Starting off a new series of position previews for Rutgers Football, a series that will continue until the start of the college football season, we start with arguably the most important position on the field, the quarterback. As of right now, Rutgers has four quarterbacks listed on their roster after last year’s starter, Gavin Wimsatt, decided to transfer to Kentucky after losing the starting job to Athan Kaliakmanis. The reviews will go in order of predicted depth chart placement.
Quarterback Position Preview
Athan Kaliakmanis
During his time at Minnesota where Kaliakmanis was a starter, he proved himself to be below average yet still a deserving Big Ten starter. Coming to Rutgers he engaged in a quarterback battle for the starting role with incumbent Gavin Wimsatt and won. What is Rutgers getting with Kalimanis though? They are getting a much more proven passer while taking a little bit of a sting in the mobile quarterback department. Last season, Kaliakmanis completed 53.1 percent of his passes for 1,838 yards and 14 touchdowns. That can be considered a major upgrade over Wimsatt who had just a 47.8 completion percentage, the lowest in the Big Ten last season.
In addition, Kaliakmanis had a better completion percentage during the 2022 season, 54.1, when former Minnesota offensive coordinator and current Rutgers offensive coordinator Kirk Ciarrocca was his offensive coordinator. Since these two already have decent chemistry together, this reunion should hopefully be a good opportunity for Kaliakmanis to maximize his talents while playing under the coach who recruited him.
AJ Surace
It might be surprising to see Surace listed here because he is only a freshman while Ajani Sheppard is a sophomore however, since Surace is expected to take over the team after the departure of Kaliakmanis in two years it only makes sense that he be the next man up. Surace has yet to play a down of regular season college football however he had a few decent drives in the second half of the Rutgers spring game with the third and fourth teams.
Every time someone from the Rutgers coaching staff talks about Surace and his abilities they have a general sense of hope and excitement for what he can do on the field. Before committing to Rutgers Surace was rated as a high three-star coming out of high school so we can see that the talent is there. It will be exciting to see how he develops but for now, he will be the backup.
Ajani Sheppard
Unlike Surace, Sheppard has seen the field during a regular season game. However, he didn’t do much. during his one game against Wagner, he had two completions for 23 yards and one rush for 10 yards. He did post a perfect passing percentage that game only having two attempts. With Surace coming in and seemingly being the future, it becomes easy to imagine that he might get in those early tune-up games over Sheppard, bumping him down the depth chart. It is a tough break but it is how college football works.
Rounding out the current quarterback roster we have sophomore Collin O’Sullivan. Very little is actually known about O’Sullivan other than he led his high school team to a 9-1 record his senior year. O’Sullivan did not see the field his freshman year. He doesn’t even have a rating on 247Sports so we do not know what he was rated coming out of high school. Since we have such limited information about his talents and his outlook it’s hard to rate him anywhere but here on the Rutgers depth chart.
