Rutgers Football's Offense Seeking Big Year for 2025 Season
It’s been a little over two years now since Rutgers Football brought back a former assistant coach in current Offensive Coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca, and in those two years, he’s completely revamped the offense.
In his first year with the program, he helped the Scarlet Knights go from averaging a lowly 17.4 points per game in 2022 and brought that number up to 23.2 in 2023, in just one season.
A year later, the offense took another jump as they went on to average 28.9 points per game, including scoring 30+ points in each of their last four games.
With the offense set to return eight of their 11 starters from last season and bringing in several key transfers, this year’s unit should have a good shot of increasing those numbers again this year.
“Really, I’m indebted to them,” Head Coach Greg Schiano said of his coaching staff. “They do an unbelievable job. Kirk Ciarrocca, who’s our offensive coordinator, is now going into his third season and has done an unbelievable job leading our offensive staff.”
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One of the keys to having a successful offense is great quarterback play, and prior to the 2024 season, Ciarrocca brought in quarterback Athan Kaliakmanis from Minnesota via the Transfer Portal. The two reconnected as though they had never left one another.
“It’s our communication,” Kaliakmanis said of his bond with Ciarrocca. “When we communicate, we are honest with each other. Whether that’s in the film room or on the field, I’m always asking questions because I want to pick his brain. He’s so knowledgeable about the game. I think that’s what helped me become on the same page as him, and you saw that kind of growth from me last year.”
This past year, Kaliakmanis had his best season yet, throwing for 2,696 yards and 18 touchdowns, while also rushing for three more scores. Despite all that and the seven wins, he still feels as though it isn’t enough.
“I feel like last season left a bad taste in our mouths,” said Kaliakmanis. “We want to be better, and it’s not because of how it ended in the bowl game. It was just never enough, the standard is the standard and those standards are high at Rutgers. We feel like we just have to be better and we’ve been working really hard this offseason. We’ve been getting together, all of us and just working on being the best that we could possibly be.”
Along with Kaliakmanis, the Scarlet Knights also have one of their better wide receiver rooms in a long time, and it’s led by Ian Strong, who finished with 676 yards and five touchdowns last season.
However there are some other names there to watch as well.
“I think DT (is a name to know),” said Strong. “He’s new to the room, but he took that leadership role on bringing the young guys along. There’s KJ Duff, of course, Ben Black, and we’re just trying to get some of the young guys in there to get ready for the season.”
No Kirk Ciarrocca offense is complete without a potent run game, as the Rutgers Football offense under him has run the ball more than 60% of the time. However this year, they have several different faces in the backfield, as former leading rusher Kyle Monangai is now in the NFL.
“Kyle was special, he was really special,” Kaliakmanis said. “I’ve had the pleasure of playing with a lot of great running backs in college and I have to say that our running back room never misses a beat. You know we got CJ (Campbell), Benji (Ja’shon Benjamin) and Antwan (Raymond). I mean these guys could really play and you saw a sneak peak of that in the bowl game with the two younger backs.”
On paper, the Scarlet Knights have one of the better offenses that they’ve had in recent history, but only time will tell if that translates to the field or not.
