PISCATAWAY - Safety is one position group on the Rutgers football team where there isn’t much depth.

Outside of its current starters in senior Saquan Hampton and junior K.J. Gray, who’ve combined to appear in 42 total games and make 19 career starts, there isn’t much.

The Scarlet Knights lost productive starter/rotational player Kiy Hester to transfer and don’t expect Jawuan Harris (baseball) to be back for the fall.

“I don’t think you’re ever happy with depth at any position. You can always use more. Safety, especially, we’re thin,” head coach Chris Ash said last week. “We do have some reinforcements coming that are not on campus yet. The good thing is we have some guys at corner with good size who can move over and play safety. Right now, we’re trying to develop our front line guys in K.J. and Saquan and bring the other guys along. But depth is a concern just because we’re young back there.”

Rutgers has a slew of corners that can and will play once the season begins in Blessuan Austin, Isaiah Wharton, up-and-comer Tre Avery, and Damon Hayes. New co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach, Noah Joseph, who played for Ash at Drake (who is also an alum), revealed that redshirt junior Kobe Marfo has switched to safety to provide an extra body.

“We moved Kobe Marfo over to get him some reps to help us out. We got a pretty good stable of corners so a couple of them could mentally handle (a change) no problem. We don’t make a move until we feel like we need to,” Joseph said. “If you look at some of defensive backs who signed that are going to be coming in, there’s depth in the cornerbacks room, and there’s some size with those incoming guys that could possibly cross train (at safety and corner). In this league, guys play as true freshman all the time. It’s difficult to do, but they do it all the time. We did that at Indiana. I kind of take pride in it. My second or third year there we had a freshman All-American at safety.”

Ash and Co. have a few more defensive backs arriving this summer including two 3-stars Christian Izien and Deion Jennings. Izien and Jennings could be those extra reinforcements to join Gray, Hampton, Marfo, and redshirt freshman Naijee Jones.

“I think they’re physical kids. I don’t know them well, I’m just getting to know them. I think Deion has some length. When you look at Christian and talk to him, he’s not real tall in stature but he’s put together. He’ll strike you. What he kind of is, is like that alpha male kind of guy,” Joseph said.