Just hours after landing the top-ranked recruit in his 2027 class, Michigan State head coach Pat Fitzgerald missed out on another top target.
The Spartans landed four-star offensive lineman Caleb Johnson on Saturday afternoon but later in the day, three-star wide receiver target Isaiah Alvarez committed to a Big Ten foe.
Alvarez, a three-star receiver from New Jersey, had a final four of Nebraska, Colorado, Rutgers, and Michigan State and he announced his decision on Saturday. He chose home-state Rutgers over the Spartans who he visited on May 29 to kick off official visit season.
The decision doesn’t come as a huge surprise given that he didn’t visit Nebraska, he saw back in mid-May, and he was fresh off a visit to Rutgers. This is another miss for the staff in the receiver room which follows up a whiff on one of my favorite wideout targets in the class, Ronnie Gomiller, who committed to Cincinnati last week after a visit.
Alvarez is ranked the No. 728 recruit and No. 87 receiver in the 2027 class.
With the commitment to Rutgers, that likely means that Michigan State is either content with what it has at receiver or there may be other guys on the board who haven’t visited campus yet. It also gives the Scarlet Knights the No. 30 class in the country with now 20 commits.
Michigan State has the No. 41 class and 14 commits. The Spartans need to step it up.
Pat Fitzgerald has a very Mark Dantonio-like first class
Fitzgerald has said multiple times that Mark Dantonio has laid out the blueprint for success at Michigan State and he seems to be following it to a T.
The new head coach has preached toughness and said that it was born in East Lansing and he’s landing recruits who he sees fitting that description. He’s also landing Midwest guys that have been overlooked by Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Notre Dame, and Indiana. Fitzgerald is also winning battles with some of those schools. There’s a good mix.
Dantonio classes would have maybe a handful of four-stars in the middle of over a dozen three-stars with chips on their shoulders.
Will this strategy work in the NIL era? I guess with the right coaching and development, absolutely. It’s definitely harder to win the way that Dantonio did it nowadays because of the money being thrown around and the introduction of the transfer portal. It’s basically free agency every offseason. Fitzgerald can’t afford to fall too far behind, talent-wise.
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