Following the second scrimmage of spring, Rutgers football head coach Greg Schiano highlighted the overall emerging depth of his team. In particular, some intriguing names popping up at wide receiver is good news for the offense.
The fact that both players are true freshmen and in their first spring at Rutgers is certainly encouraging for the continued growth and development of the program.
Last season under Kirk Ciarrocca, the Rutgers offense took a big step forward developmentally. Ciarrocca’s return to Rutgers helped elevate what was one of the Big Ten’s worst offenses into a respectable unit that finished middle of the Big Ten in total offense.
Rutgers was led by a ground game that was among the best in the nation. If Schiano’s offense can start making plays with their wide receivers, then the team’s rebuild can take yet another step forward.
Wide receiver has consistently been a struggle for Rutgers to land talent. But this incoming freshman class could prove to be an important cycle for the program’s ability to land multiple wide receivers with the ability to make plays at the Big Ten level.
“I don’t know if they’re big time – how will we know if they’re going to be big time until they do it, right? But there’s some really talented young guys: Ben Black jumps off is really doing some good things. You know, KJ Duff, I think is really doing some things and he doesn’t look like a freshman out there,” Schiano told reporters on Saturday.
“So that’s good. We have a couple guys as you know, that are bumped up so they’re getting more repetitions. And then we just need to get (to) play bigger and stronger at the position and I think we’re starting to learn how to do that, you know, in the Big Ten there’s big DBs and there’s big nickels and big cover down linebackers and you got to be able to play strong. And it’s something that we didn’t always do at times. So we’re really working on doing that.”
From North Carolina, Black was ranked a three-star and the No. 26 recruit in North Carolina in the class of 2024. At the time he committed to Rutgers, Black had offers from Duke, Georgia Tech and UConn among others.
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Duff was a marquee recruit for Rutgers after being a dominant force in Long Island his final two seasons in high school.
He was a four-star recruit according to Rivals and On3 with offers from Miami, North Carolina, Syracuse and Tennessee among others.
