Michigan State football: Way-too-early 2023 defensive groups preview

Today, we’re focusing on the Michigan State football defense.

While there is plenty of blame to go around for how things played out last year, Scottie Hazelton is squarely on the hot seat coming into the season, at least, according to the fans of this team. We can hope that another year of recruits, transfers, and coaching hires can project this team into a top-tier unit in the Big Ten.

Let’s break it down by position.

Defensive Line

While the transferring of Deshaun Mallory and Jeff Pietrowski and Jacob Slade going to the NFL seems like a lot of attrition for the defensive line, the position looks pretty stacked thanks to transfers and redshirt freshmen looking to contribute early.

The big-name transfer coming in is former five-star recruit Tunmise Adeleye, who transferred here from Trainwreck, sorry, Texas A&M. At 6-foot-4, 255 pounds, this dude has all the physical tools to be a star defensive end in the Big Ten.

Teaming up with Adeleye are true freshmen Bai Jobe and Andrew Depaepe (all reports indicate that these kids are too good to redshirt this year) and redshirt senior transfer Khris Bogle all looking to be the studs to lead the defensive end room.

As for the defensive tackle spots, I’m looking at redshirt freshman Alex VanSumeren and Maverick Hansen to have big leaps this year and anchor the middle of the line along with Liberty transfer Dre Butler, who comes in at a whopping 6-foot-5, 300 pounds.

I think there is more than enough talent here and with the hiring of Diron Reynolds, the Spartans should be aiming for the top half of the conference in run defense and sacks.