Penn State Football
Rutgers Head Coach Greg Schiano Postgame Press Conference
vs. Rutgers – November 20, 2021
Opening Statement
That was a tough one. We did some things well but just not well enough to win. They're a good football team. That defense is top 10 for a reason. We have to regroup, and we will. Got a bus ride home to think about it. Come back tomorrow and get ready for Maryland.
Q: What's your initial assessment on why the offense was as bad as it was?
A: First, they're good. Without watching it I can't tell you why couldn't we run the football even a little bit. I have to look at that. The secondary did what they've done. They've played well, they're a top-10 defense for a reason, they've played a lot of good teams. When you accumulate all their statistics their one of the top 10 in scoring defense which doesn't happen this late in the season by accident. To win that game offensively, we're going to have to play almost perfect and we didn't play anywhere close to that.
Q: What changed after the second quarterback came in for them? What was he able to do to keep their offense going?
A: Some of it was what he did and some of it was what we did. It feels like you go into halftime 0-0, we get a late hit that bounced, just a couple of small errors. There's some good skilled guys out there so we can't afford to have little slivers. In the second half, we had a bust on the long touchdown which really is the one play that – there's a lot of them that I'm disappointed – that one is more than disappointed. I have to find out why that happened because we're playing well enough defensively to win a game like that. We just have to get the other side cooking a little bit and part of it like I said was them.
Q: Did you think the offense was unsettling in a way? The two men in motion earlier, the 12 men in the huddle coming out of the timeout. Did anything contribute to that?
A: I don't know. I don't know if it's unsettled. Why does that happen? First of all, I put it on coaching. That's number one, I've said it all along. When you have 10s and 12s that's bad coaching.
Q: Are the potentials still ahead of you to write this story?
A: I think that's the biggest thing. We still in the last game of the year have the pen in our hand, we have a chance to write it. So does the team we're playing. It's going to be on each side of the field. Two teams trying to do the same thing against each other and who is more prepared in all facets and who plays more together and who plays harder for longer is going to win the game.
Q: What was your thinking in your usage of Gavin Wimsatt in that game?
A: We have a plan. Sometimes that plan doesn't come off exactly as you'd like. I'm not going to go into details because then that would expose what our plan was and I'm not getting into that. Later in the game, we played him to let him get some experience. He did some good things, he did some things that freshman rookie quarterbacks do.
Q: Is there something that you can put a finger on overall that's lacking?
A: All of the above. We need to block better, we need to do a better job in the skill positions. We got shut out, so we didn't do anything really well. We have to first look at coaching. We have to look at ourselves and then look at personnel. It's easy to look at personnel that's what commentators do. We're not commentators, we're coaches, so we have to look in the mirror first and then we have to say are we giving them the best chance to succeed and then are the people we're giving that chance to the best people we have on our team to do it. If it is, you keep playing the same guys but if it isn't you make changes and that's what we have to really examine.
Q: Does the resilience your team has shown give you confidence going into what's basically a one-game season?
A: My time with our team every day gives me confidence. I don't know if we'll win or not, but we are really going to fight our you-know-what's off to get ready. Whoever is healthy is going to play and we are going to do everything we can to write the last chapter of the regular season to our favor. As I continually remind everybody, there's a team on the other side that's trying to do the exact same thing. Good players, good coaches. That's called the Big Ten, so we have to figure out how to do it better than they do for about three and a half hours next Saturday. That's the plan.