Rutgers Football has promoted Assistant Cornerbacks coach David Rowe to full time Cornerbacks coach, taking over the job from Mark Orphey who just left for an opening with the University of Texas per ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

This one made a ton of sense and was pretty much expected as The Knight Report hinted at this potentially happening late Wednesday night on The Round Table forum.

Rowe is already familiar with the defensive backs and familiar with how things work under Schiano, as he’s been with the program for the past season as the assistant cornerbacks coach.

On top of that, Rowe is very familiar with coaching under Greg Schiano as he originally played cornerback at Rutgers from 2008-11, recording 156 tackles, nine for loss, and five interceptions in his four-year career.

He later joined the coaching world as an intern under Schiano back when he was still the head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2013. Since then, Rowe has went on to coach at a few different schools such as Western Michigan (GA), Rockledge High School – FL (DC), Valdosta State (DB) Central Michigan (CB) and most recently Houston before joining Rutgers prior to the 2024 season. Rowe has developed cornerbacks just about everywhere he has gone previously, he was most recently responsible for coaching Willie Reid (2020 All-MAC first team) and Marcus Jones (2021 All-AAC second team). He also won a D-II National Championship with Valdosta State in 2018.

So his coaching resume speaks for itself, but how about his recruiting? He is young enough to relate with the kids, plus who better to sell Schiano’s vision on recruits then someone who played for him and helped him turn around the program the first time. Plus he’s a Florida native and an alumni of Cocoa High School, one of the top talent producing high school football programs in the country.

Rowe is now the second former Scarlet Knights player that is a full time assistant on staff for Schiano, as Tight Ends coach Scott Vallone is the other.