Even now, even after leading the Big Ten in rushing last season, the kid from Rutgers who has been overlooked for way too long should no longer be.
RU watching Kyle Monangai?
You should be.
Ray Rice is.
“I love his style!” Rice told The Post. “He runs hard and always seems to fall forward on contact! I am glad he is with us and has remained loyal to Rutgers.”
RU watching Kyle Monangai?
Isiah Pacheco is.
“Kyle is a young man that works extremely hard for the team,” Pacheco told The Post. “He’s a team player, and is extremely strong in the weight room.”
Monangai, a local kid out of Don Bosco Prep, follows Super Bowl champ Pacheco who followed Rice. And now both of them follow him. And he is intent on following them to the NFL … thanks to Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano placing a bet when he returned to resurrect the program on a prospect who received only one other Power Five offer, from Cal Berkeley.
“I mean, I have been overlooked most of my career,” Monangai told The Post ahead of the Scarlet Knights’ opener Thursday night against Howard at SHI Stadium. “But it doesn’t bother me. It’s probably been mostly my stature, my size. The prototypical running back nowadays doesn’t look like me anymore. … It’s been like that since high school, even in college now. I was the Big Ten leading rusher last year and I feel like we were able to do some good things, but still people overlook us as a group, as a unit.
“It’s just a chip that we have on our shoulder that makes us go harder and makes us hungry to prove people wrong.”
Monangai will be carrying his chip on the shoulders of a 5-foot-9, 209-pound frame that immediately brings Rice to mind.
“To me, that’s a blessing and an honor to even be mentioned in the same sentence as Ray,” Monangai said.
Monangai had an up-close-and-personal view of Pacheco in 2021.
“Just seeing his success, it just pushes me,” Monangai said.
No one runs with more anger than Pacheco.
“We see the field a little differently, but I think one thing we have in common is the toughness and like the anger and power in which we run,” Monangai said. “You gotta play angry a little bit just ’cause I’m not the biggest guy on the field so I gotta be the one delivering the blow more than the other guy.”
Monangai rushed fleetingly into the Heisman conversation during a 1,262-yard, eight-touchdown junior season when he averaged 5.2 yards per carry and carried Rutgers (7-6) to a 31-24 Pinstripe Bowl win over Miami (Fla.) with a 163-yard onslaught.
“I think I have the ability to get those gritty 3-, 4-, 5-yard gains, but also can make those home run hits as well,” Monangai said.
The game has slowed down dramatically for him.
“I think I’m more poised on the field and I allow myself the best chance to see things before they happen and then when I can anticipate it, I’m able to just be explosive and let my natural God-given ability take over,” he said.
God gave him plenty of ability.
“We would watch NFL games and he’d be like, ‘Mom, when I grow up I’m gonna be able to do that,’ ” Gwendolyn Monangai said.
It didn’t mean that Gwendolyn and William Monangai were gung-ho about Kyle and older brother Kevin, who played running back at Seton Hall Prep and Villanova, participating in the sport.
“We think American football is a gladiator sport,” Gwendolyn, a native of Cameroon, said with a laugh. “We were totally reticent about them playing.”
Into each life some rain must fall, and when Kyle was 5, Gwendolyn fractured her neck in a freak accident lifting weights at home.
“It was a terrible time because I did not know whether I would be paralyzed after the surgery,” she said.
Kyle: “We didn’t know if she was gonna make it or not.”
Thankfully, she made it. When Kyle was 9, Gwendolyn lost her job as a pharmaceutical sales rep.
“We had to cut back on some things that I know my parents probably didn’t want to cut back on, but they knew it was a necessary evil to allow us to maintain,” Kyle said.
Sounds like Kyle persevered.
“Now you can spend all the time with me that I need you to be here, and you can take me places,” he told her.
Gwendolyn and William and Kevin, 31, and Kathy, 28, will be at the opener beaming with pride at the football player, No. 5 on your scorecard, and the man.
“The success has not changed him,” Gwendolyn said.
It’s helped change Rutgers football.
