RUTGERS UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 5, 2022

Greg Schiano

Press Conference

GREG SCHIANO: Cardinals, huh? I like it. I like it. Thanks for coming out, guys. I'll try to answer anything I can.

Big week here. We're starting academics tomorrow. School starts tomorrow. There's a lot going on in our building right now. Everyone getting ready. I think that's something that's lost often on people. They watch the games on TV, and they see these big, fast guys running around making great plays.

Being a student-athlete at Rutgers is a huge challenge. Academically it's such a competitive school, so not only do we compete in the Big Ten Conference, but academically these guys are competing every day in the classroom and every evening in the classroom.

We had a great summer. Everybody is eligible for the season. I thought we really did well in the classroom this summer, so now we have to pick it up again here starting tomorrow.

Big week. First game, we had some first game jitters. We had some guys that were playing for the first time. We played multiple quarterbacks.

There's a lot of stuff that we have to sort through and get better. I mean, really get better. We had ten penalties. That's not who we are, but we did it, so it is. We have to clean that stuff up. There's so much to work on.

Wagner is coming in. They had a tough game with Fordham, so I'm sure they're going to be hungry and come in here looking to impress. To me it's about us. We've got to get better. Just like last week was about us, this week is about us.

Questions?

Q. I wanted to ask you about Noah. How has he handled the injury, and what kind of role has he played with the younger guys while he has been out?

GREG SCHIANO: He has been great with the younger guys. He has coached them. Noah wants to go into coaching when he is done playing. He has done an awesome job.

He has helped me. He has helped Sean quite a bit. He is handling it well, but he is like a caged animal. He wants to play. This is very frustrating to him. But we'll just week-to-week and see how it heals.

Q. Do you feel like you're still learning about this team and individual players just because they are so young and what they can do, and how does that kind of impact what each week of practice is like for you?

GREG SCHIANO: Quite a bit. It's a good point in that it's not only the young guys that haven't played. Like a guy like Wesley Bailey who hasn't played football for us, all of a sudden he goes out and really has a good game, a very productive game. Okay, that's good.

Then there are some other guys, like Desmond Igbinosun. Got a little time in the bowl game, and now he goes out and plays -- I don't know what he played -- 70, 80 plays. He did a good job.

Those things you have to now assess and say, Okay, so now what? What's the next step for them? How do we redistribute some of the repetitions, offensive line? There's a lot of different areas that we have to address, and I mentioned it in the open with improvement.

As I said to our coaches, we had a great workout last night. We just have so much to do. It's almost overwhelming, but we just have to keep chopping. That's what chopping is. Just chop the moment, whatever we're working on right now.

We'll run out of time, there's no doubt, but how much can we get done before the kickoff at 4:00? That's our goal.

Q. Before getting into the questions, just to be sure, the two-quarterback system is still a possibility for Saturday, correct?

GREG SCHIANO: Anything is. We don't have to answer this too many more times going forward. This will be a blanket statement for the whole year. Whatever gives us the best chance to win is a possibility, so then basically, anything is a possibility if it gives us a chance to win.

Q. To that effect, with the two-quarterback system, can you take us through a bit about the decision-making process on who makes the decisions, how the decision of who comes in when, who comes out when, how that comes about? How do you guys go about making those decisions?

GREG SCHIANO: Well, ultimately, personnel is my decision. I listen to all my coaches. I watch the video with them. I watch it separately. I get a lot of reports come to me, but at the end of the day that's my job as the head coach.

During the game, I give my coaches latitude based on what they want to call, who they want doing it, and I thought Sean and the offensive staff did a good job, really good job, of managing that.

But some of that is subjective, right? I mean, how do you know? You don't know. They're human beings. You don't know how people are going to react.

Neither one of those quarterbacks have played a substantial amount of football, so you're getting to see it just as we are. We see it in practice, but the games are different. We all know that. So we're learning about them just as everybody is.

When are you going to name a starter? You know, again, when it gives us the best chance to win.

Q. Coach, obviously, you're on the precipice of a milestone. You would tie Frank Burns this week if you win for the most wins ever at Rutgers. What's something you learned from Frank Burns as a coach, and how was he able to, first, identify Rutgers and build that into a program? What did you learn from him?

GREG SCHIANO: Well, Coach Burns, I got the opportunity my first go-around to meet him. Unfortunately, his health had failed later on, but I really enjoyed it. He was such a, I don't know what the word is, stately. When I got to know him, he had that white hair, and he was just such a gentleman. I was so impressed being around him.

We would talk football. He was a tough guy. I mean, he was a legitimate old-school, do it right, work hard and good things happen. We didn't really ever talk Xs and Os as much as we talked philosophy, head coaching things. I always enjoyed my time with Coach.

I've been blessed. I've had some great people I've had a chance to be around.

Q. What are you seeing now from Christian Braswell and also, just the way he handled coming back from the injury, the adversity, and obviously, made a big play the other day. What are you kind of seeing from him?

GREG SCHIANO: I was glad. Certainly happy for our team, but I was really glad for him individually because he has been up against it, right? He decides to transfer here, and then in the summer hurts his knee, misses the entire season. Then has some health issues this spring.

I know the way he felt. He felt, like, snake pit. Well, when is it going to end? To make a big play like that was so good for him and so good for us.

I'm hoping this is kind of, as I said to him, a launching pad for you right now.

Q. Taj Harris: 11 snaps, one catch. Why was his role so limited?

GREG SCHIANO: I think it's just competition. We have a lot of guys that are playing. You saw we played a lot of guys at a lot of positions, and that was on purpose. I'm hopeful that his reps will grow as we get more and more comfortable.

He is a newcomer that has worked hard to get himself in a position to compete. I'm hopeful that that grows.

Q. No injury or suspension or any issue of that nature?

GREG SCHIANO: No, nothing other than just playing a lot of people.

Q. You talked about a lot about the linebackers coming into this season. How would you assess Tyreem and Deion's performance in Week 1?

GREG SCHIANO: I thought they both played well. I thought they both played well. Deion played a lot more his first year with us than his second, and then Tyreem played last year. He got to start at Indiana, but you never really know now they were the guys. I thought they performed well. Again, a launching pad for them.

All of this is a starting point, and because we win by one point it all feels so different. But had we not, if Kyle Monangai doesn't get that fumble, we don't win the game, right? Now everything feels differently.

So that's what I tried to talk to the team about is the 150 text messages that were on your phone after the game would have been zero, and one point is what changes all that. That's what they have to understand.

That's the fine line in major college football. What does that mean? Do you sit there and worry about that? No. It's all about the preparation, what you are willing to put forth, the effort you're willing to put forth, the attention to detail all wee long.

We had some guys cramp. I don't have a lot of sympathy for crampers. That's about preparation. You have to prepare. You have to drink throughout the game. It's easy to get distracted and not do that.

I think all of these things are what we learn. Those penalties, a lot of them were unforced errors. That's not who we are, but we did it, so it is. Until we change it, that is who we are.

Those are the things that we have to work on this week, and there's got to be laser focus on that. That's my job, and that's our staff's job to make sure that we aid and help these guys, take them where they want to go.

There's no lack of want-to. There's no lack of hard work, but we have to learn to be where our feet are and really focus on that moment. We call it "chop the moment." When with did that, we were good Saturday. When we didn't, we made silly mistakes and didn't perform even close to our capabilities.

Q. Obviously, you said starting it's better to teach from the win column, obviously, than the loss column, but starting 1-0, beating Boston College, from your perspective, what does that mean for your team moving forward?

GREG SCHIANO: I told our team this: Boston College and Rutgers all had the same goal. We wanted to be 1-0 at the end of the first game.

We got that done, and that feels good, right, when you work really hard at something and then you achieve it. But now that's done. As I told them, we have a 24-hour rule, like a lot of teams do. We celebrated the win.

Yesterday we were in here watching the tape, and there's so much on that tape to correct. There's no way we can possibly get it all corrected in a week's time, but we're going to work.

As I told them, the key is don't make the same mistakes twice. If we can correct a mistake and not make it. There's new mistakes that will be made, but if we can keep from making the same mistakes.

The other thing I said is, if one guy makes it, we all make it. Let's learn from each other's mistakes. That's what we need to do. There will be plenty of mistakes, but as the year goes on, when you have a really good football team, you start running out of mistakes. They become fewer and far between, but I'll tell you, that sheet was just full of them Saturday.

I'm grateful for how hard they played. If they didn't play that hard, we wouldn't have won. My hats off to our strength and conditioning staff. Our team was very well-conditioned.

To be able to do what they did in the fourth quarter is critical, but that's a testament to their conditioning. How much the strength and conditioning staff and the players put into it this summer.

We have a base, but we have to correct these mistakes. It's a challenge. It's going to be a race. Right now time is our enemy. We don't have enough time to get it all fixed, but we're going to try.

Appreciate you.