Arnav’s Analysis: Four Takeaways From Rutgers’ Loss to Boston College

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After Rutgers football came out completely lifeless against Boston College, they rallied back to within a score and had several chances to take the lead. However, the overwhelming takeaway from the game is not how close the Scarlet Knights were to pulling off the road upset but instead how badly Rutgers performed overall. I am not here to argue with that, as that game looked far worse than its score of 28-21 (while wildly entertaining at the end).

In a competition of which team could give the other team the game more, the Scarlet Knights threw the game away, quite literally in some cases. Instead of going through a comprehensive breakdown of every phase of the ball, I will go deeper into a few different takeaways and big-picture thoughts.

Both Quarterbacks Struggled. Just Differently.

If it wasn’t clear previously, Rutgers has a big quarterback problem on its hands this season. Both factions got to see their preferred guy, and each comes with similar but different problems.

Dylan Lonergan may have had one of the worst starts I have seen as a Rutgers fan, and some of the interceptions he threw were baffling. He was underthrowing footballs, throwing hospital balls at receivers, struggling at any sign of pressure, and actively taking Rutgers’ slim chances of victory and reducing them to absolute zero.

But there is a reason why he won the starting job. He can see the field better. Sure, he may have thrown meatball subs out there, but he was making the right reads to his receivers.

The same cannot be said about AJ Surace. Despite all the claims of Surace being ready for the moment, the lights were indeed too bright. He was unable to see linebackers sitting back in coverage, throwing the football right where they could go ahead and make the interception.

His two interceptions late came to Anthony Palano, who dropped back into coverage pretty routinely on both plays. There was not a ton of deceptiveness from Palano, although on the second read, he did shift over to the right, but Surace completely seemed to miss the linebacker in the middle of the field in both cases.

He also was very much a first-read quarterback, staring down his first read while making it very easy for the defense to telegraph where he was throwing the fooball. Surace was the more consistent quarterback out of the two in making the available throws to his reeceivers and moving his offense down the field, and was able to help Rutgers dig out of the hole they were in, so credit to him for doing that.

I can finally understand why Rutgers was so hesitant in allowing Surace to throw the ball even in mop-up duty last season and why this quarterback competition was so close this offseason. Hint: its not because both QBs are equally very good, as Greg Schiano will still tell you.

Where Rutgers goes from here is yet to be seen? Lonergan might be the better processor, while Surace more promising, but does any of that matter when both quarterbacks are equally turnover-prone in the games themselves? And with the offensive line seeming to hold up better this time, a lot of the turnovers in this game can be attributed to Surace himself.

The Defense Showed Improvement, But Mistakes Proved Costly

After a disastrous showing against UMass, the Scarlet Knights defense picked up where they left off against the Eagles early. They were more poised in tackling, including linebacker Sean Allison, who made a nice tackle on Evan Dickens to force an early fourth down for BC.

However, they once again struggled to pressure quarterback Mason McKenzie and stop the run, with Allison shooting the wrong gap and allowing a nice run lane for Dickens for the Eagles’ first touchdown of the game. On Boston College’s next drive, McKenzie aired out the football and found Landon Wright deep downfield. Boston College shifted their protection slightly right, and pass rushing was again an issue, while Mikey Munn flew over Wright and got everything but the football. Both him and Kevin Levy left the game injured early on as well.

McKenzie finished off the drive with a touchdown using his legs, which was all-too-expected given Rutgers’ struggles with mobile quarterbacks. Greg Schiano made a point to not “drive by” the quarterback, but the Knights did exactly that and allowed the uber-quick QB to evade an ankle tackle and find the corner of the end zone.

The defense also left short and intermediate throws available for McKenzie to make, which he took advantage of, including ample yards after the catch. They also allowed McKenzie to take off up the middle for yardage, which is a dangerous recipe to work with for any mobile quarterback.

But in the second half, the defense was able to get Boston College off the field while they sustained offensive drives of their own. More importantly, Rutgers created turnovers to generate short fields, which started with corner Bradlee Jones punching the ball away from Dickens and Kevyn Humes recovering the fumble.

After the Knights cut the lead to six off that turnover, Rutgers nearly brought McKenzie down with a sack, forcing a rushed throw that resulted in an interception by Moses Walker deep in BC territory. Rutgers was unable to take advantage (will get into this in the next section), but all the defensive progress was washed away when McKenzie scrambled right and found a wide open Dawson Pough for a 78-yard touchdown that put the Eagles back up 14 following a successful two-point conversion.

Safety Latrell Noel gets caught looking at a different route, and Pough runs his route, then realizing nobody is behind him, simply turns around and runs up the field completely unmarked. McKenzie sees the lapse in coverage and launches the football on the run, and there isn’t a Rutgers defender visible on screen in one of the most embarrassing touchdowns you will see all season.

If not for KJ Duff’s own 60-yard corner-post route touchdown that beat Boston College’s secondary on the next drive, this would have been a two-score margin. Despite Walker ripping the ball away for his second interception for one last Scarlet Knight shot, Surace threw the ball right back to Boston College to seal the Eagles’ win.

Offensive Play-Calling and Decision Making is Questionable

Shifting back to the offensive side of the ball here, because some of the play-calling in this game was not only questionable, it was a downright disservice to the team and its fans. Many fans have pointed out that Schiano is heavily dependent on analytics and has no feel for the game, despite claiming that every decision was different, and that argument became clearer to me after the way this game was managed.

Right from the opening drive, Rutgers kept the ball on the ground and was unable to pick up a third-and-short on the ground behind Antwan Raymond. The Knights made an already questionable decision going for a fourth down in their own territory, and then ran the same Tush Push play that failed last week against UMass. Of course, they were unable to convert and Boston College ends up scoring their first touchdown.

The Knights also failed to take advantage of their biggest mismatch in KJ Duff most of the first half, and he was held to just one catch for nine yards. Some of that can be attributed to the physical press coverage BC played on Duff, which was partially responsible for the first interception, but once Surace started getting Duff involved, he routinely beat BC’s corners using his size, strength, speed, and skill to haul in seven catches for 128 yards and the long-ball touchdown.

Third, the later decisions for Rutgers to not take the points proved to be costly. Schiano elected to roll the dice each time they ended up deep in BC territory. One resulted in the first interception to Palano and the other was the fourth-and-one slow mesh that resulted in a turnover on downs. So instead of the score being tied at 20-20, we have to look at hindsight being 20-20 instead.

My frustration is not so much with the aggressive decision-making alone, but the play-calling and execution behind it. If there is so much confidence in the offense being able to convert these critical fourth downs, especially late in the game down a score, then they have to be running plays that will actually work.

And that brings me to the slow mesh that was nonexistent against UMass but ran all too often against Boston College. While Richie from TKR was unable to get a conclusive answer in the press conference and Schiano saying that they have run that play before, they have not run it quite like this and certainly not this season.

In a properly executed slow mesh (like Wake Forest’s), the offensive line creates a horizontal “wall” that forces the defense to choose a lane. The handoff from then Forest QB Sam Hartman (from the 2022 video against Clemson) to his running back is delayed as he reads the decision from the plus-one defender. The running back then has the chance to take off and find the hole, as the backs often did. It wasn’t a miracle cure, but it was effective during the Demon Deacons’ strong seasons in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

Because Rutgers’ blocking didn’t hold the line the same way, Anthony Palano was able to penetrate so deeply and quickly that he didn’t even have to guess. He physically occupied the space of both the quarterback and the running back simultaneously and BC defenders accounted for both on that critical fourth-down stop. When a defender gets into the mesh path that fast, the quarterback has no time to read the extra defender—he is fighting for his life before the handoff decision can even be processed.

Between some of the bizarre offensive play-calling, lack of strong in-game decision making, and lack of execution on these innovative concepts, the Scarlet Knights are not helping themselves win any more football games.

The Nonconference Argument is Over. The Season is Too.

I’ll admit it. I used to joke that I almost wanted Rutgers to lose one of these nonconference games. At least the one against Power Four competition. Just to break the low ceiling, stable floor model that has made Rutgers seasons and games all too predictable when the Knights never get one they are not supposed to get either. Well, I got my in-jest wish this season. Twice.

Not because I wanted Rutgers to lose. None of us really want that, I hope. I just hated the way a 3-0 start against vastly inferior competition could create a sense of confidence and faith in the team and its future outcomes that really wasn’t justified. If Rutgers handled the teams it was heavily favored against, that was good, but it didn’t tell us much about how the rest of the season was going to go or whether the Knights would take the next step as a program. At first, I bought into those wins. I learned the hard way not to.

Even when the Scarlet Knights defeated the likes of Temple, Delaware, and Syracuse pretty easily back in the 2021 season, the rest of the season seemed go by the wayside and didn’t promise Big Ten wins. In the coming years, it became even more difficult to process the nonconference win streak, as Rutgers proceeded to nearly lose to Temple and Boston College in a lifeless 4-8 season in 2022. In the seasons to come, it felt like RU was on the verge of giving one away almost every season since then, including two nearly-blown double-digit leads against Virginia Tech in 2024 and Ohio to open the season last year.

If fans are supposed to take pride in the 3-0 nonconference starts, can’t they least enjoy them comfortably? Don’t call me selfish for not enjoying the near-blown 34-31 win over Ohio or the similar 26-23 win in Blacksburg for anything more than the win accounted for in the standings.

Well, Rutgers lost 37-21 to UMass and although they lost 28-21 to Boston College, they were playing catch-up the entire night and could not execute when it mattered most. The Eagles avenged their 2022 loss in front of their Red Bandana crowd on an emotional night, but this says something bigger about the state of Rutgers football.

Some fans might think that means those two teams are better than expected. The truth is that may not fully be the case. We saw how much BC struggled against Cincinnati. We have yet to see UMass in MAC play. But when USC rolls into Piscataway as a 25-point favorite and demolishes us by more, we will all be reminded that whether you like it or not, there is a reason why even the worst Big Ten teams usually pull these games out. We didn’t.

It’s going to be a long season in Piscataway.

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