Wisconsin football recruiting: UW offers 2022 4-star DT who recently decommitted from Michigan

Recruiting is the lifeblood of any major college athletics team, but following it closely as a fan can sometimes be difficult and can often be time consuming. We’ll try and condense all the recruiting news you can use into this bi-weekly (sometimes more) post. It’ll include updates on current commits, including stats from their high school games, as well as news on players the Badgers are still pursuing. Let’s get down to business!

New offer

• 2022 4-star DT Alex VanSumeren (Essexville, Mich.) out of Garber High School announced on Tuesday night via Twitter that he has received a scholarship offer from the Wisconsin Badgers. Until last Thursday, VanSumeren was committed to the Michigan Wolverines but he announced that he was decommitting at the same time his brother Ben, a redshirt sophomore Michigan LB, announced he was entering the transfer portal.

VanSumeren has myriad offers on the table now that he has reopened his recruitment. Since Thursday, Illinois, Boston College, Oregon, Virginia, Arizona and Texas A&M have offered and he already held offers from Penn State, Michigan State, Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky and Stanford.

The defensive tackle stands around 6-foot-3 and weighs nearly 300 pounds (there are a lot of different numbers listed for him on various sites so we’re going with ballpark figures) and is rated as the No. 233 player in the nation, the No. 16 DT and the No. 4 player in the state of Michigan according to the 247Sports Composite.

His highlights are impressive, and also a little hilarious because his high school lines him up as a short-yardage running back and I pity the defender who gets in his way. He is strong, quick, agile and plays with a mean streak that you want all of your linemen to have. The way he finishes blocks on offense is a coach’s dream. He is stout at the point of attack and can also speed around slower offensive tackles to get to the quarterback. I’m sure there are some technique things that he’ll need to work on, but he’s got the size to play in the Big Ten next fall.

Since he just decommitted from Michigan under a week ago he will presumably take his time and mull his options over this time around. It’ll be interesting to see if he and his brother want to be a packaged deal.