Fun fact and an aside. My great-grandfather, Oliver Mann, was one of the first head football coaches to lead the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. Safe to say he watched the product Greg Schiano put on the field on Thursday night and rolled over in his grave. In fact, when the zombie apocalypse happens, instead of eating brains, Mann will just be picketing the athletic department’s offices in Piscataway with a “Fire Schiano” sign. Assuming Schiano isn’t fired later tonight.
That’s how bad Rutgers’ performance against UMASS was in both teams’ season openers. It’s not just that they lost at home to a bad MAC team. It’s that Rutgers lost to a bad MAC team that hadn’t beaten anyone since October of 2024. That year isn’t a typo. The Minutemen went 0-12 in 2025. Before Thursday night, they hadn’t beaten an FBS team since 2023. They’ve never beaten a Power 4 team. Now they have a 37-21 win over a Big Ten school.
What does all this have to do with Nebraska? Assuming Greg Schiano is still the head coach on November 14, a game that looked a little scary during the offseason suddenly looks far more winnable.
The Huskers also have a one-time Nebraska quarterback commit to thank for showing that there are some serious weaknesses in Rutgers’ revamped defense. Pop Watson is a brand new starter for UMASS after transferring from Virginia Tech.
Nebraska football should feel better about Rutgers after disastrous UMass loss
Watson was a member of the 2023 class and was heavily recruited by Nebraska and then-offensive coordinator Mark Whipple. Watson committed to the Huskers in February of 2022 but then decommitted just 10 days before National Signing Day and signed with the Hokies.
In three years with the ACC squad, Watson threw just 63 passes and wanted to find a starting spot by moving to UMASS. Safe to say he’s the story of Week 1 already after completing 19 of 22 passes for 197 yards, 3 touchdowns, and 0 interceptions. He also ran for 40 yards.
Greg Schiano talked a lot about how excited he was about his revamped defense after a bad 2025 season. UMASS managed to run for a total of 200 yards on Thursday night, and quite a bit of those runs were right up the gut.
However, the headliner in the “maybe Rutgers isn’t that scary an offense after all” is its quarterback, Dylan Lonergan. The Boston College transfer supposedly won the QB competition, and Schiano went out of his way to say he was the winner, rather than someone losing it. And then, in his first start with Rutgers, he completed just 16 of 29 passes with 2 touchdowns and a whopping 3 interceptions. He added another turnover when he fumbled on a sack.
He was so bad that he was mercifully taken out late in the fourth quarter and replaced with AJ Surace. While the backup led the team down the field and made the score look less embarrassing, the loss to UMASS is going to sting for a while.
Anything can happen in any given week, and Rutgers could show they took UMASS far too lightly. But if the Minutemen exposed a ton of weaknesses that Greg Schiano wanted to keep hidden, Nebraska has to be licking its chops.
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