Rutgers football just wrapped up its best regular season since 2014 with a dominant win over Michigan State, but the Scarlet Knights still have one more game to play.
Greg Schiano’s team, which went 7-5 and won four Big Ten games in a season for the first time since joining the conference, will need to wait until Sunday to learn their bowl destination − most projections at this point have Rutgers headed for the Rate Bowl in Phoenix, Arizona on Dec. 26.
Regardless, the next few weeks leading up to that game offer Rutgers a valuable opportunity.
“Wherever we land, we’ll have a great trip,” Schiano said after his team’s 41-14 win over Michigan State Saturday at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan. “What I know is so great about bowl games is you get another spring practice, in essence, and the young guys will get a chance. We’re a developmental program and what better way to do it than going to a bowl game and developing along the way.”
That’s especially important for a team that’s been badly banged up throughout the season, forcing multiple young players – some of whom weren’t even on the two-deep to start the season – into significant roles.
“We have a plan on what we usually do between the regular season and the bowl,” Schiano said. “We’ve got to find out when that date is and then you fit it to the plan. So the first week, we won’t know. We’ll find out next week after the weekend some time and then we’ll figure it out. Maybe we’ll know a little before. I don’t know how it’s going to work, but I’m not worried about that.”
The big question now becomes which veteran players will suit up in the bowl game.
Rutgers has a large number of players who will moving on after the season with the hopes of heading to the NFL.
That includes running back Kyle Monangai and linebacker Tyreem Powell, both of whom said after Saturday’s game that they’ll make their decisions about whether they’ll play in the bowl in the coming days and weeks.
Something else to keep an eye on is whether any players enter their names into the NCAA transfer portal, which opens Dec. 9, one day after bowl games and the College Football Playoff field are announced. That window will close on Dec. 28.
Those conversations will all be held in the days ahead now that the regular season is over.
The fact the Scarlet Knights are bowl-bound is an impressive feat considering the adversity they faced this season – from an avalanche of injuries to a four-game midseason losing streak.
“When we know where we’re going, that will be the next step and the next chapter, but these kids wrote this story this year one word at a time,” Schiano said. “They refused to get ahead of themselves. They refused to live in the past, and they learned some valuable lessons.”
