Michigan State Football: 5 early signees who’ll have instant impacts in 2022

The 2022 class is all but sewn up after a successful Early Signing Day. Now which early signees will have immediate impacts on Michigan State football?

Mel Tucker signed a heck of a class on Wednesday afternoon as all 22 of Michigan State football’s commits sent in their NLIs during the early period.

Michigan State also signed four transfers which brings the group to 26 new players and each of them will have a role on this team next year from depth piece to starter.

There are some guys who will obviously have bigger roles from the freshman class. They’ll all be fighting to be the next Cal Haladay-type player who came in and starred as a true freshman and made the Freshman All-American team

These five incoming freshmen who signed early, and some who have announced they’ll be enrolling early, will have an immediate impact in 2022.

Let’s face it, Michigan State needs a ton of help in that defensive backfield and with Xavier Henderson likely gone along with Michael Dowell moving on, getting some help from Dillon Tatum will be important.

I’m still holding out hope that AJ Kirk emerges next season as one of the starting safeties, but I think Tatum could have an early impact on the two-deep.

It’ll be interesting to see how active Mel Tucker and Co. are in the transfer portal when it pertains to the secondary because thus far, they’ve landed two linebackers, a defensive end, and a running back. Maybe the second-year coach believes he has some special talents coming in with the 2022 class in the defensive backfield such as Tatum.

The West Bloomfield, Mich., native spent a lot of time playing running back in high school, actually backing up Donovan Edwards last year, so it’s clear that he’s athletic and he’s not afraid of contact. He fits that Tucker mold and could make some noise as an early enrollee.