The Knights Watchman

Well, the Scarlet Knights saw their faint conference championship hopes get washed out with the rain on Friday night at Rutgers Stadium. Having had a few days to digest the loss, there are few things that concern me as we head into the second half of the season. In his postgame press conference, Coach Schiano mentioned that the staff made a conscious decision to ask Tom Savage to throw the ball between 35 and 40 times in the Pittsburgh game. In retrospect, it's easy to say this was a bad decision, but I was personally baffled by Rutgers' first two offensive series. The lucky bounce on the punt aside, they were more or less dreadful. Last year, RU beat Pitt throwing the ball. But last year we had a senior quarterback and two receivers who are currently on NFL rosters. I'm not taking anything away from Savage in regard to where he is in his development, but perhaps taking a more balanced approach would have made more sense. Two years ago, we beat Pitt using little more tha...

A day later has shed some perspective on RU's 42-zip victory against the overmatched Texas Southern team. Really, the game went pretty much as it should. A team from the lower division comes in as a tune up to fill a home game. The expectation is at least a 30-point blowout, and that's what we got. The Scarlet Knight defense was on the top of its game and Texas Southern just didn't have the horses to get the job done. That's really all there is to it. Jonathan Freeny was crazy good on the D-line and David Rowe and Khasam Greene were excellent in the secondary. On offense, the RU was just too big and strong for the Texas Southern defense. It seemed that with the exception of two or three good stops, all of Rutgers' backs ran for huge chunks. DeAntwan Willimas looks like a stud, but I still like the idea of using Martinek as the feature back for now. He seems to have the best balance of speed and power and has the benefit of a year of experience. I have my concerns a...

This weekend, Rutgers will be gunning for the 600th win in the history of the football program. In addition, they will be collecting dry goods at each entrance and at various other locations. With the winter months right around the corner, I know I'll be pitching in whatever I can, and I encourage you to do the same.

Rutgers Athletics has updated its official Web site. I like the new look, although for some reason the video section took awhile to load on my machine, so they may still be working out some kinks. But it's been many years since the site got some sprucing up so I think the response to it will be good.

After watching Coach Schiano's press conference on scarletknights.com, I have to admit that it didn't really break new ground. It seemed that he feels Tom Savage has a decent chance of playing. George Johnson, however, is still on crutches and seemingly is unlikely to play. No one else that got bumped around in the FIU game appears to be out. Schiano seemed to stress the number of BCS transfers on the Texas Southern roster. Yet they've lost games to Louisiana-Monroe and Texas State by well over thirty points. So, I think that if RU wins by any less than 30 it would have to be considered a disappointment. Granted, I always feel a win is a win, but sometimes you need some style points to impress voters and recruits. We can't have another Nicholls State situation where a championship subdivision team hangs around for three quarters in front of visiting recruits. But otherwise the game should be a chance for the team to continue to work on fundamentals and hopefully for som...