Rutgers Football names Dane Pizzaro starting kicker for 2026 season
Rutgers Football has named their starting kicker for the 2026 season and it is third year Scarlet Knight Dane Pizzaro.
Football Rutgers Football names Dane Pizzaro starting kicker for 2026 season
- Thread starter Richie O
- Start date
I think he had the stronger leg. As always, it doesn't matter if the accuracy isn't there. But stil a surprise. Must have been quite the competition in camp.
Damn. I don’t like this decision. Most accurate kicker in Rutgers history demoted. 13th most accurate in B1G history.
Maybe Jai’s form suddenly slipped unexplainably? What does Greg know that we don’t know?
Hopefully it doesn’t happen but this coaching decision might blow up in Greg’s face.
Maybe Jai’s form suddenly slipped unexplainably? What does Greg know that we don’t know?
Hopefully it doesn’t happen but this coaching decision might blow up in Greg’s face.
We discussed this last year. Patel kicks the ball way too low. Sounds like he has not fixed that. This is a good change and maybe lights a fire under Patel to get better.
His accuracy has been declining: 83.3%, 78.9%, 72.2%, each of the last 3 years (close to bottom of Big Ten and 106/143 in FBS in 2025).
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Jai took over for Jude McAtamney, who made it to the NY Giants as an UDFA and to the roster in 2024 and 2025.
Jude displaced Valentino Ambrosio, who went on to kick for Tulane for two years, where where he holds the highest field goal percentage of any kicker in Tulane football history (84.2%). In 2022, his % was 91.2%. In the 2023 Cotton Bowl Classic where Tulane beat USC by a score of 46–45, Ambrosio made the winning kick. We could have used a winning kick the last few years beside the one against Purdue!
Heck of a decision letting him go, which was the same year Greg let the ST coach Adam Scheier go, who is now the ST coach for Florida State.
Hope this decision works out better than the last two!
#FreeAdamScheier!!!
Valentino Ambrosio Career Stats - NCAAF - ESPN
Complete career NCAAF stats for Tulane Green Wave Place Kicker Valentino Ambrosio on ESPN. Includes scoring, rushing, defensive and receiving stats.
www.espn.com
Football - K Valentino Ambrosio to the portal - Forums
What????? https://rutgers.rivals.com/news/rutgers-football-k-valentino-ambrosio-has-entered-the-transfer-portal
Jai regularly kicked balls too low and got some blocked, can't hit anything over 50 and missed some gimmies the last few seasons. I would bet this guy has a stronger leg and kicks balls higher. He must have significant more potential and better technique to unseat an incumbent. We'll see.
He also gets a LOT of height on his kicks, which is important.
Our punters during GS 2.0 have had open lanes all the way to Trenton and stopped to kick at the LOS. It has nothing to do with their "40 times" lol!!! Ugh.
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I feel differently here. If Patel was clearly beat out in camp (which I’m sure is what happened) Greg did the right thing. If Dane doesn’t deliver, you then make a change based on new information. If player B clearly beat out player A, player B earned the chance to go out and show what he can do. Otherwise, why have the competition in camp? I respect Greg for doing this - couldn’t have been easy. Pike ought to take a lesson in this.
Exactly. 4th and 8s are his specialty. A sure thing to almost get back to the LOS.
Agree. Kicker, QB, whoever. Best player plays. But Schiano should be fair and dial up a certain-fail trick play for Pizzaro too. Or maybe have him try a 58 yarder into the wind with the game on the line.
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After what happened with GW, I don’t even care how Dane actually does. Just glad to see decisions like this are being made period. It’s important for performance in preseason position battles to have some meaning. If he chokes under pressure (or even, to your point, looks bad trying to execute a Schiano headscratching specialty - then put Patel back in. It still wasn’t the wrong decision.
No, only time will tell if it was the right decision. Patel had limitations but is mostly adequate. Pizzaro is an unknown. Shelby does think Schiano did what he thinks is best for the team, however.
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Listen - I know your lifelong mission is to bash everything Greg does, but in this specific case, there’s no chance at all (zero) that Pizzaro earned the job without being more accurate than Patel throughout camp. Comparing kicker performances is very straightforward. Not everyone’s practice performance translates to live game situations, so it’s certainly possible Pizzaro chokes under pressure in which case another change would be made. But even if that happened, that still doesn’t mean this preseason decision was a “mistake”. Whoever “earns” the job in camp for any position battle deserves their shot. Full stop.
You misunderstood. Not bashing Schiano on this. Not all decisions people make prove to be the best decisions. In sports, players get traded or released, coaches get fired, etc due to bad prior decisions. There’s even a coach who called a TO to ice the kicker attempting a 58 yarder into a 30mph wind and chose to get the ball first in an overtime game, losing both games. Good decisions ?
Nobody wanted Johnny Unitas until eventually one team did. The Red Sox traded The Bambino.
For sure Schiano thinks Pizzaro beat out Patel and Lonergan beat out Surace. Hopefully these decisions were good decisions. Many Schiano decisions were blatantly and obviously terrible in real time, but Shelby isn’t questioning these two particular decisions.
Nobody wanted Johnny Unitas until eventually one team did. The Red Sox traded The Bambino.
For sure Schiano thinks Pizzaro beat out Patel and Lonergan beat out Surace. Hopefully these decisions were good decisions. Many Schiano decisions were blatantly and obviously terrible in real time, but Shelby isn’t questioning these two particular decisions.
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