PISCATAWAY — Rutgers football quarterback Evan Simon got right to the point during his postgame interview session Saturday night.
“It’s unacceptable,” he said of his team’s performance.
“Three hundred yards doesn’t mean anything,” he said of his passing statistics.
“Got to take a major leap,” he said of his task ahead. “Got to be able to pass the ball, be accurate, make the right decisions and win.”
It’s unfair to pin Rutgers’ 27-10 loss to Iowa solely on the sophomore. He absorbed a crushing hit on the pick-six that relinquished the lead for good. His three running backs generated 68 yards between them. He has no playmakers to throw to.
Most of all, he wasn’t supposed to be carrying this burden, slinging it 49 times against an elite Big Ten defense. He seemed ticketed to be a third-stringer this season until things went sideways.
The issue hanging over Rutgers football like a dark cloud is not Evan Simon. It’s that Greg Schiano, a chunk of the way through this third season, has failed to stabilize the sport’s most important position.
Yes, former coveted recruit Gavin Wimsatt is injured right now, but before he got hurt, he couldn’t pass Simon on the depth chart. Schiano obviously feels Wimsatt needs more time to develop before he hands him the keys, but if he’s not playing he’s not developing. If he has a long way to go, and Simon admittedly has a long way to go, then it’s fair to wonder if Rutgers’ offense is doomed for the foreseeable future.
“This is temporary,” Schiano said. “We just need to be a little more consistent on offense. Defense, I thought played their guts out. We’re close on offense. We’ll get there.”
Will they? When Rutgers’ offense produces nine points against Temple, when it delivers two touchdowns to Iowa, when a former four-star prospect is squeezed into a three-way timeshare under center, it hands a cudgel to rivals on the recruiting trail.
Simon said Noah Vedral, Rutgers’ two-year starter who is working his way back from a preseason injury, “helped me out a lot this week.” That’s no surprise. Vedral is the consummate leader. And when healthy, the sixth-year postgrad probably gives the Scarlet Knights the best chance of making a bowl game. That would be a great comeback story, but it doesn’t do much for the program’s quarterback of the future, if there is one.
Schiano was non-committal about the entire situation Saturday, but he dropped a telling clue when asked about a return timetable for Vedral and Wimsatt.
“When they can play effectively to win the game, they will be back in the mix,” he said. “But that’s what it will be; it will be back in the mix, right? The competition will continue.”
You read that correctly: Nearly midway through Schiano’s third season, Rutgers’ quarterback situation is a three-way competition.
“Got to take a major leap,” Simon said. He’s right, but it’s not just him.
Jerry Carino has covered the New Jersey sports scene since 1996 and the college basketball beat since 2003. He is an Associated Press Top 25 voter. Contact him at [email protected].