Michigan State Is Leading Four Recruitments, and the No. 1 Player in the Country Has Them in His Top Three

A week ago the only honest thing to say about Michigan State’s recruiting board was that it was a board. Offers had gone out. Nothing had come back. I wrote about a target list and said plainly that a target list is a statement of intent and not a result.

Something came back this week.

Four prospects put Michigan State in a named group. One of them is the top-ranked player in the country. Two of those four scheduled official visits. Four other prospects now have Michigan State out in front, which is a different and in some ways more useful category. One five-star shut the Spartans out entirely. And Michigan State stopped recruiting a top-200 edge rusher, which is the first evidence anybody has that this staff will actually take something off the board instead of collecting names.

That is a real week. It is also a week made entirely of lists, and lists are the cheapest currency in this industry. Nobody signed anything. Nobody is going to sign anything for months.

Here is what moved, sorted by how much I think it matters, which is not the same order the graphics went out in.

Sateki Vaeao is the oneNo. 33 overall, four-star center, California

I am going to start with the fourth-most-discussed name on this board, because I think it is the most important one and I do not think it is close.

Michigan State is the leader for Sateki Vaeao. That is not my read. That is the read of four people I trust who are not connected to the program, and one who is and who was noticeably careful not to sound pleased about it.

Vaeao is a center. Centers are the least glamorous category of player in recruiting and the position that most reliably decides what an offense is permitted to attempt. He has genuine power and genuine movement in the same body, which is uncommon, and his hands are inside on nearly every rep I watched. The pass-protection processing is behind the physical tools, which is normal for a high school center and is the thing that separates a good college starter from a first-round pick.

The competition here is USC, Texas, Oregon, Florida and Notre Dame. Read that list again and then look at where Michigan State has finished in recruiting for five years.

So why is a first-year staff in front?

The answer I keep getting is the same answer, from people who do not know each other, and it is about a job description. Michigan State went to that family and described the specific role a center plays in this offense, at length, with tape, including the part where the center makes the identification calls and the quarterback’s read is built off what the center declares.

They are also, at the moment, the only program in that group that can point at a live example of a coach designing a position around a player rather than the other way around, which is what Rustin Young at center is whether or not it works.

Vaeao has not scheduled an official visit to East Lansing. That is the caution flag on all of this and it is a real one. Leading in September without a date on the calendar usually stops being true by November.

If Michigan State signs a top-40 center, that changes the interior of this roster for four years and it does more for this program than the No. 1 tight end in the country would.

Carson Coakley named them, and set a dateNo. 1 overall, five-star TE, Maryland

The No. 1 player in the country put Michigan State in his top group, scheduled an official visit, and the Spartans are in his top three with Alabama and Indiana.

I want to type that sentence again because it is absurd. The No. 1 player in the country has Michigan State in his top three.

Now the qualifiers, and there are several.

Coakley is moving fast. Faster than his class, faster than most five-stars at this stage. Fast recruitments have a specific failure mode, which is that a kid narrows to three, takes his visits, and then the school with the biggest weekend wins. Michigan State has never won that weekend against Alabama. It has never been in a position to try.

Indiana is the interesting one on that list, not Alabama. Indiana is what Michigan State would like to become and is four years ahead of it, and Indiana can offer a kid the same argument about a modern offense with a shorter list of things you have to take on faith.

The evaluation has not changed since I wrote it in August. Tall, long, lanky, moves like a receiver, tracks the ball over his shoulder like one. He runs an actual route tree. He needs weight and he needs to become a real blocker, and nobody who has him first overall disputes either of those.

What has changed is that Michigan State is no longer sending mail to a kid who will never call back. There is a date on a calendar.

The argument the staff is making is the same one it made in August and it is more persuasive now than it was, for one reason: Jayden Savoury started an opener as a redshirt freshman H-back and was on the field for most of the game as a blocker, which is the least fun version of that job. A 17-year-old evaluating whether a coach will actually use him the way the pitch says can look at that and see a staff that put a young mismatch piece on the field and then made him do the boring part.

That cuts both ways, and I would be doing this badly if I did not say so.

Jake Landing: named, dated, and behindNo. 3 overall, five-star CB, Missouri

Landing put Michigan State in his top group and scheduled an official.

Michigan State is a long shot and everybody involved knows it. The other names are Ole Miss, Indiana, Michigan and LSU, and at least two of those are meaningfully in front.

I am not going to spend eight hundred words on a recruitment Michigan State is probably going to lose. What I will say is that being on the list is not nothing when the list is that one, and the reason it happened is that Michigan State recruited a corner the way you recruit a corner: it told him what the nickel job is here, what Tre Bell has been asked to do, and what a defensive back who can do three things is worth in this structure.

Big, strong, sticky in man, elite anticipation in zone, plus real value in run support and as a returner. The open evaluation question remains whether he is a pure outside corner or something else.

He will visit. That is the whole story until he does.

Patrick Paul locked them out

This is the cleanest piece of news of the week and it should be reported as a normal thing that happens.

Patrick Paul, the No. 14 player in the country, has cut Michigan State. He is not taking further contact. He thanked the staff publicly on the way out and by every account did it graciously.

This was expected. It was expected in August when the offer went out and I said so at the time. Paul is the cleanest pure-corner profile in the class and he was never going to be at Michigan State in year one of this.

There is a version of the Spartan internet that will treat this as a wound. This is what happens to a program that offers a top-15 national player: most of the time, nothing, and then eventually a polite no.

The only useful information in it is procedural. The staff got a real answer instead of being strung along into December, which gives a coach his Tuesday nights back. That is worth something for a staff that knows fewer of these families than anybody it is competing with.

Three more where they lead

Devin Jennings, No. 56 overall, four-star CB, Ohio. Michigan State is in front, gaining ground, and the field behind them is wide open with nobody obviously second. This is my favorite recruitment on the board that nobody is talking about. Jennings is excellent in press and in bail press, and his hips are fluid enough to carry most route stems. He is also skinny and he is, today, a non-factor when the ball is run at him. That is a weight-room problem and a two-year one. Somebody is going to get a very good corner in year three and pay four-star prices for him now.

George Dickinson, No. 91 overall, four-star OT, Wisconsin. Michigan State leads and the reason is the least sophisticated one in recruiting: he likes them. He has said so to people who have no reason to tell me. Long, obviously unfinished frame, better feet than the tape suggests at first, and he plays through contact rather than absorbing it. The Spartans need offensive tackles for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who noticed they moved one of theirs to center.

James Thomas, No. 203 overall, four-star QB, Flushing, Mich. Michigan State leads and is pursuing heavily. He is still considering everybody, which is exactly what a quarterback should be doing in September and which nobody should read as softness. Flushing is forty minutes from campus. Michigan State has not signed an in-state quarterback anybody was excited about in a long time, and if you want to know whether this staff has actually changed how the high schools in this state talk about the program, this recruitment is where you will find out first.

I would not build a thesis on one coach. I would note that I have now heard a version of it from four of them since February, and that all four brought it up before I asked.

The in-state piece is the part of this board that has the longest tail and the least drama. Michigan State does not need to beat Alabama for a tight end to fix its recruiting. It needs Michigan high school coaches to describe this staff the same way in January that they describe it in September, and it needs the Flushing quarterback and the Walled Lake edge and the Cass Tech guard to stay live.

What a scheduled official actually is

Three officials went on the calendar this week, which is the concrete result of a week made of lists. The number is going to get used badly.

An official visit is a paid weekend. The school covers travel for the prospect and, within limits, for his family. There are only so many a prospect can take. That is the entire reason the date matters: it is the one currency in recruiting that a kid cannot spend twice.

A named top group costs nothing. A prospect can put ten schools in a top group and eight of them will never hear from him again, and everybody in the industry knows this and reports the graphic anyway because it is a graphic.

A scheduled official costs a weekend of a seventeen-year-old’s fall. It is the first thing on a board that a prospect has to give up something to provide.

So the honest ledger for Michigan State this week is three weekends, not four lists.

What happens on those weekends is the part nobody can model. Official visits are won by things that do not appear in any evaluation: whether the position coach and the mother get along, whether a kid feels stupid or smart in the meeting room, whether somebody remembers a detail about his little brother, whether the stadium is loud on the Saturday he happens to be there.

That last one is worth a sentence for a program hosting five-star officials for the first time in most people’s memory. The home schedule matters. A recruit who visits for a noon game against a MAC team in a stadium that is three-quarters full has a different weekend than one who visits for Oregon in November.

Michigan State does not control most of that and there is no version of this where a first-year staff is good at hosting yet.

The shape of the class this is turning into

Set the star ratings aside for a minute and look at what the live recruitments actually are.

Michigan State is in front for a center, an offensive tackle, a corner and a quarterback. It is on the list for a tight end, a corner and a linebacker. It is behind for an edge.

That is a coherent class. It is also, position by position, a nearly exact map of what is wrong with this roster right now.

The interior of the offensive line is the least trusted group on this team. The staff is leading for the best center on its board and the tackle it likes most. The secondary has one corner who had a bad afternoon on Saturday against an FCS receiver and a nickel who is a position-change experiment. The staff leads for a corner and is on the list for another one.

The one hole in the map is edge rusher, where Michigan State just dropped one target and is losing ground on another. Seven edge rushers are listed on the current depth chart and none of them produced a sack against Grambling State.

Boards are supposed to look like this and most of them do not. Most boards look like a list of the best available players in a four-hundred-mile radius, sorted by ranking, with a couple of national swings attached to make the page look ambitious.

Whatever else is true about this one, somebody sat down and decided what this roster is missing before deciding who to chase.

Southerland, Fajardo, Ingold

Marquise Southerland made Michigan State a finalist and scheduled an official visit. Michigan State is a long shot. The competition is Ohio State, Clemson, Georgia and Florida, which is a list on which Michigan State is the fifth-best name and knows it.

He flies. Homing missile in space, coverage and blitz upside, a frame that will take another twenty-five pounds. He is light and raw right now, and he is either a three-year project or a sophomore starter with nothing in between.

Diego Fajardo named Michigan State in his top five. No visit is scheduled. Fajardo is the mispriced-player bet on this board, a 513th-ranked free safety who plays with instincts that do not show up in a ranking and arrives angry. He is undersized and a full year of development away from a projection anybody would sign off on. Michigan State liked him before anybody else did, which is the entire thesis of how this staff says it wants to recruit.

Josh Ingold is going the other direction. Minnesota came out of nowhere and Michigan State is losing ground in a recruitment it had been comfortable in.

If I were a Spartan fan, that would worry me more than the Patrick Paul news does. Ingold is long and bendy and unfinished, an edge rusher whose ceiling is not on his tape yet, and he is exactly the category of player this staff has said out loud that it intends to win on. Nobody expects Michigan State to hold off Alabama for a five-star. Holding off Minnesota for a No. 160 is supposed to be the part they can do.

It is September. Nothing is decided. But that is the one on this board I would be watching.

Michigan State dropped Jeremiah Stick

The Spartans stopped recruiting the No. 189 player in the country, an edge rusher out of Arkansas, and removed him from the board.

Nobody does a graphic for this. There is no announcement. A staff simply stops calling and the recruitment ends without a sound, and the only reason I know about it is that I asked and got a straight answer.

The reasoning I was given was resource allocation, in more words. Michigan State had spent a lot on a recruitment it had come to believe it was not going to win, and it decided to spend that time somewhere else.

I have covered staffs that could not do this. There is a specific institutional cowardice in recruiting where nobody is willing to be the person who takes a name off, because the name is evidence that you are trying, and so a board bloats with players who stopped answering in July and everybody pretends it is a pipeline.

This is the first hard evidence that this staff has an internal standard for what a live recruitment is. It is a smaller story than Coakley and it tells you more about how the department is run.

Everybody else: nothing happened

Larry Barnes Jr. No news. Marvin Officer III. No news. Darien Allgeier, no news. Lindsey Kane, Enrique Leon, Jalen Peacock, Roosevelt Edwards, Tyreke Carter, Ethan Grubbs, Jamal Bowser. No news, none of them, not one.

That is eleven of the twenty players on this board with absolutely nothing to report, and the alternative is manufacturing movement out of a coach visiting a school or a kid posting a graphic.

Most weeks in recruiting are this. A board with four things happening on it is a busy week and this was a busy week, and if you read a site that has news on all twenty names every Monday, you are reading a site that is making it up.

How excited to be

Somewhat. More than last week.

A week ago this was a board. A board is a list of people you have decided to be interested in and it costs a graphic and a phone call. This week four of those people said Michigan State’s name back, three of them set a date, and four more have the Spartans in front.

None of that is a player. Nobody has signed anything. Two of the four named lists are lists Michigan State is going to lose, and the staff would tell you that themselves.

What is real is that the category of school Michigan State is competing against has changed, and it changed in ten days rather than in the three years everyone assumed it would take. That is either the beginning of something or the most expensive September in the history of this program’s recruiting department. There is no way to tell yet.

They play Eastern Michigan on Saturday at noon, and every one of these kids who watches will be watching for the same thing everybody else is, which is whether a program that just beat an FCS team by 49 looks like it knows what it is doing against a MAC team that does.