Rutgers’ season took another hard turn Saturday, and the second half made the gap impossible to ignore.
Playing without starting quarterback Dylan Lonergan, who is sidelined indefinitely on concussion protocol after getting hurt early in the October 24 loss to Northwestern, and without tar receiver and projected first-round NFL Draft pick KJ Duff, the Scarlet Knights hung around for a half against Wisconsin. Rutgers battled on defense and did enough on offense to go into halftime down just three.
Then the game got away. The Badgers scored 18 unanswered points after the break and rolled to a 31-10 win.
Wisconsin moved to 6-3 overall and 4-2 in Big Ten play. Rutgers dropped to 2-7 and 1-5, with three games left in what has become another lost season.
The biggest swing may have come from the other sideline. Wisconsin made a quarterback change after being shut out by Iowa the previous week, benching senior Colton Joseph and giving freshman Ryan Hopkins his first start.
Hopkins made the move look easy, completing 18 of 24 passes for 241 yards and three touchdowns as Wisconsin locked up bowl eligibility. He was rewarded with Big Ten Freshman of the Week honors.
That kind of contrast has become painfully familiar for Rutgers fans. Backup quarterback AJ Surace, now in his third year with the program, couldn’t get much going in offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca’s system, while Hopkins came in and lit up the Scarlet Knights defense. Head coach Greg Schiano has repeatedly framed Rutgers as a developmental program, but that message gets harder to sell when a quarterback the staff has talked up all offseason struggles this badly.
Rutgers has developed players. The running back room is the clearest proof, with two NFL stars, Isiash Pachecho and Kyle Monangai, and current first-string running back Antwan Raymond set to join them next spring.
But development only goes so far when the quarterback play doesn’t match the level needed in the Big Ten. At that point, the team doesn’t just struggle to win - it starts losing the trust of its own fanbase.
After the game, Schiano was asked about Rutgers missing bowl eligibility again.
“Look, it’s very disappointing. In my wildest expectations, I didn’t think we would find ourselves here.
But maybe that wasn’t realistic on my part. I don’t know.
But we’re not going to be bowl-eligible; that’s for sure. Mathematics tells you that.
So there’ll be a time when we can do the autopsy on everything that occurred because there’s a lot that occurred.”
Schiano also previously addressed the roster-building issues after the 42-35 loss to USC in September, saying: "Did I do a good enough job? Probably not. We had a lot going on with the coordinator search at the same time.”
That explanation only goes so far for a fanbase that has watched the same problems repeat. Rutgers waited months to hire defensive coordinator Travis Johansen, but he wasn’t involved in evaluating and recruiting the right players for the transfer portal.
After last season’s historically bad defense, Schiano knew the roster needed a major overhaul. Instead of bringing in a general manager to handle that work or making the defensive coordinator hire earlier, he took on those responsibilities himself - and the results have shown up every week.
The defense keeps fighting, but it does not have the talent to hold up in the Big Ten. Pair that with no quarterback capable of fully using a strong receiver and running backs room, and the record says the rest.
Rutgers sits at 2-7, the season has gone nowhere, and Athletic Director Keli Zinn now faces a major cleanup job after the year. If the program isn’t run differently, the same outcome is waiting next fall.
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