Rutgers Football Recruiting Commit Alert! Jon Bateky

Jon Bateky, a three star DE from Poolesville, Maryland, committed to the Scarlet Knights Saturday morning.  He had offers from Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Boston College, Iowa, Wake Forest and Navy, among others.  This is a major win for Kyle Flood, and Rutgers continues its recent recruiting hot streak with Bateky, a highly sought after consensus three star recruit.

Bateky is 6'4" and 245 lbs, giving him nice size for a DE prospect.  Bateky plays with impressive quickness, and shows tremendous ability to shed blockers to get at the QB.

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Even better, Bateky plans to graduate in January and enroll early, which has numerous advantages for both him and the Scarlet Knights. He gets the advantage of being on campus a semester early, so he can get acclimated to the academic side of being a student athlete without the additional pressure of football season, and he can participate and compete in spring practice. As an early enrollee, Bateky also will count officially as a member of the class of 2014, leaving Rutgers some wiggle room in the 2015 class, which is expected to be somewhat smaller than the customary 25 players.

This is a great pickup for Rutgers all around - the Knights picked up a tremendous player with strong academics who will enroll early, and they beat a number of other power 5 teams to do it.  Great news, and another indication that DL coach Jim Panagos is the ace recruiter of this staff. Panagos was instrumental in bringing Bateky to the banks.

Rutgers is hosting a 7 on 7 passing camp with 96 teams today.  Bateky may not be the last commitment of the weekend, and Knights fans certainly hope the positive momentum keeps rolling.

Welcome to Rutgers Jon!