Leach puts finishing touches on 2020 MSU class
What former Mississippi State head coach Joe Moorhead started in December, new MSU head man Mike Leach finished on Wednesday's traditional National Signing Day.
Leach and the Bulldogs have put the finishing touches on their 2020 signing class by inking four more players, bringing the class to a total of 26 guys when including the 22 individuals who jumped on board with State two months ago in the early signing period. According to the 247Sports composite rankings, MSU wrapped up Wednesday with the country's 27th-best signing class in the country.
Graduate transfer quarterback from Stanford, K.J. Costello, was the biggest name to become a Bulldog on Wednesday. He was joined by a trio of three-star players including Starkville High School standout wide receiver Rufus Harvey,
Mississippi Delta Community College safety Kyle Cass and Fort Pierce, Florida, defensive end Jamari Stewart.
Costello was the headliner of State's most recent haul. The signal caller verbally committed to MSU on Monday after three incredibly productive years at Stanford. A two-time team captain with the Cardinal, Costello has one season of eligibility left and comes to MSU with 6,151 career passing yards and 49 career touchdown passes. He was Stanford's starting quarterback in 2018 and put together one of the best seasons in school history, ending the year with second team All-pac-12 honors. He was again the starter last season before injuries derailed his year.
Costello is an incredibly accurate passer and likely stands as the favorite to earn MSU'S starting quarterback job in 2020. Leach wasn't ready to commit to that on Wednesday, but he was sure happy to have Costello headed to Starkville.
“Once he went in the (transfer) portal, we contacted him,” Leach said of Costello. “We were very familiar with his high school. We've had good success with players from that school.
“He was looking for a place where he'd have the chance to be able to throw the ball more and so we feel fortunate to have him. The dialogue kind of happened naturally. We already knew a bunch of the same people, including his head football coach, who I thought was a great coach. So it went. It was a good deal. We're thrilled to have him.”
Joining Costello at MSU will be another player who signed on Wednesday that could end up being one of Costello's future targets in the form of Harvey. Harvey is no stranger to the city of Starkville after compiling one of the best careers for a receiver in SHS history. The Yellow Jacket wide out is ranked as the No. 3 receiver in Mis
sissippi by 247Sports. He’s coming off a senior season at SHS in which he caught 75 passes for a whopping 1,066 yards and 16 touchdowns. Harvey is only the third 1,000-yard-plus receiver in Starkville High School history. Now, he’ll try and move that success just up the road over to MSU.
“He’s really good with the ball in his hands,” Leach said of
Harvey. “I think that’d be the quickest way to describe him. He’s a pretty complete player as far as being productive on special teams and on offense. It’s kind of like in some plays, it’d be inexplicable how it happened, but he’s very productive with the ball in his hands.”
A pair of defensive players in Cass and Stewart completed MSU’S Wednesday group. Cass is rated as the nation’s 23rdranked junior college cornerback. He’s thought of as a player with tremendous versatility with great size and length.
“(He’s a) very complete player,” Leach said of Cass. “He’s physically built and an explosive guy.”
Stewart is versatile as well. He has the ability to play both linebacker and defensive end. Stewart was ranked as the county’s No. 34 weak-side defensive end according to 247Sports.
“(He’s a) tall, long defensive end,” Leach said of Stewart. “Those guys are always dynamic in pass rush. Plus they get bigger.”
Despite adding Costello, Harvey, Cass and Stewart on Wednesday, MSU still has room to add more talent later should the opportunity arise. Leach said the Bulldogs are keeping an open mind an an eye out in the days ahead for anyone else that might could help State.
“We still have a couple of scholarships remaining if potential kids pop up, which we did deliberately because lately there have been kids pop up from one year to the next,” Leach said. “We didn’t want to diminish all of our options.”
For now though, MSU’S first signing class that will play under Leach seems essentially complete. Somewhat amazingly, despite a coaching change from Moorhead to Leach between the early signing period and Wednesday, the Bulldogs lost only one Moorhead signee. That was defensive lineman Ben
Key who opted to back away from his pledge to MSU and play at Missouri instead.
Leach said he and his staff made a strong effort to keep all of Moorhead’s signees in the Bulldog boat and it paid off.
“There were 10 (already enrolled) on campus, then we went and saw all the others that had signed,” Leach said. “I deliberately did that because I wanted them to feel secure about their decision, then the other thing is, we started getting acquainted with them and their families. Even though I kind of missed that official window, I tried to make up for lost time. It was a very busy and vigorous twoand-a-half weeks covering as much ground as we could, then prior to that, I called them all too. With regard to that, it’s never perfect. You always wish you knew somebody better, but we covered as much ground as we could and I felt like in a quality fashion quite quickly.”
The result is a class Leach is proud to have. He certainly feels as though his MSU coaching tenure is off to a solid start given the talent that the Bulldogs have signed over the last couple of months.
“We’re really impressed with the class signed and excited to have everybody on board,” Leach said.