Rutgers Football LB Onyechi is back, has eyes on sack record

After missing all of last season due to suspension, linebacker CJ Onyechi is back with the Rutgers Football program this season and is ready to get back to work.

Onyechi was one of eight football players charged in a credit card scheme last season and only one of four players who still remain on the team after the fallout.

The Knight Report sat down with Onyechi to talk about his return, some of his goals this season and much more.

“It definitely feels good to be back,” Onyechi told TKR. “It’s now been a year and I’ve definitely missed out on being with the team. I just love being back and I’m ready to do some work this year.

“It was a little hard for me at first. However we all learn from everything we do and learn a lot as we go through life. I think I learned a lot and now that I’m with the team again, I feel more beneficial towards them. I’ve learned a lot and grown in the last year.”

Although Onyechi missed the entire last season, he picked up right where he left off and is already running with the second team JACK linebackers.

“I’ve been ready,” said Onyechi. “I felt like I was always ready to take on a role like this. Right now I’m just trying to keep up, learn everything I have to do so we as a whole can be successful this season.”

This offseason the JACK linebackers group also received a pleasant surprise, as a familiar face in Vince Okruch took over as the main assistant coach for the group.

“Coach Okruch is a great guy,” he said. “He is a little old school in the way that he coaches and I think that’s what the Jack position needed. We’ve been through a couple coaches over the past couple of years and I feel Okruch is really grounding us with the right tools to be successful.”

After the team went 1-11 last season, a lot of guys in the locker room are amped up to prove the naysayers wrong. Onyechi is one of those players and he thinks that Rutgers will surprise some people this season.

“The culture we have in our locker room right now is the best I’ve seen since I arrived at Rutgers,” Onyechi said. “We are all tired of the notion that Rutgers can’t be great. We are in the best state in America, we do exactly what every other program does, and we should be able to win. That’s the energy that goes around the locker room and I feel like this year, we are going to shock a lot of people.”

Back in the year 1974, Rutgers Football defensive lineman Nate Toran set the single season sack record of 19 total sacks in one season. CJ Onyechi has a goal in mind for the 2019 season and he is aiming to take down Toran’s record.

“Our goal as a unit is to always be getting to the quarterback,” stated Onyechi. “My personal goal is to be that Rutgers record of sacks in one season at 19. That’s the goal I set in my head and I think if I put my mind to it, I can do it.”