Rutgers Football set to add two new faces to QB room this season
The Rutgers Scarlet Knights are all set to add two new faces to quarterback room this spring as true freshman Evan Simon and Baylor transfer Payton Powell enrolled this past month and started working out with the team.
On Wednesday afternoon, head coach Greg Schiano spoke to the media for the first time in about a month to discuss the late National Signing Day and along with his two new additions to the quarterbacks room.
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“I think it was very important,” Schiano stated in regards to keeping Simon committed. “It’s going to be interesting in this day of the transfer portal, of how many quarterbacks you are going to be able to actively keep on your roster. It’s no secret that it’s pretty much one, maybe two guys play. One of the things that is pretty cool that Sean Gleeson has done at other spots, is that other quarterbacks have played. I’m not hinting that is going to be the case here in anyway, I’m just saying that it has been done before by him.”
One of the late gets in the December period was Baylor transfer Peyton Powell. He was originally committed to Utah for a few months, but once Rutgers hired Fran Brown, it had the inside track to land him.
Brown recruited Powell to Baylor in the first place before he left to head back home to coach at Temple in Philadelphia, Pa. near his hometown of Camden, N.J.
“I know Peyton is capable of being a really fine quarterback, he’s a really fine receiver and he’s really good at a lot of things,” Schiano said. “We’ve discussed the opportunity for him to try and play quarterback and he is going to attempt that. Right now we don’t know what we have on our football team and I’ve never coached this team before, so really anything is up for grabs.”
The biggest issue with adding multiple quarterbacks in one class is that it makes it that much harder to keep others on board with your program, as Schiano pointed out with the new transfer portal in place.
“To keep quarterbacks on your roster is not going to be easy,” he said. “Because that portal makes it much easier for them to leave, more readily than it used to be. That’s going to be a challenge for every team going forward and you just have to managed that situation very well.”
Along with the two new faces at quarterback, Rutgers also added a new coach to that QB room this offseason in offensive coordinator Sean Gleeson. The New Jersey native, comes over after one season as the OC at Oklahoma State, and also spent a good amount of time at Princeton in various roles, including as a play-caller.
“He is just a tremendous football mind,” Schiano said back in January. “I’ve followed him for a while now. I didn’t know him, but I was talking to a lot of people who know him. It was kind of a little bit courtship, but we just got to know each other. And they had a bowl game to get ready for and stuff like that. At the end of the day he wanted to be back here in his home state and he believes in what we are doing. As the leader of our offense, I think he’s going to be tremendous. 100% fits my vision. If you look at the job that he’s done and a lot of you have written this, he’s been able to use the personnel that he’s had. That to me is a sign of a really good tactical coach. It’s one to say I’m a 4-3, 3-4, spread or pro. But how about what players do you have and I’m going to go into the room and utilize them and I think that’s what Sean has proved as a young dynamic coach.”
Stay tuned for more on Rutgers Football, as spring football is right around the corner!
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