Resources: My charting, RU game notes, RU roster, CFBstats, Last Year

The birthplace of college football travels to the birthplace of intercollegiate 25-on-25 soccer, with the winner likely finding their way out of the loser's game. Rutgers has been reinvigorated by rehiring their greatest coach since converting their soccer team to the rugby game. The Great One arrives with all the tricks he learned while overstaying his welcome at Ohio State, and several shopping bags full of Big Ten transfers. New Schiano also discovered a bag of tricks, a hypermodern understanding of fourth down strategy, and the worst fourth down tactics I've ever seen. What they say is true: Rutgers under Schiano is Rutgers, just more so.

The film: Rutgers opponents so far this season: MSU, Indiana, Ohio State, and Illinois. This is unfair to Indiana but they're probably the closest comp to a reasonably competitive Michigan. If Dr. Blitz would remember he's allowed to Blitz.

Personnel:

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Schiano's first team back has so many transfers they've been called a Power 5 expansion team. Dual threat QB Noah Vedral escaped from Nebraska. TE Jovani Haskins, previously of West Virginia, supplanted last year's weak starter, former UCLA transfer TE Matt Alaimo—both are primarily there to block but Haskins can actually do it. JUCO RG Cedrice Paillaint, and slot receiver Aron Cruickshank, lately of Wisconsin, round out the offensive starters who played last year elsewhere.

These joined a roster that had some good backs, particularly Isaih "Spellcheco" Pacheco, the guy you remember Brad Hawkins chasing that one time Rutgers scored on the 2018 defense. True sophomore RBs Kay'Ron Adams and Aaron Young are peppered in behind. They all have good speed; Adams is the true backup while Young will line up as a slot receiver as often as in the backfield, and will also be called up on to block. The receivers too are a name you might know, and several you can forget. Former Michigan target Bo Melton is a functional receiver and good downfield blocker. Junior Shameen Jones passed last year's true freshman starter Isaiah Washington, but they're more of a 50/40 rotation. Tiny Christian Dremel will spell Melton or Cruickshank as needed. You'll also see last year's starting QB Johnny Langan in various frippery sets; he might line up as an RB, a QB, a WR, or a TE.

The rest of the OL are homegrown. RT Reggie Sutton and LT Raiqwon O'Neal are quasi-guards whom Carlo Kemp should be able to in the backfield with regularity. O'Neal struggled hard against us last year. Center Nick Krimin also started last year, though at guard, and his transition to the middle has been a bit rocky. They're clearly trying to work in freshman CJ Hanson, pushing Paillant out of the lineup.

It must be mentioned that Cruickshank had two TDs off kick returns for Wisconsin.

[after THE JUMP: I've been charting all along so I figured I'd make one]

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Charting:

Here are the scores from this game if you're interested:

That is indeed a huge RPS score, in amplitude and suckitude. Tom Allen had a lot of blitzes dialed up that Rutgers ran right into, and Rutgers had a lot of goofy stuff that backfired, particularly on 4th downs. This is a coordinator trying to scheme his way around pass protection issues. The difference is Indiana has a great secondary this year.

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Spread, Pro-Style, or Hybrid? They're spread though the personnel will go to two tight ends on a quarter of their standard downs.

They also went to a two-RB set for comeback hour, which was most of the 4th quarter (I count these downs as passing downs because that's the style of play).

I called this RB Flex. There's also QB Flex, when the extra guy is QB Johnny Langan, who came in for a lot of frippery. For counting purposes I counted RBs as WRs if there was already a back in there. Usually that extra RB was Aaron Young, who straddles the line between receiver and running back anyways.

Gleason will often cover the tight end in an unbalanced formation and go max protect, particularly (laughably) on 4th down. We'll get to that.

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL? They're mostly MANBALL; outside zone is in the playbook but most of their running plays are Pin & Pull, Counter, and variants.

Hurry it up or grind it out? Gleason is known as a tempo guy, but Rutgers is still picking it up. They can get set quickly but then they're much better off looking to the sideline; when they run a play off tempo it's often easy to predict it.

Quarterback Dilithium Level (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): Vedral's legs are part of the offense and he can make things happen with them.

Making a safety miss is a rarity but it's best to treat his legs as a threat, no matter how much you'd rather bottle up Pacheco.

Frames Janklin Factor: On his travels through the blasted lands, probably while working Kevin Wilson, Greg Schiano learned how to use modern fourth down strategy to his advantage. When he's in his opponent's territory he goes for it. When he's in 3rd and 8 he will try to set up a 4th and short.

Their tactics on fourth down, well…

So that's an unbalanced formation, meaning the tight end (#13 on the bottom of the formation) is covered by the WR at the bottom of the screen, and is therefore an ineligible receiver. They also keep the RB in to pass protect, putting three guys into routes against a defense expecting a pass. Then they cut the field in half by rolling Vedral away from all that blocking and try to run a flood concept that has two guys running routes past the sticks. The interception doesn't matter because there's no way this gets converted.

It wasn't a one-off. They ran plays out of this formation—where, again, you're telling the defense before the snap that one of your precious passing targets isn't allowed to catch a pass—on two more fourth downs.

Not one of these routes gets the first down even if they're magically completed. It's beautiful, really.

Dangerman:

I was saving "Isaih Pacheco is the best running back in the conference" for a hot take segment after I saw him tear Michigan State to shreds, but we've learned since that anybody could tear Michigan State's defense to shreds if you put your athletes in space against theirs.

…

Anyway Pacheco. You remember how fast he is but his feet are awesome, allowing him to cut ninety degrees on a dime.

After this I started a "Fools Hurdled" counter, a tradition that dates back to when my Sparty brother and I would do this with Le'Veon Bell games. A good Bell game saw at least two and maybe three fools hurdled. Pacheco got up to 4 fools in this one, 4.5 if you count going down after clearing the fool.

When Rutgers is out of ideas, they'll turn to "Isaih Do Something" and then as often as not Isaih will in fact do something.

That fool was run over, not hurdled. Fool Hurdling has rules.

The only problem with this—and the source of most of Pacheco's six minuses in my charting—is that he often tries to do all the things by himself:

Michigan's going to have Josh Ross trying to flag this guy down; if Ross is still trying to cover for his DTs instead of staying focused on his job this time, Rutgers could string together some drives. He's on cyan watch, but with one of only two plausibly tough assignments this week he could also get off the schneid and go back to being one of the leaders of this defense. Michigan really really needs him to.

HenneChart:

As per FFFF tradition, we clip all "BAtted"-x events:

I counted the scramble on a screen pass in the downfield metric. I also knocked for 8 pressure minuses below. That's usually the stat line of a broken quarterback but Vedral this year is averaging 4.8 yards per play with five TDs to seven INTs—bad but not THAT bad. He averaged just 2.5 yards per attempt (sacks included) against Indiana, regularly bailing from the pocket when IU brought their myriad pressures. I would recommend a similar approach for Michigan, because he's obviously rattled by it, and because these guys really need some QB scalps to feel better about themselves.

Also because a set Vedral has his moments.

"That could happen to our cornerbacks too!" I hear you say, but if we're busting that badly in double-coverage on the one non-running back target who can get behind a defense, call off the season. Also do so if they can't run a zone that gets to Noah Vedral throws downfield.

Just say everybody caught some deadly disease. People will believe it.

OVERVIEW:

To a very specific subset of the population Greg Schiano is a hero capable of delivering the Glory Days, and in the early part of this season, that population looked like a reinvigorated program capable of notching victories over the traditional bluebloods who mocked them and raided their gardens. Like Michigan they took an opening day victory over a bad opponent way too seriously, and have since been humiliated either in close losses to bad teams or big losses to better teams.

New coach energy is nothing to laugh at. You probably don't remember now but we used to get excited every week over the fascinating new wrinkle Michigan added to their offense, whether it was having the fullback take a counter step, or the TRAIN formation. The Rutgers version of that is trick plays with multiple quarterbacks.

They ran this one off tempo after a successful normal play with last year's starting QB at tight end.

The flag was pass interference on Tiwan Mullen. Here's another that got Bo Melton into a high-low throw/run with a cornerback and Indiana kept to the minimum.

They also have an appropriate identity, which is "give New Jersey running backs an inch and they'll take a mile:"

It comes with a warning not to underestimate TE #13, Jovani Haskins, as a blocker. Their performance against common opponent Indiana, at least on offense, makes them underdogs. But they're underdogs that smell a kill.

No, reading that edge player when a QB run would go right into the one you blocked doesn't make any sense. No, the offensive line isn't getting off the line of scrimmage (unless they wander there during a pass play). But they've got that one player and he might do something, and that other player you might forget can do something, and then who's laughing now?

Your Moment of Zen: