For Rutgers, the season keeps circling the same point, and Greg Schiano keeps saying the same thing: the Scarlet Knights are getting better.
That was the message again after a 28-21 loss to Michigan on Saturday at SHI Stadium, a game Rutgers had chances to turn into something bigger before it slipped away in the final 11 minutes. Schiano said he was “very disappointed in the final result, very disappointed, but not disappointed in our people,” then added, “We’re getting better, just not as quickly as I’d like and everybody would like, but we are getting better and we just got to keep doing it.”
Rutgers did look sharper than it did a week earlier at Northwestern. But the gap between “better” and actually winning is still wide, and the Scarlet Knights are now 2-6 with four games left in Schiano’s seventh year of his second stint. At some point, progress has to show up on the scoreboard.
The Michigan game offered a real opening. Schiano had said after the Week 2 loss to Boston College that this team will “beat some people that you don’t think we can beat.”
Michigan fit that description. The Wolverines came in heavily favored, and Rutgers had them on the ropes for stretches.
Then Antwan Raymond broke loose for a 54-yard run in the fourth quarter, and suddenly the place got loud for Rutgers - or at least as loud as it gets when “yes, this happened at a Rutgers home game” and the crowd is packed with Michigan fans. That run set up a chance for the Scarlet Knights to tie the game.
They never got there. Over the last 11 minutes, Rutgers couldn’t force a key stop on defense and couldn’t manufacture another meaningful play on offense. AJ Surace did not complete a single forward pass in the second half, and that detail sits awkwardly next to the idea that Rutgers is steadily improving.
When asked about Surace finishing 3 of 12 passing, with one completion going for an 80-yard touchdown, Schiano said, “We just went out and scored more points than anybody has against what I think is statistically the best defense in the country,” and added, “There’s things we could have done better, but nobody scored more than we have against that defense so far this year.”
Rutgers did reach 21 points without star receiver K.J. Duff and with a backup quarterback, but Michigan was working with its own backup situation too. The Wolverines had already moved on from their $4 million starter, and Tommy Carr made the change count with three touchdowns, one through the air and two on the ground.
That was the difference. Michigan found a way, and Rutgers didn’t.
Schiano still pushed back on the idea of moral victories. “There are no moral victories,” he said. “I do think we’re getting better and I think we definitely will win (again) this year.”
If that prediction holds, Wisconsin is next on the list. The Badgers just got shut out 30-0 by Iowa, which only sharpens the point: Rutgers is past the stage where “getting better” is enough. It has to start turning that into wins.
In Other News...
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Greg Schianos latest extension has put Rutgers in the same conversation as several other programs trying to balance patience with the cost of change. The contract details matter because buyout structures can shape how athletic departments think about coaching decisions, and this piece places Rutgers alongside Marylands Mike Locksley and NC States Dave Doeren while also nodding to the recent firing of Mike Norvell at Florida State as a reminder of how expensive a reset can become.
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