Rutgers Football continues to focus on size along OL with latest class
With the CHOP22 class signed and ready to go for Rutgers Football, the staff’s focus will now shift more towards the transfer portal and the CHOP23 class, which currently features one verbal commit in offensive lineman Jasire Peterson.
Peterson committed to the program back in January of 2021 and since then Rutgers has added seven other offensive line recruits in the 2022 class. This caught the attention of our staff and brought up an interesting topic about Greg Schiano and his staff’s strategy to get bigger in the trenches.
"But at the end of it all, we needed to go out and recruit and continue to recruit offensive linemen," Schiano said in his post signing day presser. "The linemen that we brought in, you mentioned it, are all very big, are athletic. Yet it's a position that's very hard to come in and play right away. I don't care how readymade you think you are. For every Anthony Davis that starts as a freshman, there's a lot more who don't."
TKR decided to look at the average height and weight of offensive line recruits for Rutgers Football dating back the 2014 recruiting cycle.
2014 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-6, 305-pounds
(Zach Heeman, Jaquis Webb, Tariq Cole, Marcus Applefield)
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2015 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-5, 278-pounds
(Jonah Jackson, Jack Shutack, Manny Taylor, Zach Venesky)
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2016 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-5, 278-pounds
(Sam Howson, Nick Krimin, Mike Lonsdorf, Michael Maietti)
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2017 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-4, 273-pounds
(Jamaal Beatty, Owen Bowles, Micah Clark, Samuel Vretman)
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2018 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-5, 270-pounds
(Raiqwon O’Neal, Matt Rosso, Reggie Sutton)
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2019 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-5, 295-pounds
(Omari Cooper, CJ Hanson, Anton Oskarsson)
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2020 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-5, 299-pounds
(Tunde Fatukasi, Bryan Felter, Kamar Missouri, Cedrice Paillant, Hollin Pierce, Troy Rainey, Isaiah Wright)
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2021 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-4, 270-pounds
(Tyler Needham, Kevin Toth, Gus Zilinskas)
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2022 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-6, 311-pounds
(Jacob Allen, Kobe Asamoah, Dantae Chin, Joe De Croce, Nelson Monegro, Emir Stinette, Taj White)
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2023 AVG SIZE: 6-foot-5, 270-pounds
(Jasire Peterson)
RIVALS REACTION….
It’s clear as day that the staff wants to get bigger up front and they’ve been doing just that. Since Schiano took over again, the average numbers are up in general in terms of size and we’ve seen some solid improvements from certain guys over the past two seasons as well. This past recruiting class is going to be a big one for the staff as they added some much needed size and even if they can hit on only a couple of the seven incoming offensive linemen, it could drastically help the rebuilding process.
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