UMass just walked into SHI Stadium as a 29-and-a-half-point underdog, took Rutgers’ $1.55 million guarantee, and left with a 37-21 win that snapped a 16-game losing streak. I have covered enough Week 1 mismatches to separate a fluky opener from a full institutional failure. Thursday night in Piscataway was the second one, and Greg Schiano already wrote the indictment for me.
“We got outlicked, outplayed and outcoached,” Schiano said. “There is no other way to say it. I didn’t have them ready.”
That is not spin. That is a head coach staring at his own product after his former defensive coordinator came home and lit the place up. Joe Harasymiak spent three seasons running Rutgers’ defense. He grew up an hour from that stadium. His parents and brothers sat in the stands while Rutgers, a Big Ten program that paid for the privilege of this game, rolled over for a team that entered 0-9 all-time against the conference and had not beaten an FBS opponent since Army in 2023.
Schiano Handed Them the Blueprint and the Check
I have watched Schiano rebuild, leave, return, and sell toughness as the brand. I watched his teams grind. I also watched last year’s defense bleed 30-plus points in eight of 12 games, and nothing about Thursday said the problem left with the calendar. Rutgers managed 30 rushing yards. New quarterback Dylan Lonergan threw for 242 yards and two scores and still coughed the ball up three times through the air plus a fumble. KJ Duff was the only grown-up on that side of the ball, hauling in three touchdowns, and it still was not enough because the rest of the operation quit competing after the opening drive.
UMass scored 30 unanswered after trailing 7-0. First halftime lead against a power conference school since Mississippi State in 2017. Largest win by a 29-plus-point underdog since Texas State took down Houston in 2012. Those are not moral victories. Those are evidence that Rutgers showed up soft in a building it owns, against a program that finished 0-12 a year ago and ranked dead last in scoring.
Harasymiak did not gloat. He talked about FaceTiming his wife and kids and how special it felt to have his parents there. Then he said the part that should rattle every Rutgers booster still clutching last year’s talking points: “It’s going to change around here. I believed in it from the beginning. Just glad we were able to show it tonight.”
He showed it on Schiano’s field, with Schiano’s old defensive DNA turned against him, after Rutgers cut the check.
Pop Watson Ran the Whole Operation
Let me tell you something about William “Pop” Watson III. The Virginia Tech transfer completed 19 of 22 passes for 197 yards and three touchdowns. He added 40 yards on the ground. He scattered those completions to eight different receivers and led UMass to scores on seven of ten drives. Elijah Faulkner caught two of the touchdowns. Joseph Griffin Jr. took the other. Curtis Kimmons IV ripped off a 17-yard scoring run. The Minutemen piled up 200 rushing yards and nearly 400 total. The defense forced four turnovers, including a pair of interceptions from Jahmad Harmon.
That is not a lucky bounce or a blocked punt deciding a close game. That is a complete performance from a program people treated like a scheduled donation. Rutgers launched the postgame fireworks after most of the 42,454 had already filed out. I cannot invent a better visual for what this night was.
Schiano kept reaching for the same confession. He said he never saw it coming. He said he thought they had a great training camp. He said he is in charge of the coaches and the players and they laid an egg on opening night. I have heard versions of that speech for years from coaches who confuse effort talk with actual preparation. When your former coordinator beats you by 16 at home with a roster that had not won an FBS game in nearly three calendar years, the problem is not surprise. The problem is standards.
Legacy Does Not Care About Guarantees
Rutgers wanted a soft open and a comfortable win to build confidence before Boston College. What it got was a program-defining embarrassment that will follow Schiano into every press conference this September. Power programs do not pay Group of Five teams seven figures to get outcoached, outplayed, and left watching their own fireworks over empty seats. That is an affront to what it means to call yourself a Big Ten outfit with serious ambitions.
UMass still has to prove this was more than one electric night. Sacred Heart is next, and the schedule will get harder. But Harasymiak already did something his predecessor never managed: he made people take the Minutemen seriously for three hours and forced a Power program to answer for its own softness. Watson looked like a quarterback who belongs. The defense hunted. The whole operation played like a team that had been told for months it was allowed to win.
I said the losing streak would end eventually. I did not say it would end like this, with Rutgers footing the bill and Schiano delivering the guilty plea in real time. Sixteen straight losses are over. The questions hanging over Piscataway are just getting started. Rutgers has a run game to fix, a quarterback already dinged, and a coach who admitted he did not have his team ready on the night that was supposed to be automatic. UMass has a win, a paycheck, and proof that believing in the thing can still look like 37-21 on the road against a favorite that forgot how to play.
