Daniel Barker sees Michigan State football as next step to NFL. But he must do this first

EAST LANSING — Ted Gilmore delivered high praise for his newest understudy, Daniel Barker.

Even though he feels the Michigan State football tight end transfer does have one thing he needs to work on.

“Once he learns it all, once it slows down for him, this young man has some skills. And I'm glad we have him,” Gilmore said Monday. “My biggest challenge with him is to get him to be quiet.”

Barker’s opinion?

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“I mean, I got a great personality,” he said with a grin.

And talented, enough so that Barker explored entering the NFL draft before deciding to leave Illinois and play a fifth college season as a graduate transfer with the Spartans.

The 6-foot-4, 250-pound native of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, went from a three-star recruit to the Illini’s tight end career leader with 11 touchdown receptions. He finished his four seasons with 64 catches for 827 yards in 44 games, opting to test the draft after starting eight of his 13 games last season to finish with 18 receptions, a career-best 273 receiving yards and four TDs.

But in January, Barker withdrew from the draft and entered the transfer portal.

“Last year, my mind was kind of set on, ‘Yeah I'm gonna come in this year and put my best foot forward and go ahead and give (the NFL draft) a shot,’” Barker said. “But that comes with looking yourself in the mirror and making a decision that you might not want to make. You gotta evaluate everything, go through all your pros and cons and see what's the best for you after you get your grade and see what's best for you.

“And I kind of thought coming back one more year, even though I didn't want to and that was not the plan, but I knew I had to come back and be able to showcase my full ability and everything that I could do.”

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Enter MSU.

Coach Mel Tucker mined the portal to turn the Spartans into an 11-win team in 2021. Barker quickly established a relationship with Tucker and Gilmore, committing to them Jan. 31, less than two weeks after going into the portal.

“I ended up watching the Peach Bowl game, and I love the stuff that they did with the tight ends,” Barker said. “I researched all the background, and I just fell in love with everybody on the coaching staff and everything.”

In that 31-21 win over Pitt, quarterback Payton Thorne connected with Connor Heyward five times for 37 yards, including a 15-yard touchdown pass down the seam. He also hit Maliq Carr twice for 35 yards, including a 25-yarder.

Heyward moved from running back to tight end a little more than a week before camp last fall and blossomed into a sixth-round pick of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Carr returns for his second season at MSU after transferring from Purdue, where he played wide receiver, and converted kicker/punter Tyler Hunt is back for a sixth season after making four starts in 2021 and three the year before.

But Barker is a proven veteran tight end, one who already understands the nuances of the position, from strong blocking on the edge to stealthy footwork on pass routes to steady hands to make catches in heavy traffic and through hearty contact.

Even though Gilmore said becoming a better blocker is one of those things Barker needs to get to that next phase as a player who can be attractive to NFL scouts.

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“He'll be the first to tell you, 'Coach, I've never done that. I wasn't asked to do that.’ We're asking him to do everything,” Gilmore said. “I think the place he left used him in a certain way, more of a situational guy, and we're asking him to learn everything and do everything. I think we're put more information on him, so he's having to put more time in the classroom. And he's embraced it. I challenged him, and he's answering the bell.

“So that's what I mean by slowing down. It's once he knows our system and what he's supposed to do and don't second-guess himself, then he can play a lot faster. But I'm very excited that he's here.”

So are his new teammates, who agreed with Gilmore’s assessment of Barker’s ebullient personality.

“Oh, yeah, he's always talking, always joking around,” Hunt said. “He's gonna help us out this year for sure, the run and pass game.

“DJ is a big athletic guy. He's got a lot of experience with coming from Illinois. Just making sure he knows a little things on offense is what I've tried to help him with the most. ... He gets the bigger concepts pretty well, but it's just those small details of (how) different plays can change this much on certain looks.”

Barker also adds another red-zone weapon for Thorne, who set an MSU single-season mark with 27 touchdown passes last season. The junior completed 57 of his passes to Heyward, Hunt and Carr, who combined for three TDs and 597 yards.

And Barker feels that Gilmore, who spend three of his 27 years as a coach working with the Raiders’ receivers in the NFL, can put him in position to reach his ultimate dream.

“I think everything is repetition,” Barker said. “I'm kind of a veteran guy and I've been doing this for a while. … It's more of doing it exactly how my coach is teaching me to do it, and doing what my coach is telling me and being able to trust the process to be able to get to where I want to get. Coach has a reputation of being a coach in the NFL and next level, so I know what he's telling me is the right thing. So I want to be able to do it, and do it to the best of my ability and do it at 100%.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tight end Daniel Barker sees Michigan State football as step to NFL