Michigan State Football: 3 freshmen who’ll have biggest impacts in 2022

Michigan State football landed its best recruiting class since 2016 and there are a handful of freshmen who will have immediate impacts in 2022.

For the first time since 2016, Michigan State football landed a top-30 recruiting class. The Spartans landed six four-star pledges in its 2022 class and a handful of them actually enrolled early with a chance to see the field as true freshmen.

Mel Tucker has had a huge impact on this program in a short period of time and his first real recruiting class (I’m not going to count 2021 because he never got to recruit in person) was hopefully a sign of things to come. If he can land consistent top-15 or top-20 classes, Michigan State will have a shot to contend in the Big Ten East for years to come.

The 2022 class will have a serious impact on the success of the upcoming season and there are a few guys, in particular, who I believe will have major impacts as true freshmen.

Even if you are the most casual Michigan State football fan in the world, you would know that the secondary was one of the worst in the country in 2021.

Michigan State’s pass defense was as porous as any in the past couple of decades in East Lansing but Mel Tucker has done a solid job of pushing for repairs. He landed a couple of four-star safeties in the 2022 class (Dillon Tatum and Jaden Mangham) along with one of my favorite recruits in the class, three-star cornerback Caleb Coley who was flipped from Vanderbilt.

Coley was a late addition to the 2022 class in December and still enrolled early in January so he’s got a good handle on the defense.

Although the Spartans do return some talent to the cornerback group in the form of Charles Brantley, Ronald Williams, and Marqui Lowery along with bringing in Ameer Speed from the transfer portal, I think we’ll see Coley play a healthy role in the defensive backfield right away.