Tag: Jalen Thompson

Michigan State listed in top 5 for Detroit 2023 4-star DL Jalen Thompson

The Spartans are still in the hunt for one of the top players from Michigan in the 2023 class

The Spartans are still in the hunt for one of the top players from Michigan in the 2023 class.

Four-star defensive lineman Jalen Thompson announced his top five schools list on Saturday, and Michigan State made the cut. The Spartans were joined by Ohio State, Pitt, Cincinnati and Penn State.

Thompson ranks as the No. 2 player from Michigan in the 2023 class. He’s listed as the No. 202 overall prospect and No. 30 defensive lineman in 247Sports’ composite rankings for the 2023 class.

Michigan State is considered the favorite to land Thompson based on 247Sports’ crystal ball predictions. However, those predictions weren’t entered recently so things could have changed since then so we’ll have to wait and see how things play out for Thompson.

Contact/Follow us @The SpartansWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Michigan state news, notes, and opinion. You can also follow Robert Bondy on Twitter @RobertBondy5.

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Contract extension candidates for the Cardinals entering 2022

The Cardinals have a few key players entering contract years. Here are a few of the players the team will look to extend this summer.

The Arizona Cardinals have recently been in the business of extending their own homegrown talent and they’ll likely be doing more of that this season.

The team typically negotiates new deals during training camp and the weeks leading up to the regular season. Once the season starts, however, the front office is typically focused on winning games.

Here’s a look at the main contract extension candidates for the Cardinals entering training camp.

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Jalen Thompson left off NFL’s most underrated defenders list

Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar chose an All-Pro and a Pro Bowler at safety for his underrated defenders over the unheralded Jalen Thompson.

The Arizona Cardinals had a top defense for the first half of last season before injuries took their toll. They had Pro Bowlers in Chandler Jones and Budda Baker, and they had the big name in J.J. Watt.

But one player that doesn’t get enough attention is safety Jalen Thompson, who is one of the team’s best defensive players. He played at a Pro Bowl level last season with his 121 tackles, three interceptions and seven pass breakups.

One would think that he would be mentioned as one of the league’s most underrated players, but no. In Doug Farrar’s list of the most underrated defensive players in the NFL right now, no Cardinals player is mentioned — not even Thompson.

At safety, instead of Thompson, he includes Buffalo’s Jordan Poyer, who was an All-Pro last season, and, by definition, not underrated, and Tampa Bay’s Antoine Winfield Jr. Winfield was a Pro Bowler last season, so also not underrated.

Thompson was not considered for either.

He and Baker make arguably the best safety tandem in the league. Thompson hits hard, is a sure tackler, which makes game-changing plays only large gains.

He can catch the ball and cover.

Among the so-called underrated players, Thompson is even more underrated.

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Cardinals need big play from these 4th-year players in 2022

QB Kyler Murray tops the list, of course, but Byron Murphy, Zach Allen and Jalen Thompson all need to be great for the Cardinals to improve.

The Arizona Cardinals enter the 2022 season with expectations of doing more than fading late in the season and losing in the first round of the playoffs. To do that, as they have returned much of their roster from their 11-win 2021 season, they will need players to step up and improve.

In particular, a few fourth-year players are being counted on to take a big step forward and be great.

For some of them, it is a contract year.

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2023 4-star Detroit DL Jalen Thompson to visit MSU on Tuesday

A big-time Michigan State target in the 2023 class will be on campus on Tuesday

A big-time Michigan State target in the 2023 class will be on campus on Tuesday.

Jalen Thompson of Detroit announced via Twitter that he’ll be visiting Michigan State on Tuesday. He is a four-star defensive lineman prospect in the 2023 class, and ranked as the No. 26 defensive lineman by 247Sports.

Thompson is currently projected to end up in green and white, but does hold offers from numerous other big-time programs. He has 27 offers, with schools like Cincinnati, Michigan, Arkansas and Arizona State already extending him an offer.

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In-state 4-star DE Jalen Thompson includes Michigan State in top 10

MSU has made the top-ten for one of the top in-state targets in the 2023 recruiting class

Michigan State made a splash in its defensive line recruiting this past week, landing top-150 ranked Andrew Depaepe and now they are in hot pursuit for an in-state 4-star to pair with him.

Jalen Thompson is a native of Detroit, attending Cass Tech High School. He is a 4-star prospect that is ranked as the No. 161 overall player in the 2023 recruiting class according to the 247Sports composite rankings.

Thompson released his top-ten schools on Friday and the Spartans were included.

The Spartans were included in the top ten alongside Pitt, Penn State, Arkansas, Michigan, Kentucky, USC, Cincinnati, Georgia and Vanderbilt.

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3 Cardinals defenders get proven performance salary escalator in 2022

Byron Murphy, Zach Allen and Jalen Thompson all get raises of more than $1 million over their originally scheduled 2022 salaries.

The Arizona Cardinals will have to pay three of their young defenders a little more than their contracts originally called for in 2022. Thanks to proven performance escalators, defensive lineman Zach Allen, cornerback Byron Murphy and safety Jalen Thompson all will get a nice raise in their fourth season in the NFL.

Murphy, a second-round pick in the 2019 draft, was scheduled to receive a salary of more than $1.58 million. Allen, a third-rounder in 2019, was due to make more than $1.1 million in salary, while Thompson, a supplemental fifth-round selection in 2019, was going to make the league minimum of $965,000.

Thanks to what is called a proven performance escalator, players drafted in the second round or later can get a fourth-year salary bump in three scenarios, based on playing time or making a Pro Bowl.

It prevents these draft picks from being penalized for being drafted.

An undrafted player becomes a restricted free agent after three years and, if tendered, makes more than $2.5 million in his fourth season. Someone drafted in the second round or later would be locked into a salary in Year 4, ranging from the league minimum to the more than $1.5 million that Murphy was scheduled to make.

There are three tiers of proven performance escalators.

For Tier 1, a second-round pick must play in 60% of the team’s offensive or defensive snaps in two of three seasons. After the second round, the average is 35% to reach that tier.

Allen and Thompson each reached Tier 1, according to Over the Cap. Allen played in only 12.9% of the Cardinals’ defensive snaps in 2019 but hit 45.4% and 63.0% in each of the last two seasons.

Thompson played in 53.2% of the defensive snaps as a rookie in 2019, but injuries in 2020 limited him to 20.9%. In 2021, he played 90.7% of the defensive snaps.

As a result, both will be paid the same as a low-level restricted free agent tender, which will be $2.54 million in 2022. Both more than double their expected salary.

Murphy hit Tier 2, which is playing at least 55% of the team’s offensive or defensive snaps in all three seasons. He played in 97.6%, 71.6% and 88.9% of the Cardinals’ defensive snaps in his first three seasons.

Tier 2 players get $250,000 more than Tier 1 players, so he will make $2.79 million in 2022, an increase of more than $1.2 million over his originally scheduled salary.

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Why the Arizona Cardinals’ defense is the secret to their 4-0 start

The Cardinals’ offense is the talk of the league, but don’t overlook the impact of Vance Joseph’s defense on the NFL’s final unbeaten team.

Going into their Week 4 matchup with the Rams at SoFi Stadium, the Cardinals knew exactly what they were up against. Arizona hadn’t beaten their NFC West rivals since Week 17 of the 2016 season, when Bruce Arians was their head coach, and current Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury was coaching some guy named Patrick Mahomes at Texas Tech. And this wasn’t your daddy’s Rams with Jared Goff at quarterback — the Rams, of course, weaponized Sean McVay’s passing game with the offseason trade for Matthew Stafford, and that had already provided a massive difference in that offense. Kingsbury’s offense is up to the challenge against any opponent with Kyler Murray in charge, but if the Cardinals were to get off this epic schneid, their defense would have to step up something fierce.

It’s an underrated defense that has the Cardinals as the NFL’s last undefeated team, a title they held after a 37-20 win in which Stafford was limited to 26 completions in 41 attempts for 280 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 89.5 — by far his worst this season to date. It’s an underrated defense because in 2020, the Cardinals ranked 10th in Defensive DVOA, but there wasn’t the kind of lockdown, coordinated defense you can count on from week to week. Multiplicity had players at loose ends at times, and though defensive coordinator Vance Joseph certainly knows what he’s doing, it didn’t always show up on the field.

This year is very different. The Cardinals rank sixth in Defensive DVOA, and third against the pass, behind only the Bills and Patriots. They rank sixth in the NFL in third-down conversion rate allowed, up from 12th in 2020, and while they’ll give up the occasional touchdown in coverage, when you’re averaging a league-high 35 points per game, giving up 21.3 points per game, ninth-best in the NFL, makes the math work just fine.

When a defense moves from situation-neutral at best to an absolute reason a team is undefeated through four games, it’s a good time to look at how it was contracted, and why everything is working so well. In the case of the Cardinals, it’s a lot of moving parts coming together at the perfect time — coaches matching scheme to personnel, young players jumping several floors in their development, and smart veteran additions to the mix.

Cardinals hurting at safety with recent injuries

The Cardinals entered Friday’s preseason game with three safeties. A fourth got hurt at the end of the game.

The Arizona Cardinals had a number of players who were not in the lineup at all in their second preseason game, a 17-10 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

They played their starters but for only a couple of series defensively, but safety Jalen Thompson continued playing after the starters left.

At first, it looked like it would be because he could use preseason reps. He didn’t get an offseason when he was selected in the supplemental draft in 2019 and last year no one had an offseason. Then, during the regular season, Thompson missed most of the year with a bad ankle.

However, upon asking Kliff Kingsbury after the game about Thompson’s playing time, while he indicated Thompson could use the work, his snap count had nothing to do with that. It was because they “were down three safeties.”

Chris Banjo, Deionte Thompson and rookie James Wiggins all did not play on Friday. Banjo suffered a hamstring injury in the preseason opener but Thompson’s and Wiggins’ injuries are not known.

A fourth safety, Shawn Williams, left the game late in the fourth quarter with an injury, forcing the Cardinals to use back-of-the-roster cornerback Picasso Nelson at safety to finish the game.

The Cardinals do need to make five more cuts by Tuesday, but if they only have three healthy safeties — Budda Baker, Jalen Thompson and Charkles Washington — we can expect to see them sign one or two at the start of next week.

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Cardinals training camp preview: The safeties

We take a look at the safety position for the Cardinals and break down the players, questions and likely roles on the team entering the season.

The Arizona Cardinals continue the second week of training camp and we continue to look at each position group on the team, breaking down who is on the roster, what they did in 2020, what questions there are at the position, where the position battles are and the outlook for the roster.

Next up are the safeties.

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