12/16/2020 football Edit

Rutgers Football adds 23 new signees, Schiano high on 2021 class

Richie O'Leary • TheKnightReport

Publisher

On Wednesday afternoon, Rutgers Football announced the signing of a 23-member recruiting class for the 2021 recruiting cycle on the first day of the Early Signing Period.

The CHOP21 class comes from all over the country, however the majority still come from here inside the garden state, as 10 signees hail from New Jersey. Along with those 10, they are joined by four prospects from Florida, three from Ohio, two from Pennsylvania and one each from Colorado, Maryland, Illinois and Virginia.

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This was head coach Greg Schiano’s first full recruiting cycle since he rejoined the program back in December 2019 and he was pretty excited about the pieces he added.

"Certainly a different year when you have National Signing Day that amounts to a Wednesday / Thursday on game week, but everything came off smoothly this morning,” Schiano said in his Wednesday WebEx call with media. “We are thrilled with the class we were able to sign today. Just another step in the right direction for building this program into what I think we all want it to be. The 2021 recruiting class featured a lot of prospects that can play multiple positions at the next level and that was by no mistake."

Schiano went back to what worked his first time around with this class, as he hit the state of Florida for a couple of recruits once again. The Scarlet Knights added Kansas State transfer wide receiver / kick returner Joshua Youngblood and linebacker Austin Dean, both of whom played their high school ball at Berkeley Prep, the same school that current Rutgers defensive lineman Mayan Ahanotu played for.

Now it's no mistake that all these players from Berkeley Prep ended up at Rutgers, as coach Schiano is very familiar with from his days following stint in the NFL.

“That is a program that is very similar to ours,” said Coach Schiano. “I think that’s a reason why Berkeley Prep players like to come here and I think that’s why coach (Dominick) Ciao and I hit it off so well. His program is run very much like ours, it’s a family and he cares deeply about his players. Now he’s no softee cakes, he’s old school and they know he loves them and I think our program is the same way.”

Schiano and crew decided to put a big emphasis on adding even more defensive linemen to the program with this class, as they currently have five, possibly six signees who could end up in the trenches at some point in their career.

Coach Schiano pointed out how important it is to have defensive linemen in every single recruiting cycle.

“I think the defensive line is the most important position in your program other than quarterback,” Coach Schiano stated. “If you have a tough defensive line, it makes your entire program tough. It makes your O-Line tougher, which in turns when you have good OL / DL battles, it makes your running backs tougher and makes your linebackers tougher. Everything stems based off of that defensive line, so I consider it a must to recruit defensive linemen every year. Remember we have four guys, it’s a four down scheme, even though it’s a hybrid four down, it’s four down guys with that kind of body type and you have to replenish that. Every once in a while a defensive linemen might go and move over to the O-Line if he has that kind of skillset. So I think there’s a lot to that position flexibility when you get the right guys in your program and big people are hard to find, big people that can move are really hard to find. So when you get one that you think is a cultural fit, you have to go as hard as you can and coach Panagos has done a really good job here.”

Despite the defensive line arguably being the deepest unit in this Rutgers Football 2021 class, the two second deepest unit is probably the defensive backs and the Scarlet Knights added two highly touted ones in Alijah Clark and Desmond Igbinosun. Both of which could make an early impact in their Scarlet Knights careers.

“Alijah Clark is what I think of as an elite level defensive back out of Camden,” said Schiano. “I’ve really enjoyed getting to know him and bringing him into the family. Desmond Igbinosun is really an elite player out of Union. We got a Union pipeline going and that is pretty exciting.”

As TKR mentioned before this class only has 23 total signees, meaning that there is some room for Rutgers to add some more help before the next signing period in February.

"I’m not going to get into ever giving up a recruiting advantage whether that be recruiting or football, but we will never stop recruiting,” said Schiano in response to if they would add more guys in February. “I’m not going to let anyone know what we have left or if we have any spots left. That’s always something that I keep very private, but long thing short, we are always looking to improve our roster. It’s got to be guys that are a cultural fit, an academic fit and certainly guys that are a football fit.”