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HUGE Win for RU (24-0, really)! Nice Article by Politi

Absolutely. One other observation: McTomenay (sp?) drilled every kickoff deep into the endzone, iirc. That's huge and nice to see, as he lost his starting PK job to Patel, who was almost 2-2 - that 2nd one was really low, though. Punter did decently - only ST issue was the fumble.
Jude's yer man
 
Politi is very good at jumping on a band wagon and kicking a dog when it's down. Makes sense I guess, it sells (or used to at least) papers. When Rutgers goes through a bad stretch you will find him infuriating.
 
The Ledger a day before Opening Day had a front page article mocking attendance.
Their bias has no boundaries!
If that's true, then that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. They can just not write anything about attendance at all, if they think it's going to be poor. Why would they put out a story like that?

That the sort of thing you expect from the RU haters on the Syracuse forum. Not from a local media outlet.
 
If that's true, then that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. They can just not write anything about attendance at all, if they think it's going to be poor. Why would they put out a story like that?

That the sort of thing you expect from the RU haters on the Syracuse forum. Not from a local media outlet.
Isn't the Star Ledger Sports Editor a Syracuse homer?
 
If that's true, then that's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. They can just not write anything about attendance at all, if they think it's going to be poor. Why would they put out a story like that?

That the sort of thing you expect from the RU haters on the Syracuse forum. Not from a local media outlet.
To make it worse, that article was about stagnant growth in season ticket sales. But it selectively measured growth beginning after Greg’s first season through today and conveniently ignored the huge spike in sales between Ash’s last and Greg’s first seasons.
 
Isn't the Star Ledger Sports Editor a Syracuse homer?
I recall something about that. Not sure if it’s true or not. But it would make sense given some of the attack articles over the years.
 
To make it worse, that article was about stagnant growth in season ticket sales. But it selectively measured growth beginning after Greg’s first season through today and conveniently ignored the huge spike in sales between Ash’s last and Greg’s first seasons.
If they wanted to put out an article like that, why not wait until the end of the season? The timing of the attack pieces is always where they can be as optimism sapping, as parade raining, as possible.

Better yet, don’t publish the attacks at all. There is no valid reason for them. It’s not useful information people need to know.

It’s hard enough to recruit without our local media putting out stories to scare recruits away.
 
Yeah, I know it was NW, who are in disarray, but sometimes teams with an us-against-the-world mentality rally and play well and despite their 1-11 record last year, they have some talent, plus this is a team we might not have beaten, much less stomped on, like we did today. Was it perfect? No, but it was pretty damn good, with fantastic defense (that last score almost doesn't count as they likely don't get the ball back w/o the dumb fumble by Rochelle - they only had 156 total yards until that point, due to our dominant defense) and pretty good offense that would've been better with Brown and Young playing.

But probably the most important thing to me was that Gavin Wimsatt played very well, as he was 17-29 and didn't throw bad passes - in fact he probably threw 4-5 away, when there was nothing there, rather than forcing them, so his stats were more like 17-25 (68% vs the 59% of 17-29), and he threw several gorgeous passes, plus ran judiciously and effectively - and how about that awesome TD catch by Strong? Great start to the season. Oh and who didn't love the "We want Dylan" chants after RHJ was introduced?

Liked Politi's article (paywall), especially this part:

That early drive was the best start possible. Really, the entire game was the best start possible for Schiano, whose program needs to start showing results in his fourth season. Yes, Northwestern is headed straight to the Big Ten basement, and no one should book flights to Pasadena just yet. Still, Rutgers absolutely, positively had to win this game to have any hope of a better season in 2023, and it did so convincingly in front of a packed stadium and a national CBS audience. You couldn’t have scripted a better opener.

https://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/...n-gives-fans-hope-politis-5-observations.html
It was 17-29 we can’t go and say 17-25 because of throw aways. If that’s the case you can say he threw 2 clear ints that were dropped. He definitely played with more poise against an inferior opponent in turmoil w little pash rush. He missed guys wide open down the field. However, it’s one game and a win. It’s his first Game in a new offense so hopefully some rust that needed to be shaken off. It was a small step forward x so wil take it. He needs to play MUCH better moving forward. He has a run way with 3 of the next 4 games we’re we are clear favorites. Routing for him hard!
 
It was 17-29 we can’t go and say 17-25 because of throw aways. If that’s the case you can say he threw 2 clear ints that were dropped. He definitely played with more poise against an inferior opponent in turmoil w little pash rush. He missed guys wide open down the field. However, it’s one game and a win. It’s his first Game in a new offense so hopefully some rust that needed to be shaken off. It was a small step forward x so wil take it. He needs to play MUCH better moving forward. He has a run way with 3 of the next 4 games we’re we are clear favorites. Routing for him hard!
Actually, I can say it and you're obviously welcome to disagree with it. IMO, this is very different from, say, a RB who gains 100 yards on 5 carries but 4 of them go for 1 yard each - they all count towards that runner's average, since he was trying 100% on all of them, whereas in a throwaway case, the QB doesn't have anyone open and is throwing the ball away as taught to avoid either an INT or a sack, which is a positive not reflected in the "incomplete pass" stat. I'm not actually saying he was 17-25, but his 17-29 was better than a 17-29 where a QB forces several bad throws into coverage.

I also think his play was more than a small step forward, although I agree it's going to get tougher against teams that put much more pressure on the QB - I think he's going to need to use his legs more, which always means some risk of injury.
 
On TV it looked relatively full but there were empty sections showing and by EOG the entire endzone seemed to have cleared out.
It was hot AF. Lots of people couldn’t deal with the heat, and stood in the shade at the top of the concourse. Others, with the big R lead, left.
 
Actually, I can say it and you're obviously welcome to disagree with it. IMO, this is very different from, say, a RB who gains 100 yards on 5 carries but 4 of them go for 1 yard each - they all count towards that runner's average, since he was trying 100% on all of them, whereas in a throwaway case, the QB doesn't have anyone open and is throwing the ball away as taught to avoid either an INT or a sack, which is a positive not reflected in the "incomplete pass" stat. I'm not actually saying he was 17-25, but his 17-29 was better than a 17-29 where a QB forces several bad throws into coverage.

I also think his play was more than a small step forward, although I agree it's going to get tougher against teams that put much more pressure on the QB - I think he's going to need to use his legs more, which always means some risk of injury.

We don’t know yet how big a step his performance meant because we don’t know the extent of how bad NW is. Will they be competitive with UTEP? That will tell us if the first game can be used as any kind of measuring stick in a positive way. On the plus side, there are no negative takeaways even if UTEP beats the snot out of NW. the talking heads might say otherwise, but it doesn’t mean Gavin played poorly last week if UTEP puts up 40+ in a laugher. All it would mean is Gavin did what his coaches told him to do against an awful opponent.
 
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