The college football world saw a shocker in Piscataway, New Jersey, on Thursday night as UMass, a team that finished 0-12 last year, absolutely crushed Big Ten Rutgers 37-21. This wasn’t some close call, either. UMass came into this game as a massive underdog, with Rutgers being favored by almost 30 points. If you thought you’d seen a worse loss already this college football season, you probably haven’t. This one sets a new bar for humiliation early on.
UMass Just Rewrote Their Own Sad History
Let’s talk about how truly wild this result is. The Minutemen were abysmal last season, going a pathetic 0-12. They were giving up an average of 39 points a game while only scoring 11. Go back to 2024, and they dropped their last four games that year, too. That’s a brutal 16-game losing streak they were dragging into this season. Their last victory? Way back in October of 2024, a 35-7 win over Wagner. To make it even clearer, their last four games of the 2025 season saw them outscored a mind-boggling 176-31. This is a MAC team, people, and they walked into a Big Ten school’s house before Labor Day and absolutely embarrassed them. You can talk about NIL and the transfer portal all you want, but this kind of turnaround, this kind of shocking upset, feels impossible. But it happened.
Rutgers’ Nightmare on the Home Field
For Rutgers coach Greg Schiano, this loss has to sting like crazy. He was looking for his 100th career win, a major milestone, but instead, he suffered arguably the worst loss of his entire coaching career. To pour salt in that wound, the guy leading UMass’s charge, coach Joe Harasymiak, was the defensive coordinator at Rutgers from 2022-24! Talk about a revenge game nobody saw coming. UMass QB William Watson III came out firing, throwing three touchdown passes, while Rutgers QB Dylan Lonergan imploded with three picks. That kind of stat line tells you everything you need to know about how this game went down. The Scarlet Knights couldn’t handle UMass, plain and simple.
The only sliver of good news for Rutgers came from wide receiver KJ Duff Jr., who had a monster night. He reeled in nine catches, three of them for touchdowns, and racked up nearly 200 yards. But even that phenomenal individual effort couldn’t save them from this historic upset.
What’s Next For the Scarlet Knights?
Rutgers has to somehow pick up the pieces from this absolute disaster. Their schedule certainly isn’t getting any easier either. They head to Boston College on September 11, then they’ve got to come home and face 14th-ranked USC in their Big Ten opener. How do you recover from a loss like this when you’ve got that kind of gauntlet ahead? This wasn’t just a loss; it was a public humiliation that the Scarlet Knights will be thinking about for a long, long time. This could define their entire season before it even really gets going.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Yahoo Sports.
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