All it takes is one quality win to keep the buzzards away. I saw very little chatter this past week after Stew picked up quality win #1 over Pitt.

But all of that could easily be washed away with a bad loss.

One wouldn’t think a loss on the road to an 8-3 Rutgers team could be considered a bad loss…but I would.

Let’s be honest here folks, Rutgers has played a soft schedule and has lost 3 games – one of which was to Syracuse!

They did manage to beat USF which is something that we didn’t do this year. USF looked completely uninterested in that game against Rutgers while they played the game of their lives against us.

Anyway, back to the numbers.

Sometimes the numbers don’t tell the entire story. In this case, it would appear that Rutgers has a stout rush defense given they rank 16th in the country and only give up 104 ypg.

But a deeper dive tells me that they may not be that stout. In their loss to Pitt, Dion Lewis rushed for 180 yards and 2 TD’s. Syracuse controlled the game clock 40+ minutes and rushed for 213 as a team (plus 3 scores).

Even pass happy UC ran for 168 and 3 TD’s against them.

Their offensive numbers are almost anemic checking in a 95th overall in the country. This sets up well for us considering how well our (finally healthy) defense has been playing recently.

With all of that said for some reason I have a bad feeling about this game.

1st off were coming off of our best win of the season.

2nd our bowl destination has been determined so we really have nothing at all to prove.

3rd we’ve beaten Rutgers 14 straight times – one has to think they are going to break that streak at some point, right?

Should we win? Yes. Will we win? I have no idea. All I know is that we had better be ready to take Rutgers best shot because they will show up ready to play.