For a few years, the secondary has been a glaring weakness in Rutgers defensive scheme, with young players like Nadir Barnwell and Anthony Cioffi pressed into large roles as true freshmen.
However, coming out of the spring this year, it looked like those "green" players finally had the experience, and the secondary overall had the depth, to become a strength of the team. Barnwell started to look like the heralded prospect he was in high school, Cioffi beefed up and added a lot of functional weight, while maintaining his quickness and ball-hawking abilities, and Dre Boggs was finally fully healthy, and able to demonstrate the athleticism that won rave reviews.