He left the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium after the Pinstripe Bowl with his headphones on and his head down, and it was hard not to wonder: Is this the way Savon Huggins will make his exit from Rutgers football?

Because his arrival was something else entirely – head to the sky, smile on his face, the possibilities endless. No player had ever come to Rutgers with a more impressive pedigree. Few have ever turned down more opportunities to play at bigger, more established programs.

Huggins wanted to blaze his own path. He wanted to build his own legacy in Piscataway. But three years and just 842 yards later, Huggins is a cautionary tale about the downside of a big-time recruit trying to be something more than another football player, and what can happen when those stars next to his name don’t match his production on the field.

The St. Peter’s Prep star failed to establish himself as a starter, much less a savior, often looking as if he was running with the weight of those big expectations on his shoulders. He will now consider transferring from the program, according to his father Wendell, with just one year of eligibility remaining.

“What’re you going to do? It would frustrate anybody,” Wendell Huggins said over the phone. “We’re going to have to sit down with (head coach) Kyle (Flood) and see what direction they want to go with him – if there is a direction.

“He’s been a trooper. He had multiple options and decided to stay here. The gratuity for making that decision has been nonexistent.”

Huggins Sr. said he is angry about what he called “a non-nurturing experience at Rutgers,” and a failure to develop a bigger role for his son in the Rutgers offense. Huggins had 119 carries as a sophomore but just 86 this season when the job was wide open at the start of summer camp.

To say he didn’t get a chance, however, isn’t fair. Huggins and sophomore Paul James entered the season co-starters, but it was James – who was the nation’s leading rusher early in the season before an injury sent him to the sidelines – who seized the opportunity.

Huggins went from a back-up to an afterthought. He had just 12 carries in the last four games, including two in the Pinstripe Bowl loss to Notre Dame. Wendell Huggins watched from the stands in the Bronx knowing that his son had passed up a chance to play for the Fighting Irish.

“People were saying, ‘Your son could be playing against us right now,’” Wendell Huggins said. “Instead, he was on the sideline, just standing there. I could just shake my head.”

Flood said he had not yet spoken to Huggins or his family, but that this wasn’t unusual with the holiday break and time away from school. He said it would be naïve to think players wouldn’t transfer during the winter for “a friendlier depth chart.”

The five stars that Huggins had from recruiting services, Flood said, meant little once he arrived on campus. “I’ve said before: The way a player gets recruited has no bearing on when a player gets here,” Flood said. “When the player gets here, it’s about production.”

Still, it’s never good for recruiting for a high-profile local player to fail to live up to those expectations. If Huggins does decide to transfer, it’ll be another question that Flood will have to answer during what already has been a difficult few months for his program.

But mostly, it would be a sad moment for the player. Huggins carried himself like a leader from the moment he arrived at Rutgers. He wanted to blaze his own path, and he wanted to do it in Piscataway. He was, in so many ways, the player Rutgers would have wanted as the face of its program.

"I always felt like I wanted to start a trend, start something new," Huggins told me for an Inside Jersey magazine cover story in 2011. "That's why I chose Rutgers: to start something."

Now, three years later, his time at Rutgers might be nearing the end. Head down, headphones on, this was the finish nobody wanted to see.