Rutgers Football: The sky isn’t falling after the loss to Wisconsin

The day started so promisingly. Imagine perfect weather and two evenly matched teams on paper: the Scarlet Knights ready to beat a Wisconsin team they’ve never beaten before.

But it wasn’t meant to be. As a “developmental program,” we learn that injuries at Rutgers are not the same as injuries at Nebraska and Wisconsin. Rutgers is not yet at the point where they can overcome key injuries. Many of the upper echelon of Big Ten backups would start for Rutgers. I think the fans, myself included, thought we had the size and strength we needed to compete with Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska all over the world. We’re getting there, but today is something of a barometer of how far we still have to go. The 2025 recruiting class will go a long way toward providing a mix of size, talent and depth. But for now we are not there yet.

Athan Kaliakmanis is clearly an upgrade at quarterback, but today he reminded Rutgers fans of days gone by. There were at least six drops of catchable balls, but Kalialmanis’ accuracy was also very reminiscent of the days of Gavin Wimsatt. Kaliakmanis is a useful quarterback, but he’s not the type of player who can put an offense on him. When the Scarlet Knights get the running game going and play with a lead we are fine, but today we showed how limited this offense is.

For the third week in a row, the defense was affected by big plays. A big part of that is injuries, but again there is a lack of depth.

What bothered this writer was the occasional booing. Yes, paying customers have the right to boo. Personally, I think booing kids lacks both and represents neither our fan base nor the university. If you’ve ever played high school football, you know how talented you have to be to play Power 4 football. And when you consider that one of the biggest recruiting teams here was standing on the sideline hearing the boos, not to mention all the empty seats, the boos serve no purpose and are counterproductive.

I don’t think any of us saw today coming. But it came and now it’s in the rearview mirror. There are four very winnable games left on the schedule: UCLA, Maryland, Michigan State and Minnesota. Most fans would be happy with eight wins. More importantly, it puts the program on track for talent development in 2025. After a 4-0 start, the last two weeks have been tough. But the sun will rise tomorrow and the Knights will be much better prepared when UCLA returns home next Saturday.