4/22/2022 football Edit

Rutgers Football Scarlet-White Spring Game: Who won the spring awards?

Chris Nalwasky • TheKnightReport

Beat Writer

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Rutgers football head coach Greg Schiano brought back the program's annual spring practice awards last season.

Last year, cornerback Robert Longerbeam won the Frank R. Burns Award, which is given to the player who displays extraordinary mental and physical toughness during spring practice. Offensive lineman Hollin Pierce took home the Mark Mills Second Effort Award, which given to the most improved offensive player, and linebacker Tyreem Powell received the Douglas A. Smith Award as the most improved defensive player.

Who won the awards this spring? Find out below.

Frank R. Burns Award: TE Matt Alaimo

Alaimo has played in 33 games throughout his career and has 18 receptions for 133 yards.

"Matt played this entire spring in a lot of pain but he knows he's going to have to have a procedure done at the end of the spring, and he'll be fine," head coach Greg Schiano said. "You know, probably somewhere middle of June back to normal. But he could do the spring with it, and it got worse as spring went on. But he's going to go get the procedure and he's going to be fine. And all he did was go out to practice every day and just give it up for this team. We were down, oh, at one point, well, tonight, we only had four tight ends on the roster. The rest of them were injured or recovering from injury.

"So there was a couple times when Matt laid out for catches and I didn't think he was going to get up, and he said, give me a minute and he got up and gave them a minute and he was okay. I knew he was in pain. But that's part of our game, right. There's a difference between playing with pain and playing with injury. If you're not going to hurt it worse, then you know you're going to need the procedure. Matt made the decision to help the team, and I thought that was really, really big of him and especially a guy who has got game experience. I mean, Matt's got a lot of snaps under his belt and he did it for the team."

Mark Mills Second Effort Award: OL Ireland Brown

Two years ago, Brown came over from Boston College and played at defensive tackle. Last season, he played in nine games with six starts at left guard on offense.

Ireland started the spring at guard. After four practices, we made the move to center," Schiano said. "We just thought that he had that kind of fast twitch, and he does. I mean, I think he can be as good as he wants to be. He really improved quite a bit. He did a good job the first four practices but from practice five on, he really picked it up. You know, centers, people kind of take it for granted, especially in a shotgun offense. They just take that snap for granted. Well, that's not the easiest thing in the world. If that's all you had to do, it's easy. But you have to snap it, and then you have to block somebody, and that other guy doesn't have to snap it. He just has to get off on ball. It's really a lot harder than people think. So you've really got to be a pretty good athlete to do it, and with he and Gus, I think we have some good depth at the position now."

Douglas A. Smith Award: LB Deion Jennings

Jennings has played in 34 games throughout his career and has made 65 total tackles including 27 solo with 6.5 for a loss and an interception.

"Deion is a really talented guy," Schiano said. "Deion had some bad luck with the injury. Then he needed the surgery, so he missed the whole spring, last spring. He's really made big improvement and I think he's a Big Ten linebacker, I do. I think he's going to have a really good season. We need all hands on deck. That room right now is light with the injuries. We are hopeful that Mo can come back but he may not be able to and we're preparing as if he's not and if he does, that's going to be great. So we're going to try to uncover every stone and see whether it's outside our program or even inside our program to make sure we have the ample linebacker depth to go compete for a whole Big Ten season. But Deion is definitely right in the middle of those plans and he's really made huge improvements in our 14 practices. I have no idea if he played well tonight or not. I didn't really watch him but he sure did have 14 good practices."