Scarlet Fever: A Deep Dive Into the Ills of the 2025 Rutgers Football Season

For the first time since 2022, Rutgers Football has ended the regular season without reaching the six wins needed to secure bowl eligibility. The question is, what changed? What caused the Scarlet Knights to take this step back? Is it permanent? Or are these issues being dealt with as we speak?

The Ills

The first and biggest issue of the 2025 season for Rutgers has been the defense. No matter what the reasoning is, the defense has looked just awful. According to The Knight Report, Rutgers’ defense has given up an average of 7.9 yards per play, which is the worst since 2000. The Knights seemed to grab capable players in the transfer portal, especially on defense, so what happened?

The easiest scapegoat for these issues is defensive coordinator Robb Smith. Smith has a reputation for making the defenses he inherits worse, and the same continued here. However, his hire is not the only reason why the defense as a whole stepped back. Rutgers has a very young defensive staff overall, and their inexperience at the Power Four level is likely another reason why this team struggled. Not only did the Knights have a bad hire at the top, but they also had position coaches around him who couldn’t challenge his thinking. It also should be pointed out that the Knights did marginally better when head coach Greg Schiano started calling the plays.

It is difficult to blame the transfer portal evaluations when players who were already stars on Rutgers’ defense last year also took a step back under the new system.

The best way to fix this is to have a defensive staff overhaul, which it sounds like they might be gearing up for very soon. It will be interesting to see how this pans out this time, as it sounds like Smith was one of Schiano’s last options in the previous defensive coaching staff overhaul.

This one is perhaps the most difficult to fix. Several times during the season, the Knights had their opponent on the ropes, and they managed to have a win slip through their fingers with a few crucial mistakes in the fourth quarter. Examples of these blunders include the interception against Iowa late in the game when they had the chance to retake the lead, the botched snap against Minnesota when the offense was driving in the fourth quarter to take a late lead, and most recently the fumbled play action pass turned touchdown in the game against Penn State when Rutgers had the chance to go up by two scores.

This issue here is, how do the Knights fix that? There isn’t really a solution here outside of more practice, more experience, and improved confidence. With that being said, however, this is still one of the biggest ills of the 2025 season.

For the second year in a row, Rutgers had an enormous amount of injuries, to the point where over 25 players were missing games at certain points. They also had 12 players who were out for the entire season. Admittedly, some of that is luck; however, Schiano is known for his extremely physically demanding practices as well. It sounds like another change in the strength and conditioning staff is something that needs to happen, as well as a shift in how they conduct their practices.

While this issue remedied itself later in the season, the Knights became very predictable in their play calling midway through the season, and their output suffered because of it. Earlier in the year, Rutgers seldom used pre-snap motions and hardly ever threw out any trick plays to keep the defense guessing. This predictability can make it significantly harder to move the ball down the field. Their implementation of new concepts helped the Rutgers offense surge towards the end of the season and should have been implemented sooner.

The Cures

The good thing is that many of these issues are fixable for next season, and there is reason to be hopeful as a Rutgers fan. As mentioned earlier in the article, a defensive staff overhaul can make this team look like a night and day difference. A change in the strength and conditioning program, plus a revision to how practice is conducted, can help out immensely in the area of injuries as well.

One reason to be hopeful for next season is that the highly rated 2025 recruitment class just finished their freshman year and should be looking to make significant contributions next season. This class has four 4 stars and several high 3 stars according to 247sports, and with a year of development under their belt, they should be ready to start contributing on a larger scale.

On top of all of that, although this season was a wash on the gridiron, the Knights finally seem like they have the structure coming together behind the scenes to be successful. Having a competent athletic department can do wonders for its sports teams, and the efforts of athletic director Keli Zinn and her staff should start to pay off by the time next season rolls around.