15 days after one of my most optimistic and positive posts on the board, it pains me to have to say yet again we might be SAME OLE RUTGERS afterall. The futility against schools named Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Iowa and Wisconsin continues.The latter two are always considered the schools within reach for Rutgers to beat and yet the more things stay appear to change, the more they stay the same. Rutgers is now 0-6 vs Wisconsin....the 3 worst losses are all at home, 37-0, 52-3, 48-10, 31-17, a relatively close 24-13 last year and now the 42-7 beat down today. Amd today was not close folks. Rutgers was housed. Wisconsin dominated right from the get go. Rutgers was never in the game. So disheartening to once again see Rutgers come out with zero urgency or purpose on offense in their first few drives, content to run plays and punt and then watch Wisconsin carve up the RU defense. It easily could have been 28-0 at half but the D came up with a couple stops and turnovers to give the offense a shot. Alas the offense continue its dreadful ineffective plays. Stop on 4th and 1 and then an easy blocked punt on a kick that I was not too confident Patel would make anyhow.
But the worse was yet to come. The bottom dropped out in the 2nd half. The defense was finished and the Rutgers offensive reverted back to the Shea era. A harsh reality check for the fanbase. We are always get ahead of ourselves when we see steps forward like the Washington win. The Nebraska loss wasnt terrible on its own but the way it was lost scoring just 1 of 9 times within the Nebraska. There were disturbing moments against Akron and Howard where the offense struggled to find its footing or where the line play was dreadful in short yardage, Those kind of things cropped up today making believe that maybe those kind of things are a deeper issue. The play calling and mentality is absurd. GS still wants to win 8-7. I have never seen a program with an aversion to have a gameplan to score a touchdown every single time they have the ball. I get it. Sometimes it works...ala Va Tech albeit with a sloppy finish. More often than not, it just leaves you scratching your head.
Rutgers pulled a no show today. Pretty solid but not great crowd never was able to get into the game. Thats what happens when you do not try to score and your offense consists of throwing 3 yard passes or throwing balls short of first down marker time after time or dropping easy catches or when you get called for a couple penalties on the first play after a kickoff. Yes a bunch of injuries but no one is going to give you breaks. Thats not an excuse why you cannot finish off drives. Its not an excuse why the lack of aggressiveness by the OC just kills drives. its not an excuse why the defense gets beat time and time again.
Just abysmal abysmal abysmal. Yet RU is right where I thought they would be 4-2. Splitting some games against similar competition and losing to Wisconsin. The knock on Rutgers is the same. Their inability to ever knock off a tradtional Big 10 program worth its salt, So yeah its fair to say same ole Rutgers. Sorry Washington is a middling school this year.....it might be more of a Michigan 2014 win in retrospect. To take a next level step you have to knock off top 25 type teams and Wisconsin is one of those...a very good team but should they be a 42-7 better than Rutgers. I say no. Have to strive for better. This smelled exactly like the Flood no show 37-0 back in 2014. Get a decent win and then fall back. The bad news is the level of play is concerning the last 10 quarters with just 3 tds scored. Will not win any games doing that. UCLA blows and cannot score a lick but I expect a dogfight next week and its an absolute must win to position RU for a bowl better than awful Detroit. The schedule after that is not murders row... a likely loss at USC but then 4 tossup games against very beatables. 7-5 has to happen here but will it. I fear RU is going backwards rather than forward and that has been a trend under GS. Its time for him to step it up because you saw the fans bail quickly today at 28-0 and they will bail for games vs Ill/Minny if they do not think the brand of football is worth it
