PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Lessons learned as a former quarterback now guide Drew Lascari on the defensive side of the ball. Lascari, set to enter his third season as the safeties coach at Rutgers, has a unique perspective that he brings to his position.
It is a perspective formed from years of seeing the safety as the enemy. And now at Rutgers, Lascari’s time as a high school and college quarterback is paying dividends for his position group.
Lascari has been at Rutgers since 2018 where he started as special teams quality control. In 2019, he was elevated to quarterbacks coach following the in-season dismissal of then-head coach Chris Ash and the subsequent shakeup of the team’s coaching staff.
But since the return of head coach [autotag]Greg Schiano[/autotag] in 2020, Lascari has been on the defensive side of the ball. First, he spent two years as a defensive assistant and now is in his third season as the safeties coach.
“What’s wild now is this is going to be my fifth season now on the defensive side of the ball. It feels like it just happened yesterday,” Lascari said on Thursday.
“But I think for me, there was certainly some a bit of a learning curve for me initially, just because I spent most of my career on the other side of the ball up to that point. But I do think that my background on offense does give me a unique opportunity to see things a little bit differently, to teach things a little bit differently. And I’m grateful for my experience on offense because I think it does make me a much better DB coach.”
Lascari was a former standout in Morris County at Pequannock High School (Pompton Plains, New Jersey) who went on to play his college football at SUNY Cortland. He coached in high school in New Jersey and Florida at the start of his career before joining Ash’s staff in 2018.
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It is an unconventional coaching path for Lascari, who started his college career on special teams at Rutgers before settling in on the offensive side of the ball in 2018 (eight games as the quarterbacks coach).
Now, the former college quarterback is coaching safeties.
“He teaches us a lot about offensive terminology, run scheme and stuff,” Flip Dixon said on Thursday.
“It’s very helpful.”