Michigan State football pledge AJ Kirk was once a top prospect nationally

After injury issues and a transfer, Michigan State football’s newest commit went from a top prospect in the nation to a three-star.

Mel Tucker has done quite the job in just a handful of months with Michigan State football. He took over after National Signing Day and has had to deal with a pandemic limiting his recruiting about a month later. He’s made the most of this new style of remote recruiting.

This past week, he landed a surprise commitment from three-star safety AJ Kirk from Columbus, the younger brother of former Ohio State star Mike Doss.

Kirk wasn’t exactly on the radar of many Michigan State fans as the No. 764 prospect in the nation with one of the most elite offer sheets of any recruit, according to 247Sports.

What fans don’t realize is that his offer sheet is so good because before injury issues and a transfer, he was once one of the top recruits in the entire 2021 class. In fact, he was rated 1.000 (the highest possible rating) by 247Sports back in June of 2018. He was then downgraded to a 0.9892 a couple of months later which would be good for about No. 19 nationally today.

The Ohio-based safety went down to a 0.9317 (a drastic five-point drop) in April of 2019 and then dipped under 0.90 in December of that same year. He was once a highly-regarded four-star.

So when you see people saying things like “those offers probably weren’t committable” when it’s mentioned that Kirk had options of Notre Dame, Florida, Ohio State, Kentucky, Michigan, Arizona State, Penn State, Pitt and West Virginia, all you need to do is show them his player ratings over the past two years.

Injuries and changing program have dipped his rating, fair or not, but this kid is the real deal.

Tucker just got a high four-star talent masked by a three-star rating.