Look, I don't know if he knew anything about kids. He seems like a good guy. For what it's worth, he says Schiano has all the coaching moxy you could want. However, he said that resources and NIL will hold Rutgers back relative to peers. Basically said Rutgers has to win all OOC games and then get over .500 in B10 to be of any real consequence. Guy can still lift a lot of weight.
Nice chat with Dick Anderson at the Gym
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I like GS but his decades long problem is a handicapped offense that cant score TDs despite having the talent.
On paper RU is ahead of Indiana in some top stats
AK is 19th for passing yards and Mendoza is 55th.
Duff is #7 for receiving yards per game and Strong is #30 - Indiana's Elijah Sarratt at #95 and Cooper is #97
Raymond is #10 (104 ypg) for rushing yards and Indiana's Roman Hemby is #62 (70 ypg).
The kicker is that RU is 59th for scoring and Indiana is #3
RU had 44 TDs and Indiana had 87 - 43 more TDs with player stats well below RUs and that's not an accident
On paper RU is ahead of Indiana in some top stats
AK is 19th for passing yards and Mendoza is 55th.
Duff is #7 for receiving yards per game and Strong is #30 - Indiana's Elijah Sarratt at #95 and Cooper is #97
Raymond is #10 (104 ypg) for rushing yards and Indiana's Roman Hemby is #62 (70 ypg).
The kicker is that RU is 59th for scoring and Indiana is #3
RU had 44 TDs and Indiana had 87 - 43 more TDs with player stats well below RUs and that's not an accident
Ummmmmmmmmmm......................what does this have to do with Dick Anderson? You do know who he is, don't you?
Glad he is still doing well. He is still the last RU coach to beat PSU. But honestly, who doesn't know this part? We have the $ and resources to beat our peers. We don't have it to beat the Top 6-8 though who are clearly not our peers.
Dick Anderson was another RU coach with sub .500 record - what could he say about Schiano lol? I have no idea what "moxie" means exactly and I'm betting it means not much for W/L columns.
I like GS and in some ways he's a great coach. Gets good guys who are likeable and not in the papers. If there are no injuries to key players he can secure modest winning seasons.
But the main thing that keeps RU ball back isn't NIL. Give Greg Indiana's Mendoza, Cooper, Becker, Hemby and others and GS wont get 87 TDs despite all the hype about having a "top OC" among 15 coaches with 79 support staff (Indiana has 12 coaches and 35 support staff) .
Rutgers' main problem is a low calorie offense - and its been that way for 20 years. GS never had a RZ offense even in 06-07 years. FGs saved RU's bacon. In many years you can find an article lamenting RZ problems with GS saying "we have to fix it" and it never is. RU was ranked 105 for RZ offense (77.05) in 2025 (Indiana was 15 @ 91.18).
When was RU's last big game when it was ranked in top 12 and beat another top 12? USF? I can't even remember.
A team with top offensive talent in 2025 had to work at being #105 in RZ.
College Football Stats - College FB Team Red Zone Scoring Percentage (TDs and FGs) | TeamRankings.com
College Football red zone scoring percentage (tds and fgs), by team.
www.teamrankings.com
Re: our problems turning yardage and otherwise productive drives into TDs: whole-heartedly agree, but player stats are a bit misleading here. Love what Athan did for us, but Mendoza still cleared him pretty easily in yards per passing attempt (9.3 vs. 8.5). IU also had a very balanced offense, both in terms of spreading yards around among players (plus two 1,000-yard rushers), and in terms of racking up yardage both in the pass and run game (they were a pretty run-heavy team like us, in terms of total plays run). Overall they averaged 452 yards per game and 6.6 yards per play, vs. 407 and 5.9, respectively, for us.
That was still the best offense we had in years (43rd in offensive yards per play, per numbers here), but IU was elite (15th in yards per play, 2nd in offensive SP+ rating per my favorite CFB nerd, Bill Connelly). The funny part is last year's IU was like a dream Schianoball team - elite defense, rushing offense, and TO margin. Meanwhile we were...what we were.
Along with offensive efficiency, the main difference was defense. Indiana's was elite. RU's was trash.
It’s actually a high calorie offense based on your relative stats. Sobering. High calorie but very low on macros.Dick Anderson was another RU coach with sub .500 record - what could he say about Schiano lol? I have no idea what "moxie" means exactly and I'm betting it means not much for W/L columns.
I like GS and in some ways he's a great coach. Gets good guys who are likeable and not in the papers. If there are no injuries to key players he can secure modest winning seasons.
But the main thing that keeps RU ball back isn't NIL. Give Greg Indiana's Mendoza, Cooper, Becker, Hemby and others and GS wont get 87 TDs despite all the hype about having a "top OC" among 15 coaches with 79 support staff (Indiana has 12 coaches and 35 support staff) .
Rutgers' main problem is a low calorie offense - and its been that way for 20 years. GS never had a RZ offense even in 06-07 years. FGs saved RU's bacon. In many years you can find an article lamenting RZ problems with GS saying "we have to fix it" and it never is. RU was ranked 105 for RZ offense (77.05) in 2025 (Indiana was 15 @ 91.18).
When was RU's last big game when it was ranked in top 12 and beat another top 12? USF? I can't even remember.
A team with top offensive talent in 2025 had to work at being #105 in RZ.
College Football Stats - College FB Team Red Zone Scoring Percentage (TDs and FGs) | TeamRankings.com
College Football red zone scoring percentage (tds and fgs), by team.
RU's offense was like Chinese food. Finish the meal and you're hungry 15 minutes later.
Think of Mendoza's leaping TD on 4th down with 5 yards to go. Technically in was a 12 yd TD run to goal but it came off a drop to the 20 so in reality it was a 20 yd run past 9 scattered Miami defenders. Think Schiano was having a QB draw from the 20 on 4th down? No - 98.5% chance it would have been FG as usual - same if Mendoza was playing for RU. Player stats are important but RU plays safe as instinct and nullifies player skills to a degree.
Wish we had a HC who’s specialty is Defense.
Exactly. Indiana was 2nd in FBS in Fewest Points Allowed.
A good comparison might be average starting field position.
If it wasn't a FG, it would have been a telegraphed screen pass that the opposing defense would have intercepted and run back for a TD.
Our offense was way closer to being as good as Indiana's than our defense. That nice, respectable 43rd nationally finish in offensive yards per play? In defensive yards per play, we were...136th. Related note: guess how many FBS teams there were last season?
This is the same Dick Anderson that punted the ball at about the Penn State 40-yard line in a close game against Penn State in the 4th quarter.
I remember the loud boos from the Rutgers crowd.
Dick knew he was gone. He went back to Penn State after the season.
I remember the loud boos from the Rutgers crowd.
Dick knew he was gone. He went back to Penn State after the season.
I was reading a 2025 article from Oregon blog and they nailed RU pretty good in an extensive review leading-up to RU game
" Rutgers gets stopped completely dead in the redzone"
".The final easily identifiable issue is that about 18% of all targets are going to the tight ends, but these tend to be very short passes on toss plays and furthermore their hands are highly unreliable (I don’t want to show examples of these as they’re very unflattering, they’re the ridiculous “trying to catch a hot potato” kind of thing and Rutgers is getting under four YPT on all these TE throws, making them more or less wasted plays..as we discussed on the podcast, there’s also more to it, and the extra parts are baffling to the both of us -- is that Rutgers gets stopped completely dead in the redzone. They can look amazing between the 20s but as soon as they cross the opponent’s 20 yardline (actually I can pinpoint where the per-play effectiveness and a-EPA begins its collapse at the 31), everything falls apart.
This includes things which are totally maddening to observe, like o-line blocking grades, which makes no sense (it’s the defense in the trenches that’s supposed to get fatigued on long drives, not the offense), and Rutgers’ preternatural 2nd & long passing game which goes from a +7 percentage point overperformance compared to 1st & 10 (itself kind of weird) outside the redzone to a mind-bogglingly terrible 16% 2nd & long success rate inside the redzone.
Numerically, the offense goes from a 57.6% per-play efficiency between the 20s to a 44.1% efficiency inside the 20. A small part of that is a falloff in rushing efficiency, by about four points -- fairly natural, as defenses compress -- while the major part is that passing efficiency collapses an astonishing 21 percentage points, from 57.8% outside to 36.8% inside. As such, Rutgers has only converted 16 of its 27 meaningful redzone trips in FBS play to touchdowns, a 59.3% rate."
www.addictedtoquack.com
" Rutgers gets stopped completely dead in the redzone"
".The final easily identifiable issue is that about 18% of all targets are going to the tight ends, but these tend to be very short passes on toss plays and furthermore their hands are highly unreliable (I don’t want to show examples of these as they’re very unflattering, they’re the ridiculous “trying to catch a hot potato” kind of thing and Rutgers is getting under four YPT on all these TE throws, making them more or less wasted plays..as we discussed on the podcast, there’s also more to it, and the extra parts are baffling to the both of us -- is that Rutgers gets stopped completely dead in the redzone. They can look amazing between the 20s but as soon as they cross the opponent’s 20 yardline (actually I can pinpoint where the per-play effectiveness and a-EPA begins its collapse at the 31), everything falls apart.
This includes things which are totally maddening to observe, like o-line blocking grades, which makes no sense (it’s the defense in the trenches that’s supposed to get fatigued on long drives, not the offense), and Rutgers’ preternatural 2nd & long passing game which goes from a +7 percentage point overperformance compared to 1st & 10 (itself kind of weird) outside the redzone to a mind-bogglingly terrible 16% 2nd & long success rate inside the redzone.
Numerically, the offense goes from a 57.6% per-play efficiency between the 20s to a 44.1% efficiency inside the 20. A small part of that is a falloff in rushing efficiency, by about four points -- fairly natural, as defenses compress -- while the major part is that passing efficiency collapses an astonishing 21 percentage points, from 57.8% outside to 36.8% inside. As such, Rutgers has only converted 16 of its 27 meaningful redzone trips in FBS play to touchdowns, a 59.3% rate."
Duck Tape: Film Analysis of Rutgers Football 2025
A preview of Oregon’s week 8 opponent in Piscataway
Duck Tape: Film Analysis of Rutgers Football 2025
A preview of Oregon’s week 8 opponent in Piscataway
www.addictedtoquack.com
Addicted to Quack really does their homework on opponent breakdowns. Probably better than most fan sites do for their own teams.
Yes indeed that was most extensive preview of a coming game that I ever saw. No surprise they highlight - with some surprise - that RU does what I was highlighting and they've done it for a long time - that monsters of midfield but no red zone thing. Great stats between 20s and then poof. That's how Britt and Tiquan got 1000 yds each a season (2007) when defenses focused on Rice. But then no red zone (recall three TD passes dropped vs WV the week after USF upset).
Interesting about the TEs catching passes but not long enough (under 4 yds a throw) to make a difference. Sounds like more "safe football" ( a reason I call it a condom offense not to be rude). Its been years of this stuff and NIL wont fix it. Look at 2006 with all the NFL talent - so many close games that needed heroics in 4th to win. Defense had to save UConn game with all that talent on offense
To paraphrase Spinal Tap: "if you ask yourself how bad the RU defense could be, the answer is none. None more bad".
This.
Schiano goes into his typical conservative shell. Cost us many games because of this red zone BS.
Anderson was a solid coach. With Frank Burns players. As soon as they were gone he was useless.
He kind of said the obvious. Good to hear he is doing well at 84.
Did you ask him about the showers at Penn St. He was there when Sandusky was.
“He testified at Sandusky's child sex abuse trial that it was not uncommon for assistant coaches and minors to be in the showers at the same time at the Lasch Football Complex.”
What? Is that a normal thing I’m not aware of.
He kind of said the obvious. Good to hear he is doing well at 84.
Did you ask him about the showers at Penn St. He was there when Sandusky was.
“He testified at Sandusky's child sex abuse trial that it was not uncommon for assistant coaches and minors to be in the showers at the same time at the Lasch Football Complex.”
What? Is that a normal thing I’m not aware of.
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We needed Dick Anderson to point this out? You should have asked him about degenerate gambler Mike McQuery's spread covering TD bomb against RU with 47 seconds left in a game that Penn State already had won. Did him and Paterno bet on that game too?
Schiano considers not turning the ball over the most important factor in a game. He’s so risk adverse his red zone offense will never be great.
RU plays offense like they have a lights out defense. This past season, they did not.