(HT: Seer)
The dominoes keep falling. Current LB/TE (bound to end up a DE, but more on that later) Taylor Calero went to camp at MSU this week, got an offer, and committed in the past couple days. This was first reported on Spartan Tailgate, and went through the typical stages of verification when these commitments are first posted on message boards: The announcement of the commitment by one poster, the rebuttal by others, the original poster claiming he has a source on the inside, and more rebuttal. This repeats until one of two things happens - the commitment doesn't occur and the poster gets shamed into lurking, or Scout/Rivals confirms the commitment. This time, the latter won out. Anyways, here's what the recruiting services have on Taylor after the jump.
Scout - 1 star, not ranked nationally or at his position
Rivals - No stars, not ranked positionally or nationally
ESPN - Grade of 40, not ranked positionally or nationally
All these rankings seem to indicate one thing on Calero - that they haven't gotten around to looking at his video or ranking him yet. Expect that to change within the next month or so now that he's committed. When you get a look at his measurables though, you're going to wonder why he flew under the radar.
- 6'3", 230 lbs.
- 4.66 in the 40
- Bench max of 315
- 34" vertical
- 3.2 GPA
That's a whole lot of WOW right there. With that frame, he'll put on 20-30 lbs. in no time at MSU and his linebacking days will be over. Calero's from Southfield Christian, a class C school in Michigan with an enrollment of 332. Thus, the reason he probably didn't get a whole lot of attention this season is due to the league in which he plays. Matt Dorsey reported that Taylor first started to gain attention at a combine in March:
Calero measured in at 6-foot-3, 230 pounds at the combine. He ran 40 yards in 4.6 seconds, had a 34-inch vertical jumped and bench pressed 225 pounds 11 repetitions. Those numbers are very similar to those by Spartans defensive end Brandon Long at the same stage of development. Long wowed NFL scouts last week with his speed and strength at the Michigan State Pro Day.
4.6 sounds accurate as well if you look at his highlight video at the top of the page. He's got the lateral quickness to take down running back to the side as well as the ability to blow past the offensive line (disclaimer - he's probably playing against class C schools, but it's still nice to see) After the combine, he spoke briefly to the Fire Up Chips! blog at MLive about the recruiting process in April:
Hopefully I will have made a decision on where I am going by the time our football season starts. I want to be able to be focused on my team during the season...Out of the schools that I have been in contact with, the ones at the top of my list as of now are Michigan State, Central Michigan, and Bowling Green.
MSU's the only major conference school on that list, so it's no surprise that once he got that offer, he was in the bag. I'd look for him to be a mid-three star prospect once he gets ranked due to the video and his under-the-radar status; it's rare that Rivals will give four stars to someone they haven't seen since February. As for his spot on the team right now? There's only one senior, Trevor Anderson, and one junior, Colin Neely, at defensive end for the Spartans in 2009. The rest either have freshman or sophomore eligiblity: Tyler Hoover, David Rolf( moved from LB), Johnathan Strayhorn, Todd Anderson, Drew Stevens, and Cameron Jude. Plus, Will Gholston committed, so you can add him to the list as well.
It's definitely looking like a redshirt will be in the cards for Calero, but the good news is that if my memory serves me, the only person on that list who was hyped as a DE was Hoover. Calero has the advantage of knowing where he'll play in college opposed to some of the others I mentioned, so he'll put in time on the line from the beginning. My best guess - he redshirts the 2010 season, and competes for the two-deep in 2011.