Breaking down Berghorst's decision and what it means

Adam Berghorst’s decision to resist an offer from the Texas Rangers as a 14th-round Major League Baseball draft pick was welcomed news for Michigan State football and baseball.

The 6-foot-7, 265-pound Berghorst announced via Twitter on Sunday night that he will be enrolling at Michigan State for the upcoming school year rather than signing with the Rangers. Berghorst, of Zeeland (Mich.) East High school, is a football scholarship athlete who will double as a baseball player for the Spartans.

The Rangers’ offer was not disclosed, but Berghorst and his family weighed the options for more than a month after he was drafted on June 5. Berghorst announced his intentions to enroll at Michigan State on Sunday, on a day in which many of his incoming freshman classmates reported to East Lansing for summer workouts and classes. Berghorst joined them in reporting to MSU on Sunday and he enrolled today.

“I felt most importantly I wanted to get my education first and take care of,” Berghorst told SpartanMag.com. “Also, I wanted to be a part of a a Big Ten football team and play in this program.”

Berghorst is ranked the No. 15 player in Michigan for the class of 2019 and the No. 5 strongside defensive end in the Midwest by Rivals.com.

It was important for Michigan State to hang onto Berghorst as a defensive end prospect. With a need at the position, Michigan State signed three defensive ends in 2019 including Berghorst, Flint's Michael Fletcher and Farmington Hills' Maverick Hansen, who was an 11th-hour decommitment from Central Michigan.

Michigan State was late in getting in on Ruke Orhorhoro of River Rouge, who ended up signing with Clemson. Michigan State was in good position to get a commitment from Darius Robinson of Canton, Mich., but the Spartans seemed to slow play him at the end and was willing to let him get away to Missouri.

Michigan State lost out to Illinois for Keith Randolph of Belleville, Ill., and Gabe Newburg of Lexington, Ohio selected Michigan.

The Spartans did well to beat out Michigan and Notre Dame for Berghorst, but the most difficult part of the journey for the Spartans might have been keeping their fingers crossed as a bystander while the Texas Rangers made their pitch.

“I arrived at my decision by negotiating back and forth with the Rangers and then last Thursday just sat and slept on the decision and felt MSU was best for me,” Berghorst said.

Terms of the Rangers' offer have not been made public. The pure college experience was something he didn’t want to miss.

“The relationships and lessons in college are hard to replace, so with all that, I felt best to go to Michigan State,” he said.

His baseball dreams have not ended.

“I think I can still develop my body a lot more and work my pitching, so there is room to hopefully have this happen again but go higher (in the draft),” he said.

In the meantime, Michigan State football will put him on a weight training regimen to develop as a defensive end. Berghorst will be looking to develop as a football lineman while retaining flexibility to help him as a pitcher.

“I’m not exactly sure how it’s all going to work yet but they are aware,” Berghorst said of MSU’s strength coaches. “I have talked about it with them and hopefully we will get it figured out.”

Mark Dantonio has not been reached to comment about Berghorst’s decision, but said this about Berghorst in December on signing day:

“Adam is a very long, athletic and active player. He uses his hands very well. He can really accelerate out of his pass-rush to track people down.”

Michigan State defensive ends coach Chuck Bullough handled MSU’s recruitment of Berghorst, after tight ends coach Mark Staten kicked things off with the West Michigan athlete.

“Adam is a long athlete with a tremendous upside,” Bullough said. “He’s also a very intelligent football player.”

On the baseball field, he struck out 80 batters in 49 innings pitched with a 0.71 earned run average. He has a fastball that touches 90 miles an hour.

Berghorst was my initial pick as the most underrated member of this recruiting class, but the MLB Draft noise brought him back into the headlines for the spring and summer and erased the underrated nature of his commitment.

Beating Michigan and Notre Dame for a recruit used to be major news in Michigan State football circles, and it still is. Berghorst made his decision in April of his junior year. If he had waited until signing week to decide, his recruitment would have blown up the internet. But he’s not an attention-seeker. He committed to Michigan State before his recruitment became a three-ring circus.

This is what I wrote about Berghorst after watching his junior film last year:

COMP's TAKE, April 2018: When turning on his film for the first time, knowing about the 6-foot-7 frame and that baby face, I didn’t expect to see the one- and two-step quickness that Berghorst possesses. But he’s got quite a bit.

Tall, young guys usually develop speed and agility later in their athletic maturation. Berghorst is already ahead of the curve in that department. He’s uncommon.

His quickness would be good for someone who is 6-2 or 6-3. For him to move as well as he does as a 6-foot-7, as a three-sport guy just barely scratching the surface of his potential, provides all the reason necessary for the likes of Michigan State, Michigan and Notre Dame to offer during the winter of his junior year.

In addition to a good take-off, which is only going to improve, he has upper body quickness to match it. And he uses it with a nice arm-over move. He has head-and-shoulder quickness to cross your face and one-gap to the inside.

Change of direction? Watch him come unblocked from the backside and turn on a dime to track a tailback.

He’ll learn to play lower when coming out of his three-point stance. But he has the capacity to do so, judging by his ability to bend his knees in an instant and get low to deliver a big blow when encountering a sudden blocker.

* He can rag doll you when he gets ahold of you in the backfield.

At the line of scrimmage, he’s not yet powerful enough to blow people up within a phone booth. But that is likely to come as he matures and adds mass. He’s 240 pounds, probably on his way to 280.

His practice time has been spread over three sports, but he’s managed to harness an impressive skill set as a d-lineman to go with that uncommon (for a tall guy) quickness and agility.

“(I) have heard that a lot, actually,” Berghorst said at the time. “Many coaches have said the same. I’ve worked hard to get those moves working.”

I had to ask who’s responsible for coaching him up on the d-line.

“His name is John Fusco,” Berghorst said of the assistant coach who oversees him at Zeeland East. “My high school d-line coach does a great job with that. I do off-season stuff with him and have done lots of speed work, agility with top guys. I think that helped.”

**

As for comparisons, he is more sudden, quicker, than Tyler Hoover was at the same age. Hoover was a 6-foot-7, 265-pound, four-star recruit from Novi High School who committed to Michigan State over Michigan and Notre Dame in 2007, marking Dantonio’s first recruiting victory over the Wolverines. Soon after Hoover committed to Michigan State, however, he was downgraded to three-star.

Hoover took time to develop at Michigan State. He was serviceable at defensive end, but didn’t have the explosiveness to excel at that position. He added weight and strength and found a home as a defensive tackle, a position where he had better comparative athleticism. He started for MSU’s 2013 Rose Bowl team. His late-career development was a major reason why the 2013 team’s defense went from good to great and the Spartans finished ranked No. 3 in the national polls.

Berghorst isn’t as thick as Hoover was in high school, but he is more athletic. Berghorst’s secondary position for college would be offensive tackle, something Dantonio and Staten have already discussed with Berghorst.

He’s a guy with options - in more than one sport. His frame and athleticism makes it that way.

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As for his ranking - he has the frame, levers, feet, and base technique to be a four-star, but I wouldn’t expect it to happen for him. He plans to attend only one camp this summer.

“Probably just the school that I commit to,” he said. “It’s tough (to attend camps) with baseball tournaments every weekend.”

He needn’t worry about camps and rankings. He just needs to do what he’s been doing. That’s been working just fine so far.

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COMP's TAKE, July 2019: After watching his senior film, it’s clear that playing with extra weight as a senior agreed with Berghorst. He’s filling out nicely. He won collisions more easily and dominantly as a senior. He also improved his ability to play low and bring the back leg through during contact.

The ability to win collisions made his head-and-shoulder quickness more of an asset. He could get blockers worried about his quickness, and then win collisions with aggressive force.

What you see over-and-over on his senior film is that he has the one-step quickness and head-and-shoulder moves to gain a half step on you, and then the strength to maintain, and the ankle and hip flexibility to turn the corner and continue to accelerate while converging on the QB or RB, and then wrap with power. That's his pass rush game.

In terms of playing the run, he had more than enough power at the high school level. He could play heavy when one-gapping, almost two-gapping it, and control blockers while reading. As an offensive blocker, he was dominant, low, strong and mean.

In terms of hitting checkboxes, he is far ahead of the curve for a 6-foot-7 teen-ager.

He’s not a finished product, but he has a lot of tools and a high ceiling. He’s an intriguing prospect who projects to have the strength to play the strong side, but will be able to shed blocks and translate from the run game to the pass rush nicely, perhaps very nicely.