Pledge Week: Offensive Line

Offensive Line and Tackle in particular has been the Achilles Heel of recruiting at Michigan State since Dantonio arrived. So it's really important we get some good ones this year, right guys? Right? How about solid? Can we do solid?

Zach Higgins

Courtesy of MSU Scout

Higgins committed to Michigan State on 4/30/2011 over offers from Northwestern, Cincinnati, Virginia and the MAC. Ranked a three-star prospect by all three major recruiting services he projects as an OG/OT tweener. All three sites list him as being 6'5" and 305-310. If he's really 6'5" (always a question with recruiting services) he might be a bit tall to play the Offensive Guard spot, I guess it depends on how tall his QB would be.

Higgins shredded up his knee pretty well at the end of football season, which sucks. It sucks because you want him to succeed, it sucks because you don't want him to be hurt and it sucks because we can't keep our Offensive lineman healthy anyway. So on that happy note, to the film!


YOUtube Predicts Success

It's a short video, but here's what I like about the kid. When he blocks a kid out of the play he pivots to block them out of the play so he is always between his opponent and the ball. He only got out into space once but looked to be fast enough for a guard. I have to think after watching this tape that his home will be at guard when it's all said and done. A solid pickup if he can stay healthy.

2012 Prognostication and Beyond: Redshirts in 2012. Starts seeing the field in the 2015 area. Any sooner and it's probably an injury issue.

Kodi Kieler

MSU Spartans

Kodi Kieler committed to Michigan State on 8/8/2011 over offers from Minnesota, Purdue and the MAC. Kieler was ranked a three-star prospect by all three major recruiting services despite a ho-hum offer sheet. Kieler is the only true Offensive Tackle taken in this class which to be honest scares the crap out of me a bit. Dantonio said on Kieler yesterday: "Kodi is a big athlete who excelled on both offense and defense. He has great running ability and change of direction. We saw him play in 2011. He shows toughness, explosiveness, and the ability to run and change direction." So he shows the ability to run and change direction!


Can Kieler change direction? YOUtube be the judge!

Well, I was really hoping to see a little more of the Running! and the Changing of Direction! and the Toughness! I watched his stuff behind the pay wall. He moves much better in space than Higgins. Kieler hit a couple of guys so hard he fell down, which is a positive. There were one or two plays where he was blocking two kids out of a play, one with each arm. I think this kid will have a very Dan France like career, athletic enough to be a tall DE, but plays OT instead.

2012 Prognostication and Beyond: Redshirts in 2012. Is in the mix to replace Dan France when France leaves after 2013. Must stay healthy.

Benny McGowan

Benny McGowan committed to MSU on 4/30/2011 over offers from UCLA, Iowa, Cincy and a host of MAC offers. McGowan was ranked a three-star OG/C prospect by all three recruiting services. He was the very first offensive lineman to ever score 100 on Nike's SPARQ rating, which means... really I'm not sure other than he's very good at taking test based on Strength, Power, Agility, Reaction and Quickness. He scored higher than Tebow!



YouTubin' the Grind!

What's to love? Good lord he's quick off the snap. Like the Anti-Jerel Worthy. He's into the second level before you even know what happened. What's not to like about him? Nothing. He'll be bolstering our interior line for a long time to come. I think he committed too early to really get the kind of offers he could have, we're lucky to have him.

2012 Prognostication and Beyond: Redshirts in 2012. There's a logjam at Center right now. I think he could move into the role of starting guard as early as 2013. The one real drawback to his film was that it showed him almost exclusively getting out into the second level so we didn't get to see a lot of him holding his blocks.

2013 Needs: 2 OTs, 2 OGs, a great center if he comes along.

Tuesday Thoughts

Work has been soul-crushingly busy leading up to the Holidays and is over for the year tomorrow. My wife suggested that I do something that I enjoy in the middle of the day today to avoid leaving a trail of end users in my jail-bound wake.


The Defense of Isaiah Lewis


It looks like Dantonio spent a deal of time in today's presser defending Isaiah Lewis' play in the Big Ten Title Game. Despite my twitter barf in the minutes immediately following the game, there's really no defense needed. He had two bad plays in the most critical moments of the game. The one below, eh, he might have been blocked into the punter, but it wasn't obvious. If it should have been called back it's because of the punter's obvious flop, there's no way the refs could have caught the below.



If you'll recall, Lewis was responsible for the interception returned for a touchdown to make the UM game 28-14. Further, he caught Wilson's moonball in the fourth quarter of the MSU-Wisconsin game. These are two I can think of off the top of my head. There are certainly others. No defense needed Lewis nets out as a plus player for MSU by a lot.

Bowl Practices


As with every bowl practice season, there are rumors of position changes. It sounds like Tony Lippett has been practicing at WR this off-season and that will be his position next year. I really hope this is because he is filthy talented at WR and that CB is coming along nicely. The idea of moving our third best corner to WR makes me a bit itchy.

There are rumors that Darien Harris has been playing at RB, this was the position he played in HS. I'm not really sure what to make of that. MSU didn't take a running back in 2011, but like, the Bell, Baker, Caper, Hill logjam will still be right in front of Harris in 2012. By 2013, it'll still be Bell and Hill and Tompkins and others should be making some headway by then. Hopefully, this is some college experimentation in a consequence free environment.

Micajah Reynolds is back at DT with the injuries to Pickelman and Strayhorn. Huge dap to him for being able to play whatever position needs help. I do hope they settle him somewhere soon, he'll be a junior next year, the clock is starting to tick.

The Changing Recruiting Landscape

Seriously, go home and make sure your loved ones haven't bolted for OSU.

Well, Urban Meyer makes phone calls and brings kids to OSU. The Pittman thing, was, crappy. The following will sound a bit like denialism, homerism, etc. That's fine. This is a Michigan State blog, so I write it that way.

Here's the first couple sentences of Pittman's recruiting article from SpartanMag.

"Michigan State landed what can be deemed a surprise verbal commitment from Canton (Ohio) McKinley four-star defensive end Se'Von Pittman on Sunday afternoon. "

More:

When did it hit you that Michigan State was the right choice for you?

Pittman: If you would've asked me this question yesterday, I wouldn't have had no type of answer for you. But just sitting there with my parents (on Sunday) and we just talked about my top five and colleges that best fit me, and my mom kept telling me that she felt Michigan State was and she gave me some reasons and stuff like that, and I agreed. So we made the decision I should commit a couple hours before I committed. 

The following is a timeline for the majority of MSU summer commits.

• Kid comes to campus (1 to n) number of times and shows off why he deserves a scholly to Mark Dantonio and staff
• Mark Dantonio calls kid at some future date and says "Hai there, come on up to MSU, we need to have a talk" Knowing full well what this call will be about the recruit schedules a time, brings parents and comes up.
• Kid is given offer and told to go home before committing.
• Mark Dantonio follows-up with visit/phone call/handwritten letter/smoke signal/telegraph/box of chocolates.
• Kid commits usually soon, one week or less.

I'm not going to graph this, no one wants to see a single bar of me being right on this. It's pretty solid if you follow MSU football recruiting at all. There were several things about this commit that seemed a bit fishy. One, the whole we just talked about it on Father's Day and now I'm committed to MSU thing seems and seemed weird to me. Two, the whole snagging an Ohio kid with a real Ohio State offer thing seemed fishy. OSU would have needed to be down for a couple years for me to feel like we weren't stealing one. Finally, he and Adolphus Washington for months talked about playing together despite Washington showing no real interest in MSU. The writing was on the wall a bit before Meyer became the Mayor of C-bus. Afterwards, Meyer is the Unicron of good midwestern recruits.

Which brings me to my next point. Meyer should absolutely fight to get every Ohio kid he wants that is not going to school at OSU next year. Recruiting committed players to or from schools with coaching changes has always made sense to me. When a new coach enters the equation, they haven't had their shot yet. Still, anyone who coached in the SEC isn't above commit poaching and I think he better be careful he's not TOO successful at it in the 2013 class. If a half dozen schools put elbow grease into negative recruiting it will add up at some point.

Our Struggling Pretty Average Offensive Line

I have to say, the most improved position group from Youngstown State to Wisconsin Part Deux: The Cheese Filled Nightmare was the Offensive Line. The pass protection of our offensive line at year end was a plus and the run blocking improved quite a bit and was probably average. MSU's depth at Offensive Tackle is still frighteningly thin. Interior line has better depth, but loses Foreman next year. MSU returns four starters next year though and this group should pick up right where it left off. 

Enjoy the hot MACtion of the bowl games, film breakdown coming soon.