PISCATAWAY -- Chris Ash had a decision to make this week with no correct answer. Because, when it comes to his starting quarterback, the Rutgers head coach had to choose between:

A) The experienced passer who has looked downright lousy this season;

B) The recent transfer who was converted to a wide receiver on his last team;

C) The talented true freshman who looks like he might snap into two after a big collision;

D) The strong-armed fan favorite who doesn't fit the system; or

E) The lightly recruited sophomore who at least gave the offense a pulse in the most recent performance.

Ash went with E. Gio Rescigno, who just last week was the scout team quarterback, will start for the Scarlet Knights on Saturday afternoon when they travel to Minnesota. He gives the fan base a glimmer of hope because, after scoring just two touchdowns in the previous four games, what does this team have to lose?

But the decision -- or, more to the point, the lack of a good option -- raises a much bigger question: How does a Big Ten program in a region teeming with high school football powerhouses and blue-chip recruits not have one decent quarterback? How did Rutgers get here?

The answer, according to people who follow recruiting on a local and national level, is multifaceted. They point to poor player evaluations from the previous coaching staff, an inability to get and/or keep commitments from top quarterback targets and a failure to develop the players they do get on campus.

Also, they note, it isn't just a quarterback problem. Every position has suffered from a series of lackluster recruiting classes under Ash's predecessor Kyle Flood -- look at the wide receivers, for example, where Rutgers always seemed to have NFL prospects catching passes. This position just gets all the attention.

"Fans don't look at a struggling team and say, 'If we had a better right guard we'd be running the ball better,'" said Brian Dohn, a national recruiting expert for Scout.com based in New Jersey. "It's always the quarterback. That's where fans find their hope."

It's just that, at Rutgers recently and in many seasons before now, they haven't found much.

Forever searching

Look around the other Big Ten programs -- if, that is, you're not faint of heart -- and you'll find that most have had at least one legendary quarterback wear its uniform over the years.

Purdue has Drew Brees. Maryland has Boomer Esiason. Nebraska has Tommie Frazier. Michigan has Tom Brady, and he isn't close to being the most successful quarterback to play for the Wolverines.

Rutgers, meanwhile, has always seemed to struggled to find a great player at the most important position on the field. Oh, the Scarlet Knights have had some good ones, like Mike Teel and Ray Lucas and Mike McMahon. But the truly great ones have played elsewhere.

In the current situation, Ash has long ago stopped looking for greatness. He just wants competence. The bar was on the ground: The new coach wanted a game manager who could get the ball to its playmakers and protect the football, but even that limited skill set is lacking in the program.

That's a failure in recruiting.

2013: Flood, like his predecessor Greg Schiano, was enamored with Chris Laviano, who he described as a "special football player" that Rutgers needed to "lead the program." Laviano had only one other scholarship offer from a major college program -- Boston College.

The following spring, Laviano was listed as one of five "co-starters" with Blake Rankin, Gary Nova, Mike Bimonte and Devin Ray. A year later, he was the only one from that group still on the roster.

2014: Flood had a commitment from Tyler Wiegers, a consensus four-star quarterback from Michigan. But the rocky 2013 season, which included a recruiting class mutiny amid speculation that Flood would be fired, led to Wiegers to de-commit and choose Iowa instead.

Needing to fill a spot in the recruiting class, he picked Giovanni Rescigno -- who didn't have a single scholarship offer just two weeks before signing day. He also added the player he believed would be his future starter: Philip Nelson, a transfer from Minnesota.

That hope was short lived. Nelson was kicked off the team after he was arrested and charged with assault after an ugly altercation in his native Minnesota. Flood, scrambling again, added another transfer: Hayden Rettig, who had fallen off the depth chart at LSU.

2015: Flood actually added a commitment from Michael Dare a year before signing day, convinced he was the best player in the class. Dare did not have any other offers. Another New Jersey quarterback, Brandon Wimbush, ended up at Notre Dame.

2016: Ash replaced Flood and tried, but failed, to convince top recruit Anthony Russo to stick with the program. He added Tylin Oden, the talented but raw freshman from Tennessee, and transfer Zach Allen out of TCU in mad scramble attempt to add depth to the position.

The end result: Rutgers is 122nd in the nation in passing offense despite implementing a new "power spread" system that was supposed to bring a high-octane style of football to Piscataway.

"We've tried a lot of different options at quarterback throughout the year," Ash said when he announced that Rescigno would start, "and if you've watched it closely, the results have not necessarily been any different."

The question now: When will those results change? Ash and his staff hopes the answer is in their next recruiting class.

The future found?

One day before his offense mustered just its second touchdown over a 12-quarter stretch in a loss to Illinois, offensive coordinator Drew Mehringer was in Jersey City to watch St. Peter's Prep upset No. 1 Bergen Catholic. If he could have thrown the winning quarterback in his trunk and smuggled him back to Piscataway, he probably would have.

"I can't let that happen yet," longtime St. Peter's coach Rich Hansen said with a laugh. "Not yet."

That quarterback, Johnathan Lewis, has made a verbal commitment to Rutgers. He completed 16 of 25 passes for 188 yards in the victory while rushing 19 times for 144 yards. He had six touchdowns, one in the air and five on the ground.

Hansen has come to expect performances like this every week from Lewis. But does he expect the quarterback, who had offers from Iowa, Boston College and Wake Forest, to finally be the answer in Piscataway?

"Who knows?" Hansen said. "I'll tell you this, Johnathan is going to work really hard, he has a really high ceiling and he loves the potential of the Rutgers offense."

Plenty of Rutgers fans are expecting just that. There is a danger here, of course, of expecting so much out of a teenager who hasn't even had his first college practice yet, much less his first game. But, when it comes to quarterbacks, that's where the Rutgers program finds itself.

Ash made a decision this week that had no right answer. The never-ending search for the quarterback in Piscataway grinds on.

LISTEN: Episode 5 of NJ.com's Rutgers Football podcast

Rebuilding Rutgers: From The Ashes takes you inside the new football regime. This episode is about Rutgers' attempt to catch up to the rest of the Big Ten in nutrition and conditioning.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.