers, the road ahead doesn’t get any easier. The Scarlet Knights travel to Maryland in Week 7 to face a 2-3 team that is 0-2 in conference play, and that trip is followed by another road game against Northwestern in Week 8.
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Rutgers Is Building Something Fans Havent Seen In A Long Time
Rutgers 2027 recruiting push has put the program in territory it has not occupied in a long time, with the Scarlet Knights sitting at No. 3 nationally and atop the Big Ten, according to the 247Sports Composite. The class already features four-star prospects Brandon Woodard and RJ Moore, along with three-star guard Korey Francis, giving the staff a foundation that looks every bit like a major step forward for a program that has spent years trying to raise its ceiling.
The bigger question now is how Rutgers handles the rest of the board, especially with only one scholarship left for the 2027-28 season. A class this highly regarded brings both momentum and pressure, because the next move has to fit a carefully constructed group while keeping the program on the kind of upward path that turns recruiting buzz into something lasting. [Read more 🡒]
Rutgers Hits Bye Week With One Brutal Question Ahead
Rutgers heads into its bye week with the kind of 1-4 start that forces a hard reset, and the schedule waiting on the other side does not offer much comfort. The Scarlet Knights still have four road games left and only three at home, so the margin for error is gone quickly if they want any path back toward respectability. Between the losses already on the board and the stretch still to come, the season has reached the point where every week feels like a referendum on how much progress this group can actually make.
What makes the pause so tense is that the conversation is no longer just about cleaning up execution. Recent results have put the programs direction and coaching job security into the spotlight, and the remaining opponents only sharpen the pressure to show something better. Rutgers can still change the tone of the season, but it will have to do so while navigating a schedule that leaves little room for easing back in. [Read more 🡒]
Rutgers Womens Basketball Schedule Just Spotlighted Its Biggest 2026-27 Games
Rutgers womens basketball got an early dose of visibility for the 2026-27 season when the Big Ten announced five Scarlet Knights games for the Big Ten Network. The slate puts a few of the teams most recognizable matchups in the national window, including meetings with Ohio State, Seton Hall, USC, Michigan and Maryland, which should give the program a chance to be seen well beyond Piscataway.
For a Rutgers team trying to make noise in a deeper conference, those broadcasts do more than fill a TV date. They turn key stretches of the schedule into measuring-stick games, and they give fans a clearer picture of where the Scarlet Knights will be tested most once the season gets rolling. The full schedule is out, but the network spotlight already points to the games that figure to carry the most weight. [Read more 🡒]