Rutgers hopes to fix mistakes, tackling woes from Ohio State rout at Nebraska

Immediately after what was easily the Rutgers football team’s worst performance of the season last Saturday at Ohio State, senior defensive end David Milewski made a bold proclamation: “This game is not going to define us as a team.”

One week later, the Scarlet Knights will get their first chance to prove one of their five team captains right.

The major variables remain constant: another ranked Big Ten opponent, another hostile road environment at a historic venue and another up-tempo offense with multiplicity.

Only this time, Rutgers (5-2, 1-2) hopes for a different result than the season-high 585 yards it allowed against Ohio State when it travels to Lincoln for a date with No. 16 Nebraska (6-1, 2-1) Saturday at Memorial Stadium.

“Last week, we obviously didn’t get the result that we wanted, but I think it was a wakeup call to a lot of the guys who maybe had false confidence going into the game thinking that they prepared as much as they should have, but maybe they didn’t,” Milewski said. “As long as that game becomes that for this defense, we could potentially be very good as long as people are making sure that they’re doing the right things on and off the field.”

The list of issues to clean up, particularly for Rutgers’ defense, is lengthy.

The Knights couldn’t handle Ohio State’s zone-read looks in the run game, as the speed of the Buckeyes’ operation proved to be more than Rutgers accounted for in practice. Missed tackles on small details in the backfield allowed the Buckeyes to escape along the edge for big plays.

Along with a variety of spread-option passes that stretched the Knights the width of the field more than they had endured since the season opener against Washington State, Ohio State exploded for 35 points in less than 26 minutes.

“A lot of times, if you misread a play, you’re not where you’re supposed to be, and then you put yourself in a very precarious situation where now you have to do something special to make a play,” Milewski said. “We need to make sure that it’s more so on us in terms of fitting everything up correctly and getting the details of our assignments, making sure that we’re in the right spots. If you’re in the right spots, then it’s just a matter of making the tackles.”

The Cornhuskers’ shotgun-heavy formations figure to pose a similar threat.

Like Ohio State, Nebraska features a dual-threat quarterback in 6-foot-1, 220-pound Tommy Armstrong Jr. His 2,028 total yards top the Big Ten, along with 482 rushing yards that lead all signal-callers in the conference.

But perhaps most impressive are Armstrong’s improvements throwing the ball, already 10.9 points higher in pass efficiency with 56 more attempts than his true freshman campaign.

“Any time you have a dual-threat quarterback, it’s hard to account for,” said junior defensive tackle Darius Hamilton. “But if we just stay on our keys and play our game, I think we’ll be fine.”

But Nebraska runs the ball more heavily than Ohio State, where its most dangerous weapon lies.

Potential 2015 NFL first-round draft pick Ameer Abdullah ranks third in the nation in rushing yards, eclipsing the 1,000-yard mark last week after a four-touchdown performance at Northwestern.

Head coach Kyle Flood called Abdullah as good as any rusher the Knights have faced in his 10 years at Rutgers, which includes current NFL running backs LeSean McCoy and Ryan Mathews.

“To think that you’re going to eliminate him from the game, I don’t know if that’s a realistic expectation,” Flood said. “But we’re going to do everything we can to minimize his impact and control the big plays. It won’t be the threes, fours and fives [yard pickups], it’s the 20s, 30s and 40s that you have to eliminate.”

Offensively, a cleaner start is imperative for Rutgers.

While the Knights insisted communication was not an issue playing in front of 106,795 fans at Ohio Stadium, two three-and-outs to open the game wasn’t what they had in mind.

Another 80,000-plus thousand fans are likely to filter into a sold-out Memorial Stadium, where Rutgers has an opportunity to respond again after a loss.

“We need to play hard and physical from the moment the ball is kicked off,” said junior wide receiver Leonte Carroo. “We’ve had a great week of practice — better than last week — guys really moving out here fast, so I think that’s already preparing us for this Nebraska game, and I feel like we’re going to come out just from the way we’ve been practicing this week.”

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