Quite a Cycle:
What an early signing period this was. As someone that started following recruiting passively in the days of Scout and Tom Lemming, this was quite a day. We saw the nation’s number 1 recruit flip from FSU not to a top SEC school like UGA, but rather to Jackson State University, a HBCU coached by Neon Deion Sanders. I was not surprised that the SEC dominated again- UGA, Texas A&M, and Bama ran the cycle. A development that I did not expect was the meteoric rise of Texas from Saturday until Wednesday. It seemed like from the second Quinn Ewers got on campus for an official visit last weekend they tried to lock up the state of Texas. In the future, it will be very interesting to see who wins the battle of wills in the Lone Star State between UT-Austin and Texas A&M..
In May when I posted my updated Transfer portal analysis, one outstanding question about the portal that I stated was:
After 1.5 years of no in-person evaluation, will we see an even bigger surge in portal activity with players evaluating depth charts/opportunities/real-life colleges after visiting virtually? Will coaches realize any mis-evaluations quickly?
Fast forward 7 months and the answer to both questions appears to be a resounding yes. Further if you thought the portal is on fire right now, wait until Bowl Season is over. Kenneth Walker and Jermaine Johnson are poster boys for what the portal can potentially do if you pick the correct school. Likewise, coaches are holding spots for portal players assuming that their portal evaluations will yield merit on-field. In my opinion, this will lead to mixed results on field. MSU hit it out of the park in the portal because of how Mel’s staff was proactive vs. reactive with the portal. They have a clear system with proven results that they can sell now. A system that has already netted them 4 starter-level players from the portal this cycle. The MSU approach is a complete 180 compared to someone like Dabo Swinney at Clemson. He famously said this week that his staff evaluates the portal daily, but the players in the portal aren’t playing where they are. He is also getting roasted for his latest portal rant- https://thespun.com/acc/clemson-tig...-reacts-dabo-swinney-transfer-portal-comments. I think the portal and NIL are a perfect storm that has changed college football indefinitely. Further if coaches like Dabo do not adapt, they will be perish. Dabo may be in a worse situation considering that he just had non-ACC champ finish, had multiple decommits/flips down the stretch, and lost two ace coaches to head coach positions. I don’t love everything about what college football is now, but there is no going back. College free agency has arrived, and MSU will be a pioneer in this new era. In other words, Tuck Comin
An unexpected consequence of all this change has been the HS ranks. As mentioned above, coaches are holding spots for portals guy and you are seeing more traditional power 5 3-star recruits go FCS or low power 5. In addition, you have recruits like Ka’marii Landers (3 star), Kevin Thomas (4 star), and Jermiah Caldwell (4 star) that had committable offers during Covid- yet appear to be struggling to find a home. I said last year that you would see a lot of mis-evaluation due to Zoom recruiting based on sophomore tape and no physical eye-ball testing. I have no idea what is going in each case, but I never expected these players that appeared to be takes for MSU a year ago to be in this position. I’m pulling for all three of them to find a home sooner rather than later. I also think the verdict is still out on how the portal is impacting JUCO football. I imagine that it has not been a positive development.
Go State:
Mel Tucker brought in what is generally considered a top 20 class nationally. As a fan, this is the first time I have been truly excited about MSU recruiting since after the Rose Bowl. I love Coach D, but outside of the 2015 class, I felt like we would lose key recruiting battles down the stretch. I’ll be honest I started to dread signing day. We just didn’t have juice on the trail anymore.
When Mel Tucker took the MSU job, he said that MSU would be “relentless” recruiting the right players to reboot the program. I knew that he had been regarded as a top 25 recruiter during his time at Alabama and UGA. Since Tucker leveled up to a Big Ten job, I assumed that he would hit the Coach D stables- Michigan/Ohio/PA with Illinois, Florida, and Georgia sprinkled in. In a word- I was completely WRONG!!!
In Mel Tucker’s year at Colorado, he signed a national recruiting class with players from Texas, Georgia, Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, Massachusetts, Colorado and Kansas (JUCO) and Mississippi (JUCO). During year 1 at MSU, I felt like Tucker did the best that he could considering no on-campus visits, Zoom recruiting, and a messed-up Covid year. In year 2, Mel hit this thing hard from official visits resuming on June 1 to early signing day on December 15. He had a vision and followed through on it. Like at CU, he deployed a national recruiting strategy that had not been seen at MSU maybe ever. In the tables below, two things were very striking to me: 1) in the last 2 years, there has clearly been an emphasis on landing players from west of the Mississippi (CA, AZ, CO) and 2) We have Georgia on our minds.
West of the Mississippi by year
GA recruits by year:
On point 1, it had been said for a long time- you cannot win at MSU without recruiting the 6-8 hour radius around EL. Mel Tucker took this thing national between class 2 and the portal resulting in a 10-win season. Incredible job by Tuck. Since I have followed MSU (eg 2002), Bobby Williams and Mel Tucker are the only guys that could recruit anywhere. If Tucker sees a “dude” that can play winning football, he will shoot his shot. Further, it was amazingly impressive that Mel Tucker’s close rate on summer official visits had to of been 60-65%. They targeted kids early coming out of the Zoom period, and got them up early and often.
On point 2, Dave Warner did a great job in Georgia while at MSU. I always wanted to see them do more there. Georgia is a talent rich state, and everyone there can’t go to Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida. Mel Tucker spent time in the SEC at LSU, Georgia and Alabama. When he came on the job, he made it a mission to pump the MSU brand loudly in the Peach State. Those efforts yielded fruit this year to the tune of 7 Georgia recruits- an insane haul for a Big Ten school. Will all the kids be stars or contributors? No, but they pulled players from some top programs down there. Further, the connections that they have with these programs should produce a pipeline of top Georgia prospects in the years to come.
Two other stories about this class were the state of Michigan and player measurables. During the Coach D era, we had a solid rep in Detroit, until the Dream Team/Blackwell situation essentially shuttered Detroit for MSU. This was especially evident when Coach Tucker started. Multiple recruits from Rayshaun Benny-Donovan Edwards to Ra’Quan Buckley confirmed that they were not thinking about MSU until they met the new staff. In year 1, Tucker pulled decent players in the state, but lost Benny on a last second flip. I’ll always give him a mulligan there considering he was trying to sell a program in a Covid bubble. In year 2, he couldn’t have done better in my opinion. He turned the tide with the Dillion Tatum recruitment after Ron Bellamy was hired by Michigan. Shockingly in a 24-48 hr span, Tucker and staff turned Jaden Mangham from a WVU soft commit to a solid MSU commit. In addition, the staff was about to pull in BVS via the portal and his highly ranked brother AVS in the 22 class. The in-state haul by this staff was impressive, and I think the 2023 class will only be better in that regard.
In a nutshell, I like the class a lot. These kids are huge and very athletic. The shortest OL/DL that we recruited this cycle was AVS at 6’3 300 lbs. To compete for titles, you need size, athleticism, and coaching. I think we addressed 2 of those 3 in the class. We were able to flip an amazing amount of players when you think about it: Katin Houser (BSU), Zion Young (WVU), Caleb Coley (Vandy), James Schott (Miami-OH), Malcolm Jones (Va Tech), and I’d add in Jaden Mangham (WVU- a lot of conjecture that he was a soft commit to WVU). The morale of the story if Mel wants a player he will come for them. His hit rate won’t be 100%, but he’ll go all in at 100 MPH. Like many have said, Katin Houser is probably the most talented pure QB prospect to come to MSU since Andrew Maxwell. The difference here is the competition that Houser has gone against in the Cali HS scene. He’s not Joe Montana, but he has a ton of potential as a future QB 1.
Three names to remember from this class are Jack Nickel, Malik Spencer, and Caleb Coley. At one point, Nickel was a ND TE commit. I think the last TE that we signed with a ND offer was like KFD in the mid 2000’s. This does not happen. He’s a great blocker, and I expect him to play early. Malik Spencer may be my favorite player from this cycle. I felt like we needed to win at least 7-8 games to keep his commitment. His tape is great- hitter, fast, instinctive. We need all 3 of those characteristics in our secondary to see the improvement that we are all hoping for. Caleb Coley has great tape. At one point, Clemson wanted him- that’s enough from me. I expect him to have a say in who plays at DB next year. It’s kind of ironic that all 3 of these kids are apart of the migration from Georgia to EL. In terms of misses, the only kids that we “missed” on that I feel would have be big-time at MSU are the last 3 recruits that went elsewhere. Kiyaunta Goodwin was an elite OT prospect that we went all 12 rounds for. You want to be in it for these kids. It’s impressive to see us this deep into a recruitment in year 2 considering all the challenges with Covid recruiting. Tucker will close a top 30-40 level recruit in the next 18 months if we continue to win like this. Damari Alston was a big time RB recruit that I felt we would only have a chance with if we had a perfect season (10-12 wins). We got him up for a visit, but he was all in on Auburn. I like his talent, but don’t think Auburn was a great choice given all the change happening there (I could see the staff gone by next season easily). Armani Winfield could have helped with potential departures of Jayden Reed and Jalen Nailor, but WR depth looks to be a strength of this team moving forward.
My last word on all of this cycle is enjoy this. Recruiting has juice again between the portal and our HS recruiting. If we win at least 9 games next year, watch out because I think Tucker will have us in on even bigger targets. IMO our remaining needs (6 spots): OT (2), OG (1), DE (1), S or DB (1), and best available (RB, DB, WR ala the recruitment of Jameson Williams last cycle). I’m confident that the staff will fill these needs methodically. With that said folks, strap in for the insanity that will be the 2021-2022 Portal Cycle.
@jim comparoni @Macklinjb @Floyd170 @CaptainGreen @haydenv8 @SpartyDawg23 @Noah Sprunger
What an early signing period this was. As someone that started following recruiting passively in the days of Scout and Tom Lemming, this was quite a day. We saw the nation’s number 1 recruit flip from FSU not to a top SEC school like UGA, but rather to Jackson State University, a HBCU coached by Neon Deion Sanders. I was not surprised that the SEC dominated again- UGA, Texas A&M, and Bama ran the cycle. A development that I did not expect was the meteoric rise of Texas from Saturday until Wednesday. It seemed like from the second Quinn Ewers got on campus for an official visit last weekend they tried to lock up the state of Texas. In the future, it will be very interesting to see who wins the battle of wills in the Lone Star State between UT-Austin and Texas A&M..
In May when I posted my updated Transfer portal analysis, one outstanding question about the portal that I stated was:
After 1.5 years of no in-person evaluation, will we see an even bigger surge in portal activity with players evaluating depth charts/opportunities/real-life colleges after visiting virtually? Will coaches realize any mis-evaluations quickly?
Fast forward 7 months and the answer to both questions appears to be a resounding yes. Further if you thought the portal is on fire right now, wait until Bowl Season is over. Kenneth Walker and Jermaine Johnson are poster boys for what the portal can potentially do if you pick the correct school. Likewise, coaches are holding spots for portal players assuming that their portal evaluations will yield merit on-field. In my opinion, this will lead to mixed results on field. MSU hit it out of the park in the portal because of how Mel’s staff was proactive vs. reactive with the portal. They have a clear system with proven results that they can sell now. A system that has already netted them 4 starter-level players from the portal this cycle. The MSU approach is a complete 180 compared to someone like Dabo Swinney at Clemson. He famously said this week that his staff evaluates the portal daily, but the players in the portal aren’t playing where they are. He is also getting roasted for his latest portal rant- https://thespun.com/acc/clemson-tig...-reacts-dabo-swinney-transfer-portal-comments. I think the portal and NIL are a perfect storm that has changed college football indefinitely. Further if coaches like Dabo do not adapt, they will be perish. Dabo may be in a worse situation considering that he just had non-ACC champ finish, had multiple decommits/flips down the stretch, and lost two ace coaches to head coach positions. I don’t love everything about what college football is now, but there is no going back. College free agency has arrived, and MSU will be a pioneer in this new era. In other words, Tuck Comin
An unexpected consequence of all this change has been the HS ranks. As mentioned above, coaches are holding spots for portals guy and you are seeing more traditional power 5 3-star recruits go FCS or low power 5. In addition, you have recruits like Ka’marii Landers (3 star), Kevin Thomas (4 star), and Jermiah Caldwell (4 star) that had committable offers during Covid- yet appear to be struggling to find a home. I said last year that you would see a lot of mis-evaluation due to Zoom recruiting based on sophomore tape and no physical eye-ball testing. I have no idea what is going in each case, but I never expected these players that appeared to be takes for MSU a year ago to be in this position. I’m pulling for all three of them to find a home sooner rather than later. I also think the verdict is still out on how the portal is impacting JUCO football. I imagine that it has not been a positive development.
Go State:
Mel Tucker brought in what is generally considered a top 20 class nationally. As a fan, this is the first time I have been truly excited about MSU recruiting since after the Rose Bowl. I love Coach D, but outside of the 2015 class, I felt like we would lose key recruiting battles down the stretch. I’ll be honest I started to dread signing day. We just didn’t have juice on the trail anymore.
When Mel Tucker took the MSU job, he said that MSU would be “relentless” recruiting the right players to reboot the program. I knew that he had been regarded as a top 25 recruiter during his time at Alabama and UGA. Since Tucker leveled up to a Big Ten job, I assumed that he would hit the Coach D stables- Michigan/Ohio/PA with Illinois, Florida, and Georgia sprinkled in. In a word- I was completely WRONG!!!
In Mel Tucker’s year at Colorado, he signed a national recruiting class with players from Texas, Georgia, Colorado, Louisiana, Arizona, Massachusetts, Colorado and Kansas (JUCO) and Mississippi (JUCO). During year 1 at MSU, I felt like Tucker did the best that he could considering no on-campus visits, Zoom recruiting, and a messed-up Covid year. In year 2, Mel hit this thing hard from official visits resuming on June 1 to early signing day on December 15. He had a vision and followed through on it. Like at CU, he deployed a national recruiting strategy that had not been seen at MSU maybe ever. In the tables below, two things were very striking to me: 1) in the last 2 years, there has clearly been an emphasis on landing players from west of the Mississippi (CA, AZ, CO) and 2) We have Georgia on our minds.
West of the Mississippi by year
| 2013 | 0 |
| 2014 | 1 |
| 2015 | 7 |
| 2016 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2 |
| 2018 | 3 |
| 2019 | 0 |
| 2020 | 3 |
| 2021 | 6 |
| 2022 | 5 |
GA recruits by year:
| 2013 | 0 |
| 2014 | 1 |
| 2015 | 0 |
| 2016 | 0 |
| 2017 | 3 |
| 2018 | 2 |
| 2019 | 0 |
| 2020 | 3 |
| 2021 | 0 |
| 2022 | 7 |
On point 1, it had been said for a long time- you cannot win at MSU without recruiting the 6-8 hour radius around EL. Mel Tucker took this thing national between class 2 and the portal resulting in a 10-win season. Incredible job by Tuck. Since I have followed MSU (eg 2002), Bobby Williams and Mel Tucker are the only guys that could recruit anywhere. If Tucker sees a “dude” that can play winning football, he will shoot his shot. Further, it was amazingly impressive that Mel Tucker’s close rate on summer official visits had to of been 60-65%. They targeted kids early coming out of the Zoom period, and got them up early and often.
On point 2, Dave Warner did a great job in Georgia while at MSU. I always wanted to see them do more there. Georgia is a talent rich state, and everyone there can’t go to Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Florida. Mel Tucker spent time in the SEC at LSU, Georgia and Alabama. When he came on the job, he made it a mission to pump the MSU brand loudly in the Peach State. Those efforts yielded fruit this year to the tune of 7 Georgia recruits- an insane haul for a Big Ten school. Will all the kids be stars or contributors? No, but they pulled players from some top programs down there. Further, the connections that they have with these programs should produce a pipeline of top Georgia prospects in the years to come.
Two other stories about this class were the state of Michigan and player measurables. During the Coach D era, we had a solid rep in Detroit, until the Dream Team/Blackwell situation essentially shuttered Detroit for MSU. This was especially evident when Coach Tucker started. Multiple recruits from Rayshaun Benny-Donovan Edwards to Ra’Quan Buckley confirmed that they were not thinking about MSU until they met the new staff. In year 1, Tucker pulled decent players in the state, but lost Benny on a last second flip. I’ll always give him a mulligan there considering he was trying to sell a program in a Covid bubble. In year 2, he couldn’t have done better in my opinion. He turned the tide with the Dillion Tatum recruitment after Ron Bellamy was hired by Michigan. Shockingly in a 24-48 hr span, Tucker and staff turned Jaden Mangham from a WVU soft commit to a solid MSU commit. In addition, the staff was about to pull in BVS via the portal and his highly ranked brother AVS in the 22 class. The in-state haul by this staff was impressive, and I think the 2023 class will only be better in that regard.
In a nutshell, I like the class a lot. These kids are huge and very athletic. The shortest OL/DL that we recruited this cycle was AVS at 6’3 300 lbs. To compete for titles, you need size, athleticism, and coaching. I think we addressed 2 of those 3 in the class. We were able to flip an amazing amount of players when you think about it: Katin Houser (BSU), Zion Young (WVU), Caleb Coley (Vandy), James Schott (Miami-OH), Malcolm Jones (Va Tech), and I’d add in Jaden Mangham (WVU- a lot of conjecture that he was a soft commit to WVU). The morale of the story if Mel wants a player he will come for them. His hit rate won’t be 100%, but he’ll go all in at 100 MPH. Like many have said, Katin Houser is probably the most talented pure QB prospect to come to MSU since Andrew Maxwell. The difference here is the competition that Houser has gone against in the Cali HS scene. He’s not Joe Montana, but he has a ton of potential as a future QB 1.
Three names to remember from this class are Jack Nickel, Malik Spencer, and Caleb Coley. At one point, Nickel was a ND TE commit. I think the last TE that we signed with a ND offer was like KFD in the mid 2000’s. This does not happen. He’s a great blocker, and I expect him to play early. Malik Spencer may be my favorite player from this cycle. I felt like we needed to win at least 7-8 games to keep his commitment. His tape is great- hitter, fast, instinctive. We need all 3 of those characteristics in our secondary to see the improvement that we are all hoping for. Caleb Coley has great tape. At one point, Clemson wanted him- that’s enough from me. I expect him to have a say in who plays at DB next year. It’s kind of ironic that all 3 of these kids are apart of the migration from Georgia to EL. In terms of misses, the only kids that we “missed” on that I feel would have be big-time at MSU are the last 3 recruits that went elsewhere. Kiyaunta Goodwin was an elite OT prospect that we went all 12 rounds for. You want to be in it for these kids. It’s impressive to see us this deep into a recruitment in year 2 considering all the challenges with Covid recruiting. Tucker will close a top 30-40 level recruit in the next 18 months if we continue to win like this. Damari Alston was a big time RB recruit that I felt we would only have a chance with if we had a perfect season (10-12 wins). We got him up for a visit, but he was all in on Auburn. I like his talent, but don’t think Auburn was a great choice given all the change happening there (I could see the staff gone by next season easily). Armani Winfield could have helped with potential departures of Jayden Reed and Jalen Nailor, but WR depth looks to be a strength of this team moving forward.
My last word on all of this cycle is enjoy this. Recruiting has juice again between the portal and our HS recruiting. If we win at least 9 games next year, watch out because I think Tucker will have us in on even bigger targets. IMO our remaining needs (6 spots): OT (2), OG (1), DE (1), S or DB (1), and best available (RB, DB, WR ala the recruitment of Jameson Williams last cycle). I’m confident that the staff will fill these needs methodically. With that said folks, strap in for the insanity that will be the 2021-2022 Portal Cycle.
@jim comparoni @Macklinjb @Floyd170 @CaptainGreen @haydenv8 @SpartyDawg23 @Noah Sprunger
