Rutgers falls 37-21 to 29.5-point underdog UMass
Dylan Lonergan's debut opened with a touchdown and ended on the bench, Travis Johansen's defense allowed 24 points in a half, and now Rutgers heads to Boston College to face the program its new quarterback just left.
Lonergan's debut opened with a touchdown and ended on the bench
Dylan Lonergan got the debut everyone in Piscataway wanted for about a quarter. He hit KJ Duff for a touchdown to put Rutgers up 7-0, and RFootball's own account posted the throw with the caption "Dylan to Duff! Lonergan throws his first touchdown as a Scarlet Knight!" It was the last time all night the Scarlet Knights led anything.
Massachusetts21-37UMass scored 30 unanswered points from there, and Lonergan finished 16 of 29 for 242 yards and 2 touchdowns against 4 interceptions and a lost fumble, per ESPN. He didn't finish the game either — Greg Schiano said afterward that Lonergan was lifted in the 4th quarter with an undisclosed injury, with AJ Surace, the man he beat out for the job in August, closing it out at quarterback.
Dylan to Duff! Lonergan throws his first touchdown as a Scarlet Knight! 7-0 Scarlet Knights 🪓 t.co/1fLL6T1ZNV
Schiano didn't look for anywhere else to point the finger. "We got out-licked, outplayed and out-coached. There is no other way to say it. I didn't have them ready," he told reporters, per ESPN. Dave Portnoy, who'd bet big on the game, apologized to Rutgers fans afterward — and Schiano did not rule Lonergan out of the trip to Boston College on September 11, which happens to be the program Lonergan transferred in from.
Johansen's defense lasted less than 27 minutes before the alarm went off
Travis Johansen's first game as Rutgers' defensive coordinator was supposed to be the proof that eight months of rebuilding meant something. Instead, ESPN's Adam Rittenberg posted midway through the second quarter that "Rutgers has allowed 24 points, 12 first downs and 228 yards to UMass in less than 27 minutes," and it only got worse from there — UMass quarterback Pop Watson finished 18 of 22 for 197 yards and 3 touchdowns against a Rutgers defense that had 10 new faces on it.
Rutgers hired Johansen off a South Dakota staff that ran 6 top-10 defenses over 14 seasons as a coordinator, per the university's own announcement of the hire, before he went 10-5 as the Coyotes' head coach a year ago. None of that showed up against a UMass team that had gone 0-12 the year before, and Johansen now gets a Boston College offense that is 0-0 this season to try to make that résumé mean something.
Rutgers is already the lone loser in a Big Ten that's 3-0 elsewhere
One week into the season, the Big Ten teams on Rutgers' own conference table are a combined 3-0 without them: Illinois, Minnesota and USC all opened 1-0, and the Scarlet Knights sit alone at 0-1. It's a single data point in September, but it's the only one anybody has right now, and it puts Rutgers behind before conference play has even started.
USC is the name worth watching on that list — the Trojans have run their record to 2-0 with a 39-0 win over Fresno State since, and arrive at SHI Stadium on September 19 as the class of the group so far. Rutgers has 2 non-conference games to find itself before that one counts for anything in the Big Ten column.
Lonergan goes back to the Heights for a Friday night that isn't just about football
Rutgers plays Friday night at Boston College, and the matchup carries more than the usual road-trip weight: it's the Red Bandanna Game, being played on the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, and it's Dylan Lonergan's first trip back to the program he transferred out of last winter. Bill O'Brien has spent the offseason rebuilding around him — Boston College brought in 28 transfers and 24 freshmen after losing roughly 30 players to the portal, with O'Brien telling reporters he doesn't want to "live in the world of bringing in 20+ transfers every year," per SI.com.
Boston College hasn't played its 2026 opener yet, so the only form on the board is last season's, when the Eagles closed with a 34-12 win at Syracuse — their lone ACC win of 2025. DraftKings hasn't priced this one yet, which leaves Rutgers to answer the UMass game with actual football instead of a number, in front of a crowd that will be watching for more than the score.