Craig Has The Scout - Rutgers 2025
Coming Up
Who: Rutgers Scarlet Knights
When: 11:00 am – November 1st, 2025
Where: Home Sweet Home
How: NBC
Opponent Primer:
Head Coach: Greg Schiano
Greg Schiano is the winningest knight to ever lead the Scarlet Realm of Rutgers, a distinction that speaks more to the perennial sadness of that fiefdom than to the sheer magnitude of his triumphs. For the feat of once making a functional football team appear, Coach Schiano was apparently granted a lifetime contract.
But every knight has a history, and Coach Greg's tale began far away in the misty, forested realm of Penn State. There, he apprenticed as a defensive backs coach from 1991-1995, serving the great-but-ultimately-shadowed Joe Paterno and his loathsome DC Jerry Sandusky, a period of his life Coach Greg would now prefer you forget entirely. He took a brief, unsuccessful detour into the professional lands, coaching DBs with the Chicago Bears during the last, sputtering gasps of the Wannstedt dynasty, but was introduced to the legendary Jimmy Johnson coaching tree. This lineage proved mighty, for it led him south to the sun-drenched, palm-lined realm of Miami, where he became the Defensive Coordinator for the legendary Hurricanes, the last truly great villains of the college football world under Coach Butch Davis. In his final season of 2000, his Hurricanes vanquished the treacherous Florida State Seminoles but were cruelly snubbed from the title tilt after an early-season misfortune at Husky Stadium in Washington. This righteous fury, however, served him well, for that very momentum brought him home to the Scarlet Realm for his first tour as its Head Coach, where he performed the miracle of transforming the hapless doormat into a team of genuine consequence.
Alas, the cozy confines of the dying Big East could not hold his ambition. Coach Greg craved a bigger stage, a grander prize, and what could be grander than the chaotic shores of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? That was the brief, chaotic detour where the "Schiano Man" ethos met the hard reality of professional football and instantly turned into a tire fire of epic proportions. After a few years spent polishing his armor, he was summoned to the great empire of Ohio State by the Arch-Mentor Urban Meyer, where he could refurbish his reputation in the shadow of true greatness. Yet, the darkest chapter of his legend came in 2017 with the fanbase of Tennessee. The mere mention of his name for the head coach position was so volcanic that the unfortunate Athletic Director who dared suggest it was cast out of the kingdom entirely. Coach Greg was so radioactive to the Tennessee fanbase, the utterance of his name triggered a full-blown administrative purge. He returned, naturally, to the only place that understood him. He returned to the Scarlet Realm of Rutgers in 2019, still peddling blasé slogans like Keep Chopping. He is a man forever on the list with Atlantic City and the Jersey Shore as things only Jersey could truly love.
Offensive Style: Power Spread leveraging heavy RPOs and play-action.
The coordinator of offenses serving Coach Greg is a man known far and wide in the 18 kingdoms of the B1G. Ciarrocca is a Pennsylvania native, Temple grad, and he’s wandered from domain to domain delivering methodical offenses. As a young coordinator at Delaware, he polished a young passer named Joe Flacco into an NFL talent. He joined Coach PJ Fleck at Western Michigan, compiling mid-major victories resulting in an invitation to the Cotton Bowl leading prior to joining Fleck when he took over at Minnesota. There, he crafted an offense that unlocked an 11-win season with two 1,000-yard receivers and earned himself a Broyles Award semifinalist nod. Proving himself fallible, he attempted to bring his fortune to Penn State and the magic ran out, but Fleck still summoned him back for a second tour in Minneapolis. In 2023, he came to the Scarlet Realm plying his trade. Not with fireworks or fanfare, but with the steady hand of a craftsman. He’s not flashy, not headline-chasing, and that’s exactly why he is an essential part of the round table of Coach Schiano. Reliable. Competent. Perfectly Schiano.
And the playbook? It’s focused on being reliable rather flashy. The offense is built to slow the clock, grind the yards, and wait for the other side to stumble. Inside and outside zone runs form the foundation, usually with heavier personnel to tilt the numbers at the line. From that base, branches grow into RPOs and play-action with short, safe throws tied directly to the run look. It’s not built for shootouts. It’s designed to keep the ball, shorten the game, and avoid handing away possessions. When the scheme works, Rutgers doesn’t dazzle or overwhelm. They simply grind out the win, close the book, and move on to the next chapter.
Defensive Style: 4-2-5 with an emphasis pressure.
Rutgers defense is built on pressure, movement, and the hope that chaos forces mistakes. The base look is a 4‑2‑5, but the front is almost beside the point, it’s the angles that matter. Linebackers and nickels are constantly walked up, blitzes come from odd spots, and the goal is to get you behind the chains. When it works, it looks like a disciplined, disruptive unit that forces quarterbacks into bad throws. When it doesn’t, the back end gets exposed and you’re watching explosive plays pile up.
The staff was built to balance experience and promise with Robb Smith as the veteran, Zach Sparber as the apprentice. Smith has campaigned under the banner of Schiano before, at Rutgers and Tampa Bay, and has commanded at Arkansas, Minnesota, and Duke. Sparber is the Jersey‑born up-and-comer, trained under Bud Foster, meant to build the local talent pipeline while learning the craft. But the arrangement has faltered. The defense has cracked, the schemes have wobbled, and the enemy has found too many openings. And so Schiano, the old warlord himself, has stepped out of his tower and taken the lead planning the defense. He’s not just overseeing anymore. He’s directing the angles, dictating the disguises, and trying to restore order to a unit that has too often looked rudderless. This season, the leader has had to take charge because his Knights could not hold the line.
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