Monday afternoon Rutgers announced its starting quarterback for the 2016 season. According to scout.com, the Scarlet Knights will begin its campaign against Washington on Sept. 3 with Chris Laviano as the man under center.

Laviano is a redshirt junior coming into 2016 and was the starter a year ago. He completed over 60 percent of his passes while throwing for 2,247 yards, 16 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.

Rutgers head coach Chris Ash talked about Laviano being the leader of his team.

“I think he’s grown as a leader,” said Ash, via scout.com. “I think he’s earned the trust of his teammates. I would assume that he probably didn’t have that last year. I think he didn’t have a lot of that this spring. Through his work this summer, he’s changed how he lives his life. I think he’s done that. He’s definitely earned the trust of the coaches with the way he’s performed and behaved this summer in training camp. I’m excited to see what he does when we go out for game day.

“Right now today, Chris is our guy. He’s our starting quarterback. Chris is no different than any other position. He’s got to go out and he’s got to perform well. He’s got to be able to move the football and make good decisions on the field for a game. … He’s got to be able to do it in games, whether it’s home or away, we’ve got to have confidence that he can do that. The good thing that I do like, I think we’ve got good depth at the quarterback position. If an injury were to occur, something happened down the road where we didn’t get the production we wanted, we do have some guys who are going to be working extremely hard behind him, pushing him.”

Laviano closed out 2015 on a high note, despite the Scarlet Knights finishing with a 4-8 record. Laviano’s final game came against Maryland, where despite the team losing 44-41, the signal caller finished the game completing 21-of-33 passes for 344 yards and four touchdowns to go along with one interception.