Michigan State Football: Itayvion Brown helps making LB corps a strength

Michigan State football’s linebacking corps looked like they were going to be a weakness heading into the offseason, but Itayvion Brown helped change that.

Antjuan Simmons had a huge season for Michigan State at the linebacker position in Mel Tucker’s first year and improved his draft stock to the point where returning for a free year didn’t make sense.

While Simmons was the biggest loss of the linebacking corps, guys like Jeslord Boateng, Marcel Lewis, Luke Fulton and Charles Willekes really thinned out the position.

Michigan State was in a new defensive scheme under Scottie Hazelton in need of only two linebackers in the starting lineup, but all of those guys seemed to have a ton of potential, at least when Mark Dantonio landed them. That meant Michigan State would be down five linebackers from last season.

The thinning position group was bolstered by the commitment of Ma’a Gaoteote in the 2021 class, flipping from USC, as well as Michigan transfer Ben VanSumeren but it seemed like there needed to be another addition of two to really round out the position group with some depth and experience.

On Tuesday morning, the first day of spring practice, the Spartans landed former four-star outside linebacker Itayvion “Tank” Brown from Minnesota via the portal.

https://twitter.com/tank_brown4/status/1374379308941078529?s=20

Brown was PJ Fleck’s highest-rated recruit in the 2020 class but didn’t play a single down for the Gophers last season. He entered the portal much to the dismay of Minnesota fans and coaches and Michigan State stole him away on Tuesday. This further fixes the depth and talent pool at the position.

Michigan State went from Chase Kline, Cal Haladay, Noah Harvey and Devin Hightower (a group of inexperienced linebackers) to those four plus VanSumeren, Gaoteote and Brown. They could also add another linebacker via the portal to really make this unit stand out.

Brown was ranked the No. 311 overall prospect in the 2020 class and 21st-best outside linebacker, according to the 247Sports composite.

What was a weakness just a few short months ago is now a major strength.