A Rutgers team hasn't played a game this poorly since the Terry Shea era. At least in those days only 30 or 35 thousand people witnessed the ineptitude known as Rutgers football on fall Saturdays. Yesterday 53,737 fans in attendance and many more on ESPN were treated to a flashback of sorts to a bygone era of Rutgers football including many of the same bumbling plays, missed assignments, blown coverages and poor decisions that have not been seen since the Clinton administration. What I saw was a team that was clearly outmatched and unprepared playing against a very well prepared opponent:

Natale: I thought the first few QB checks to the sideline were somehow ploys to confuse the Cincinnati defense. However, after 10 or 12 times of seeing Natale back off the snap and shrug his shoulders to the sideline with less then 10 seconds on the play clock, I realized that he really didn't know what play he was supposed to be running. The scary thing is that the 5th year senior didn't have the presence of mind to call a time out to reset the offense or at least to get his head back into the right place.

Tony Pike: I don't know what I was more shocked about. How easily Tony Pike picked apart the defense or the complete lack of any defensive adjustments made at halftime. What we did see is what any good QB does against a blitzing defense with short, underneath passing into space. What we didn't see was what any good coaching staff should to do at half time when facing an intelligent QB like Pike.

Brian Kelly: Can we all agree at least for now, that he is the best coach in the Big East. He does the most with his given talent and that of his players then anyone else in the league and maybe in the country.

The Bottom Line: I can't possibly believe that what we saw last night is the reality of the Rutgers 2009 defense with all its talent and depth. What I can believe is that the QB that gives Rutgers the "best chance to win" against Howard played the entire second half last night. End the drama tomorrow Coach and get this team prepared for Saturday.

It’s was September 1, 2007…That was the last time Demetrius Jones stepped onto the gridiron to play in an any kind of a meaningful game. That was the day that Notre Dame coach Charlie Weiss tabbed the sophomore Jones to fill the shoes of the all everything QB Brady Quinn to start the 2007 season opener versus Georgia Tech. Following the loss to the Yellow Jackets where he was benched in favor of super freshman Jimmy Clausen and a loss at Happy Valley the following week, Jones was an inexcusable no show on the team bus to Ann Arbor on September 14th. It was clear that following his losing the starting job to Clausen, and the quickly unraveling Fighting Irish season, he was weighing his options.

He was first rumored to be attending Northern Illinois, a short drive from his hometown of Chicago, but in late September the former Parade All American walked into Brian Kelly’s office at the University of Cincinnati and told him that he wanted to be a bearcat. That day turned out to be the first day of the rest of his life. From the moment Jones stepped onto the UC campus he was tabbed as the future QB of the bearcat offense. Sitting out the mandatory one year per NCAA rules, Jones walked into 2008 camp as the expected starting QB. Little did he know what would take place next, the QB carousel that was Cincinnati football 2008, where from three different starters emerged the unlikely hero 6-6 Tony Pike. T

hrough the entire 2008 season, Jones did not play a single down at QB as he watched Pike from the sidelines. Down but surely not out, the 6-3 210 lb Jones thought long and hard about his next move. It was this past Spring that Kelly, fresh off of losing 10 starters on defense, approached Jones about making a switch to the other side of the ball. Demetrius, reluctantly at first agreed to try LB. Slowly but surely, Jones began buying into what Kelly was selling. “There’s no question that he’s got to (buy in),” Kelly said, “and he struggled with it, even during the summer at times. He’d go home and people would tell him, what are you doing? You’re a quarterback. But I think he’s pretty settled into the idea that that’s his position. I knew when he came back from after summer workouts that he was all in.” After committing to Kelly to becoming a full time LB entering training camp in August, Jones surprised many with his rapid ascent up the depth chart culminating with him being named a starter last week for the Rutgers opener. “You always hope for the best and adjust instead of the other way around. We saw signs of it in the spring that if we could just continue to get him to progress he was going to be a great player for us.” says Kelly.

Since it’s a fairly slow day for Rutgers football news, it’s a good time to take a quick peak into Cincinnati’s training camp. No doubt there is big play potential for the potent Tony Pike lead offense. The senior QB’s appears to have picked up in camp where he left off in 2008 where he threw for 2,407 yards and 19 TD’s. At today’s Media Day, the always affable Coach Brian Kelly had this to say about the performance of his offensive unit in camp. “One of the things that has come out of camp is that we can get big-chunk plays with the offense we have….more than the last couple of years.” Although there are ten gaping holes that need to be filled in the Bearcat defense going into camp, defensive backs coach Kerry Coombs seems very encouraged by what he’s seen so far. “It’s much deeper…Just like today when you’ve got a corner running off on a deep long ball, rather than have him go to the line of scrimmage and play another snap at maybe 90 percent, we can bring a guy off the sideline at 100 percent. We have enough guys to do that.” So far no real surprises at Kelly Camp as this offense appears primed and ready to pick up where it left off in 2008 (with the exception of the Orange Bowl of course). Only time will tell with this defense though as it tries to replace three first team all Big east Performers from a year ago.