Greg Schiano’s Rutgers tenure has reached a point that never really existed before in Piscataway: the wins have to come now.
That isn’t an official decree from athletic director Keli Zinn or anyone else inside the university. Schiano also isn’t sitting on the kind of national “hot seat” label that tends to follow coaches around the sport. But the pressure around this program is unmistakable, and it has a different feel than the one that greeted him when he came back in 2019.
Back then, Rutgers fans were mostly just relieved to have a coach who could make the program respectable again. Now, respectable is no longer enough.
Rutgers has gone 19-19 overall and 9-18 in the Big Ten over the past three seasons, and the people with the closest read on Piscataway know the margin for error is getting thin. I asked a half dozen prominent boosters how many wins Schiano needs this year to keep his job in 2027, and the answers told the story.
One said he would “probably” survive at 6-6. Another believed it might take seven wins to feel safe.
Everyone agreed that a 4-8 season could trigger a change.
There were the usual caveats about how the team looks against better competition, including the home game against defending national champion Indiana, and the not-so-small matter of the $18 million still left on Schiano’s contract. But the bigger point was the one nobody made: this is no longer a place where people automatically assume Greg Schiano is untouchable.
That was the mood in 2019, when he returned to rescue a program that felt beyond saving. Mediocrity would have been a win then. Today, the bar is much higher.
Schiano knows it, too. He said Monday that the increased resources around the program come with increased expectations.
“No one has higher expectations for the program that I do,” Schiano said when I asked him on Monday if those increased resources brought increased expectations. “How can you raise them from that? Some would say (it’s) foolish to stand up as I do and say the goal for our program is to win a national championship at Rutgers.”
He pointed to the values he wants to build into the program - the kind of stuff that gets spelled out around the facility as F.A.M.I.L.Y. - while acknowledging the reality that college football is still decided on the field.
“But I don’t shy away from the fact that there’s a scoreboard and, every week, there’s a winner and a loser,” he said. “That’s what I am passionately about, and with increased resources, I’m excited that things will get better and better and better. ... You don’t get there overnight.”
The setup is at least favorable enough to make a real push plausible. Rutgers is widely picked near the bottom of the Big Ten, but the schedule opens a door.
The Scarlet Knights should have a strong shot at going 3-0 out of conference against UMass, Boston College and Howard. Their league schedule is also considered one of the softer ones in the conference, with Maryland, Northwestern, Michigan State and Wisconsin all finishing .500 or worse last season.
Nebraska and Penn State were only 7-6, and Michigan changed coaches in the middle of a scandal.
There is talent here, too. Receiver KJ Duff and running back Antwan Raymond are both seen as future NFL players, and if hand-picked coordinator Travis Johansen can lift the defense from bad to merely average, Rutgers could turn into one of the league’s surprise teams.
If that doesn’t happen, Schiano can make a fair argument that this is the first time he’s had anything close to a full deck. He has dealt with an inherited roster short on talent, a pandemic that hit before he fully settled in, and an athletic director who didn’t seem built for the NIL era. He has earned credit for fighting through all of it.
But he also understands the business he’s in. The patience that once came with his first run at Rutgers is gone. In that earlier stretch, the late Bob Mulcahy moved quickly to reward success, and after the 11-2 season in 2006, Schiano held all the leverage in future talks with the school.
This time is different. Zinn and president William “Win” Tate have made it clear they didn’t come to New Jersey to settle for bowl-game contentment, and Schiano has repeatedly described his “vertical alignment” with them as unprecedented. Zinn’s NIL setup and fundraising have finally given Rutgers the kind of support it needs to compete in the transfer-market chaos that now defines the sport.
That means the next step has to show up in the record.
The program can’t afford to keep talking about what might happen someday while the season goes sideways now. Schiano’s second stint has included real obstacles, and he deserves credit for that. But when he called what he has accomplished “almost miraculous” after last season ended with a 5-7 loss to a depleted Penn State team, the reaction around him was hard to miss.
Zinn and Tate should be hoping this year makes their decision easy. A strong season would let Rutgers spend its resources on player acquisition instead of a buyout that would only make an already massive deficit worse.
And Schiano still has the chance to write the kind of story that made him such a force in the first place: the one true believer who built something real where almost nobody thought it could happen.
But this book is 18 chapters in now. The message is simple.
He needs to win football games. Not later.
Now.
In Other News...
Rutgers Is Betting Greg Schiano Finally Found His Defensive Fix
Rutgers is moving on from Joe Harasymiak with a hire that suggests Greg Schiano wanted a steadier hand and a better fit for a defense that struggled last season. Travis Johansen arrives as the new defensive coordinator, and the timing matters for a program that has spent plenty of energy trying to tighten things up on that side of the ball. Schiano has made clear he believes Johansen can help get the unit moving in the right direction.
What makes the move interesting is the early reaction inside the locker room, where players have pointed to Johansens leadership style and approachability as traits that stand out. For a defense that needs more confidence as much as better results, that kind of buy-in can matter quickly. Rutgers now has a fresh voice in place, and the question is whether it turns into the kind of fix Schiano has been chasing. [Read more 🡒]
Rutgers Defense Is Counting On Two New Leaders Right Away
Rutgers has spent the offseason remaking its defense, and the middle of it now features a pair of transfer linebackers who arrive with something the staff badly needs right away: experience. Sean Allison, a senior from Drake, and Ty Morris, a senior from Rice, both came in with multiple starts behind them and quickly drew notice during summer training camp as the Scarlet Knights sorted through a largely revamped unit under a new coaching staff.
With the season opener against UMass approaching, the pressure on those two is bigger than just filling a roster need. Rutgers is counting on Allison and Morris to help set the tone, organize the defense and steady a group that is still learning on the fly, which makes their leadership as important as anything they do on Saturday. [Read more 🡒]
Rutgers Needs One Kind Of Win To Show Real Progress
Rutgers enters the upcoming season with a familiar challenge, sitting at No. 68 in ESPNs Football Power Index and still living in the lower tier of the Big Ten on paper. The program has responded to last seasons poor defensive showing by making significant changes to its defensive coaching staff, a clear signal that the standard inside the building has to rise if the Scarlet Knights want to take a meaningful step forward.
The next benchmark is bigger than just looking better week to week or nudging past last years record. For Rutgers, real progress in 2026 may need to come in the form of a ranked upset, the kind of win that changes the conversation around the program and shows the rebuild is producing more than cosmetic improvement. Until that happens, the questions about where Rutgers fits in the conference hierarchy will keep hanging over every Saturday. [Read more 🡒]