Michigan football now gets a chance to refresh after an emotional rivalry week (in more ways than one) by playing everyone's favorite punching bag, Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights have a solid defense but today we're looking at the offense which has been, for lack of a better word, godawful. 

The Film: The Rutgers QB situation greatly constrained my options here. They have been rotating through three players at the QB position this year, Noah Vedral, Evan Simon, and Gavin Wimsatt. Schiano announced this week that Wimsatt will get the start on Saturday against Michigan and the only B1G game that Wimsatt has appeared in was this past weekend against Minnesota. So, Gophers it is. 

One quick note on the Minnesota-Rutgers game: the powers that be in the world of CFB game replay footage have decided that no one should be able to see this game. The usual sites we use to find copies did not have any... not even the Russians thought it was worthwhile for people to see Minnesota-Rutgers. Thus we had to get a bit creative to be able to clip plays, so some will be standard Gfycat links and others will be from YouTube. Do not be alarmed, that's just how it is for this week. 

Personnel: Click for big or here for PDF. 

The Rutgers offense has been plagued by an unsteady QB situation. RS Fr Gavin Wimsatt will be the guy this weekend, a surprisingly-great-for-Rutgers recruit in the 2021 class who reclassified up to come to college early, joining the Scarlett Knights in the middle of last season. They got him into four games, enough to preserve the redshirt, and it was clear he was not ready for primetime. The reason why may have been that he was 17 years old when the 2021 season began. Having turned 19 last week, he's marginally closer to an FBS player but there is nothing to suggest that he's ready to be a B1G starter. The arm is strong and his legs aren't shabby, but there's a lot of refining still to be done. That they're trotting Wimsatt out there tells you what they think of Noah Vedral and Evan Simon, both of whom have major weaknesses. If Wimsatt has to leave the game, as he did against Minnesota, it seems like Vedral is next up, but I wouldn't discount the chance it could be Simon as the #2. 

The RB spot is just as unsettled after a crushing injury to Samuel Brown V, who has been ruled out for the season. Brown, a 4* 2022 recruit, had started to elevate himself from the crop and become a bellcow back before the injury. In his absence, it's a bit of a revolving door and the Minnesota game provided evidence of that, with Kyle Monangai, Aaron Young, and Al-Shadee Salaam sharing the workload for the RB position. Monangai right now is the nominal starter, and he is a familiar name for those who follow B1G football very closely, being in Rutgers' rotation last season. The same is true for Young, a receiving back who has been getting significant work since Chris Ash was the coach. Young missed the first half of the season but is now healthy and working his way back into the rotation. Salaam redshirted last season but has mixed in this year, with 39 carries across eight games. None of these guys are difference makers. 

Readers of FFFF who have the unusual ability to recall the Rutgers depth chart from last season may recall wildcat QB Johnny Langan, who was brought in on 4th & shorts against Michigan in last year's meeting between the two teams. Langan is now the every-down TE and a favorite target of the various Rutgers QBs, leading the team in targets. He still has a role in the rushing game (28 carries) and has attempted two passes this season as well, so his Swiss Army Knife abilities are still there. His backup is Matt Alaimo, who is cyan'd for the second straight year. Further down the depth chart you find the likes of Victor Konopka and Mike Higgins, but I saw very little of them against Minnesota. 

Rutgers lost its primary receiving option from last year in the offseason, Bo Melton. To replace him, they hit the portal for WVU's Sean Ryan, a larger receiver who is third on the team in catches but first in receiving yards, showing the bigger play ability he possesses. The trusty checkdown guy is still Aron Cruickshank, who leads the team in catches with 27, while the #3 WR is Shameen Jones, who is now in his fifth season for Rutgers(!). Rutgers had wanted a more dangerous WR room in the offseason and brought in a decent piece, Taj Harris from Syracuse, to achieve it, but Harris left the team early in the season for "personal reasons". With Harris out of the picture, the depth is rather slim. Chris Long (not the defensive end) got some play out of the slot against Minnesota, while KSU transfer Joshua Youngblood and Isaiah Washington have a few catches each. 

The offensive line protecting whichever QB suits up on a given day is totally different than the one that faced Michigan last year. Of the five who started against the Wolverines last year, none return. Three starters transferred out, a fourth graduated, and the fifth, Reggie Sutton, suffered a devastating knee injury in the Michigan game, which caused him to miss the rest of 2021 and the entire 2022 season (oof). In other words, it's been a rebuild in the trenches. Rutgers snagged Willie Tyler III from Louisiana-Monroe to be the LT, JD DiRenzo from Sacred Heart and Curtis Dunlap from Minnesota to be the guards, and Ireland Brown from Boston College to be the center. The RT is last year's sixth man against Michigan, Hollin Pierce. Our own BiSB described the OL rebuild as a "full hockey line change" in HTTV and that feels pretty accurate. The talent level for this group is not high and they have had trouble cohering as a group and opening holes in the ground game. Colorado State transfer Mike Ciaffoni is the 6th OL, rotating in at G typically. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: not great!] 

Spread, pro-style, or hybrid: Rutgers runs a spread offense, with three WRs on most plays, a TE capable of flexing, a QB with legs, and an RB who can catch some passes. In the past they ran a screen-heavy offense out of this spread shell but that is a bit different depending on who the QB is (more on that later). As you'd expect, they operate primarily out of the gun: 

Formation	Run	PA	Pass	Total
Shotgun	10	5	25	87%
Under Center	6	--	--	13%

Going under center was a giveaway in terms of signaling an intention to run, so while scouting Rutgers is not a particularly useful allocation of time, it is something to be conscious of and put high on the scouting report. The play type by down distribution was also a dead giveaway, even early in downs and skewing heavily towards the pass late in downs: 

Down	Run	Pass
1st	9	9
2nd	7	9
3rd	-	10
4th	-	2

Getting in many third and longs because the offense is profoundly broken is the main problem here. 

Base Set: Rutgers plays primarily in 11 personnel, either flexing the TE out to look like 4 wide or playing him in a typical alignment. Here's the standard: 

And here's the 4 wide look (TE Langan in the slot to the left of the line): 

12 personnel flashes occasionally with both Alaimo and Langan on the field as the two TEs: 

Those are the three base looks to speak of. 

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL: Rutgers has run a power spread for the last couple seasons, placing them more in the MANBALL category, though I saw more zone concepts in this game than in the past. Outside zone/stretch is in the playbook, but counter is still a bread and butter play. 

Hurry it up or grind it out: Rutgers is a pretty standard team in terms of pace, going up to the line and waiting for instructions before hiking it with somewhere between 15 and 20 on the playclock. They picked up the pace against Minnesota in the second half, playing with tempo, but that was the result of score effects more than anything else. Not a ton to say here. 

Quarterback Dilithium Rating (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): The QB run is a component of the offense no matter who the QB is, with Wimsatt and Vedral each running an identical 17 times across the four games they have appeared in. Evan Simon has 20 carries in six games. Worth noting that Rutgers has only allowed thirteen sacks this season, so most of those carries are scrambles or designed QB runs, not sacks. With Wimsatt in the game against Minnesota, Rutgers didn't dial up many chances for him to run, but he felt comfortable rolling out and if needed, scrambling. They did call one designed QB run later in the game and well, yikes: 

*Brian Cook voice*: BAN BASEBALL SLIDES! That's the play that knocked Wimsatt out of the game, though he has been cleared to play this weekend. 

Wimsatt's legs seemed decent to me and he was marketed as an athletic QB as a recruit, I just didn't get to see a ton of opportunities for them to be showcased. He did have this nice long run against Boston College: 

Gavin Wimsatt 48 yard run! #Rutgers pic.twitter.com/4rueaE2cor

— 𝗙𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗪 @𝗙𝗧𝗕𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗱𝟳 (@FTBeard7) September 3, 2022

For now I'll give him a 5, while Noah Vedral gets a 6, as a slightly more rushing-inclined QB, but neither are particularly fast nor are they running as much as say, JT Barrett. Expect them to be on the move when they are passing, though. 

Dangerman: I didn't give him a star on the diagram because this offense is so anemic they are not worthy of a star, but for the purpose of this section, I am naming WR Sean Ryan as the Dangerman. The West Virginia transfer has only 16 catches on the season, but against the three best defenses Rutgers has seen, Iowa, OSU, and Minnesota, Ryan has nine of his sixteen catches. He had four in the game I saw against Minnesota, none particularly spectacular but this was a nice catch on a ball that Wimsatt puts lower than you'd like: 

It was the highlights against Ohio State that made me really like Ryan, going up against Buckeye corner Denzel Burke and making two nice contested catches down the field, one of which for a TD: 

Here was the second one: 

Pair of nice throws from Evan Simon too, but I liked Ryan's body control and adjustment to make the catches. He's got the size to Moss some guys at 6'2", 200 lb. and uses that frame to gain leverage on DBs. Do not confuse Ryan for a gamebreaking weapon but on a Rutgers offense that has essentially no teeth, Ryan is the closest thing to a baby tooth busting its way through the infant's gums. If Rutgers hits a big play down the field, I'd expect it to be to Ryan more than any other receiver, given what he's shown he can do from time to time against a good defense. 

HenneChart: Now comes our first check-in on the young Gavin Wimsatt. How did he fair in his trial against B1G competition? Not great! His stat line was a grisly 6/17 for 68 yards (4.0 Y/A) with no scores to 1 INT. Chart: 

Rutgers vs. Minn.	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	Screens
Gavin Wimsatt	--	7	1		--	3		--	2	4	3		47%	--

What you may find most interesting about that chart is the last column there, the blank in the "screens" box. If you recall last season, I marked Rutgers down for a ton of screens with Noah Vedral at the helm. With Wimsatt, it's a bit different. Wimsatt's profile revolves around his superior arm strength and the hope for the Schiano Era is that within a couple seasons, a fully optimized Wimsatt can open up their passing attack and take the Scarlet Knights' offense out of this ditch they've been in for more than a half-decade now. 

He did take his shots down field against Minnesota... problem is they weren't very accurate: 

Accuracy and reading a defense are the two areas where Wimsatt needs major improvement. His accuracy wavered the most on those deep shots, but it also reared its head on intermediate stuff too. Here he airmails Cruickshank: 

Wimsatt had his most success on the shorter stuff, but in contrast to the Vedral offense, these were slants/outs/hitches and not bubble screens. Stuff like this: 

This next one was the nicest throw Wimsatt made, showing how his mobility can help him stay alive in the pocket and find open receivers, if he's accurate: 

(Sean Ryan is the receiver there too, FWIW). The problem is, for every one of those sorts of plays, there was one blatant miss and another "oooof" decision. He took shots into double coverage a few more times than I'd like and his interception was a classic young QB mistake: 

Never saw the safety coming. 

Right now Wimsatt is limited in what he can do, but they're preparing him for the future by getting him playing time, which means Wimsatt is trying throws he is not accurate enough to make yet, or seasoned enough to read correctly. That is going to lead to intercept-able throws, and it's up to Michigan to actually turn those into takeaways. If Vedral has to come in, here was his chart from last year: 

Rutgers vs. 'Cuse ('21)	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	Screens
Noah Vedral	1	7	--		2	2		--	--	4	--		66%	9

Nine screens to eight catchable or dead-on down-field balls (seven of the eight were slants/outs/hitches, none of which went farther than eight yards downfield). Here is a refresher of what that looked like: 

Gross. Hopefully that should remind you of why they're at least trying Wimsatt, because you cannot go far with The Noah Vedral Offense running your program. 

 

Overview 

Everyone who watches B1G football this season has trained the Lasers of Shame at the Iowa offense and yup, I get why. Yet at the same time, very little ire has been directed at Rutgers beyond the typical "haha, cable subscribers!" when a quick glance at the SP+ rankings would reveal that Rutgers' offense is ranked 119th while Iowa's is ranked 101st (!!!). You, upon seeing that information: 

In dinosaur stats like yards per game and points per game, Iowa's offense ranks a decent bit worse than Rutgers, but in the efficiency metrics, it's much closer. While SP+ has Iowa rated better, CFB Graphs (@statsowar) has Rutgers 116th in offensive efficiency and 117th in offensive success rate and Iowa is 130th and 122nd in those stats. No matter which site you prefer to use, the fancystats are telling us that the Rutgers offense is very close to Iowa bad, yet we have not heard the same level of fury. I suppose it's probably because this no good, very bad offense isn't as funny to laugh at and no one expects any better.

But to be clear, Rutgers is a brutal team offensively. They fired OC Sean Gleeson in early October, replacing him with Nunzio Campanile, who you may recall was the interim head coach of Rutgers in 2019 after Chris Ash was fired. The Scarlet Knights are coming off a game against Minnesota in which they gained just 134 total yards on 3.0 YPP and scored zero points. Against another top tier defense in Ohio State, Rutgers put up 187 total yards on 3.3 YPP, scoring ten total points (their lone TD coming off a drive in which they started in the red zone). They have not crested 370 total yards in a game against an FBS team this season and have been held under 210 yards in 3/7 games against FBS opponents.

Strangely, Rutgers' best offensive performance in terms of yardage against an FBS opponent came against what is, on paper, the best defense they played: Iowa. While OSU, Minnesota, and even Temple shoved this Rutgers offense in a locker, they put up 361 yards against the Hawkeyes. Unfortunately, due to three turnovers + two turnover-on-downs, Rutgers scored just 10 points in that game. Their point totals this year in FBS games this season are very grim: 22, 16, 10, 10, 13, 24, 0. Even when Rutgers gains yards, they rarely turn into points. 

Problems start with the QB position. As I explained in the HenneChart section, Wimsatt has a limited range of what he can do right now, and yet it makes more sense to start him than it does to start Vedral or Evan Simon. Simon got run at the QB spot for much of the season and is probably the best QB on the roster right now, but even he was not good and starting Wimsatt is the best thing to do for the future of the program. For the positional group, the triumvirate of Rutgers QBs have posted a cumulative statline of 6 TD to 10 INT on 51.9% completion, for 1,189 yards at 5.72 Y/A. They alternate between a deeply flawed QB who can throw down the field some (Simon), an extremely inexperienced QB who can throw down the field some but who is not ready to be a B1G starter (Wimsatt), or an experienced QB with a noodle arm (Vedral). You cannot have a successful offense when this is the level of QB play you're getting week in and week out. 

The issues go beyond just the QB, even if that is the root of the trouble. The loss of Samuel Brown V is a very tough blow to the Rutgers offense, as the RBs they have to fall back on are less than desirable. Brown was the one back who was putting up good rushing clips in B1G play and in his absence, there are a bunch of players who are just guys. Here are the YPC clips for Al-Shadee Salaam in the past six games: 1.9, 2.0, 1.5, 3.0, 3.0, 0.3. And here it is for Kyle Monangai: 1.4, 4.2, 1.3, 4.5, 1.7, 4.1. Brown on the other hand was above 3.5 in all those games, breaking the 5.0 line against both Iowa and Ohio State! 

I have very few clips for these RBs as a result. Rutgers didn't run the ball much against Minnesota and any clips inevitably turn into clips of the OL because none of these RBs make yards for themselves. This cutback by Monangai is the closest I have: 

If you want a more depressing look at the Rutgers run game, the best clip I have of Salaam is on the final play of the game, when he managed to evade tackles to get back to the line of scrimmage. 

When the run game functions, it's because the OL is opening holes. Clips like these two, of the RBs doing anything on their own, are few and far between with Brown out of the picture. The return of Aaron Young gives the RB room another dimension as a receiving-first back, but is not going to bring them out of the mud on the ground. 

The reason those YPC clips are so bad is because the OL is not often opening holes. Rutgers running very few plays in this game hamstrung my ability to get lots of tape on the Scarlet Knights' OL but most often they were either getting little push or several players on the OL were delivering good blocks, only for the play to be done in by someone on the line making a terrible error. An example would be a play like this: 

G JD DiRenzo has a decent block on this play but unfortunately the C Ireland Brown completely whiffs and it's a stuff. Other running plays simply look lifeless from a blocking standpoint, like this: 

The QB run element spruces up the rushing game a little bit, but it is the 112th-ranked rushing attack in the EPA metrics. Brutal stuff. 

The passing game ain't much better unfortunately. Most of that can be learned by asking the question "who is this team's QB?", remembering the name du jour, and going "oh, that checks out". But it's not like they've got gamebreaking receivers and the QB is a scrub. Outside of our Dangerman Sean Ryan, no one here piqued my interest. TE Johnny Langan's career trajectory is unique because he has turned out to not be a bad TE, but he's also not the second coming of Rob Gronkowski. Rutgers did get him open on seam routes a bit against Minnesota: 

... problem is, the ball was not catchable half the time. 

Still, Langan is a favorite target of these QBs, so expect to see him get some run. He was the third down safety valve early on: 

Langan battled the drops in this game and his blocking is iffy, but on this Rutgers offense, all this still qualifies him as a "top receiver" on the roster. Aron Cruickshank is just a guy on the shorter stuff in the passing game, as well as the jet sweeps they still give him: 

I have nothing to say about Shameen Jones nor Chris Long really. They exist. They wear pads and a helmet in the colors scarlet and white but I don't have anything of note on them. 

The offensive line is middling. They are primarily at fault for the rushing issues and while they haven't allowed many sacks, that is a reflection of Rutgers' quick passing game than anything else, which is designed to mitigate iffiness on the OL. When your OL is made up of starters from ULM, Sacred Heart, and Boston College, that's not a great sign. The only player who stood out as particularly bad to me relative to the others was RT Hollin Pierce, who was on the bench last year against Michigan, now cyan'd in the diagram two years in a row. Minnesota is not really a virtuosic pass-rushing outfit so there weren't a ton of pressures in this game, but the most success came against Pierce off the right edge: 

Most Minnesota pressures looked like this, with the tackles getting pinched inwards and the pocket squeezing from the edges. Minnesota didn't blitz all that often so I can't say a ton about the blitz pickups, but what I did see from the RBs didn't look great. Rutgers doesn't put their QBs in situations to come under fire all that much and there's a reason for that. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

This is the sort of game you don't have to plan for. It's Rutgers. Roll into town, run your base stuff, don't bother watching film. Get the W and move on. By this point in the season we have a good idea of how good Michigan's defense is and comparable defenses are giving up <300 yards and 10 or less points against Rutgers. Rutgers cannot consistently move the ball through the air and they cannot consistently move the ball on the ground. They might hit a play here or there to Langan or Ryan, or maybe they'll get a nice run or scheme something through the Schiano School of College Crappe but this is an offense rotating three bad QBs that is bottom of the barrel among P5 offenses. Nothing to be scared of here and no reason to belabor the point and talk about matchups. Michigan is going to be a lot better than Rutgers in every matchup. The end.