I thought it wold be interesting to compare Schiano 2.0 vs Edsall 2.0. Schiano is in year 2 while Edsall was in year 5 (including the COVID year).
In the 4 years before each took over, their respective teams did not have a winning record:
Rutgers: 2-10, 4-8, 1-11, 2-10
UConn: 3-9, 2-10, 6-7, 3-9
Record for their 2.0:
Schiano: 3-6, 3-0
Edsall: 3-9, 1-11. 2-10, 0-2
Rutgers plays a tougher schedule being in the Big 10 than UConn, so you would expect Rutgers to take longer to turnaround, but it seems like Schiano has made Rutgers respectable pretty quickly. (Don't get me wrong, I don't think Rutgers will ever compete for a Big 10 title under Schiano.) What are the differences that are easily identifiable?
1) Rutgers pays more money to assistant coaches than UConn. Schiano held out for more money for his assistants before he agreed to become Rutgers head coach. For example, Rutgers OC makes $805k and was an experienced OC when hired. UConn's OC makes $310k and had no OC experience before being named OC.
2) Not only does Rutgers pay more for assistant coaches, they have a significantly larger football support staff. Looking at the listed support staff, which could understate or overstate the numbers for each school, Rutgers employs 66 support staff and UConn employs 13.
3) Schiano had more recent and relevant college coaching experience. Schiano was DC at Ohio State for 3 years under Urban Meyer, one of the best college coaches in recent years. He learned what the top coaches/programs do to be successful. And, he saw what state of the art offenses and defenses were doing.
4) It seems Schiano inherited a better and more experienced roster than Edsall. When you look at the offensive and defensive starters at Rutgers this year, all of them are Juniors, Seniors, or Grads. Although a few of them are from the transfer portal, almost all were inherited from the previous coach. In contrast, UConn has 2 Juniors/Seniors/Grads starting on offense and 7 on defense. On the 2 deep roster, Rutgers has 12 FR and SO and UConn has 27 FR and SO. Rutgers has 49 Juniors/Seniors/Grads on the roster and UConn has 20.
5) Schiano was more willing to take advantage of the transfer portal than Edsall. His first year, he took in 10 from the portal including the current starting QB. But, similar to Edsall, Schiano lost a large number of players to the portal: 10 in year 1 (5 more left right before he was hired), 17 in year 2, and 3 so far this year. Also similar to UConn, only 2 of Rutgers outbound transfers have ended up at a P5 school.
I don't think UConn needs to or should replicate the Rutgers approach under Schiano 2.0, as I think there are many examples of hiring program building coaches with fewer resources. And, I do think Edsall was doing a pretty good job of bringing young talent to UConn, but the talent is still very young. No program is going to be that successful with only 20 Juniors/Seniors/Grads on the roster. That said, it does not appear that Edsall brought in a program changing QB yet. I do expect the young players to get better as the season progresses and if the new head coach can keep the core talent, the cupboard is not bare.
The next head coach will inherit a better roster than Edsall, in my opinion, and it will still be relatively young. I think the next head coach has to have experience developing young QBs and if he thinks he needs to, bring in a talented transfer QB from the portal. I'm not a big fan of bringing in a large number of transfers, but I think the next head coach should bring in more transfers than Edsall did to improve talent, depth, and experience. And, the university has to support the new head coach by providing enough money to hire talented assistant coaches.
