The nickname stuck.

"He said I was built like a Dually Truck, so we just put “Big Dually” in there, and we went on with that," Phillips said. "Yeah, it just kind of stuck there.”

Phillips is the first commit of the 2022 class for the Spartan football program. He's a three-star recruit according to Rivals and plays football in the state that new Head Coach Mel Tucker has begun to focus on in the recruiting game: Georgia.

Phillips is going to be a senior at Salem High School in Georgia, the state that current MSU football players Ricky White, Connor Heyward, Chris Jackson, Tre Person, Shakur Brown, Simeon Barrow and Jordan Simmons all hail from.

"Michigan State has been a school that I always wanted to go to," Phillips said. "It’s been one of my dream schools. You know, Michigan State, me and Coach (Kapilovic) have a pretty good relationship."

The relationship paid off, Phillips committed to MSU on Sunday, Nov. 8.

"In talking with Coach Kap (Kapilovic), I mean, it was really nothing about football mainly," Phillips said. "It was mainly about getting my grades and stuff like that. So, Coach Kap is real big on football, but also he’s worried about my grades."

He's a shot and discus thrower for his high school track team and plays a little basketball. He might be built like a 4x4 truck, but Phillips says what he brings to the table is closer to a sports car.

"I’m very agile for a big man," Phillips said. "So, I think mainly what I can bring to the table is strength and speed because I’m very quick."

His other offers included Arizona State and Delaware State, according to 247Sports. 

His high school season isn't over, but he's focused on what he needs to improve on.

"The main thing that I’m really trying to improve on now is flexibility, that’s one of the biggest … problems that I have right now, it's my flexibility," Phillips said. "So, that's one of the most important things that I actually got to work on during this offseason."

As an offensive lineman, he joins fellow offensive line recruits Ethan Boyd, Geno VanDeMark and Kevin Wigenton who all committed as members of the class of 2021.

The commitment came on the eve of maybe Tucker's biggest recruiting win as a first-year head coach.

Rayshaun Benny, a four-star out of Oak Park, Michigan, committed on Monday afternoon, giving Tucker his first top-200 national recruit in the class of 2021 that now has 19 total recruits with the additions of Steffan Johnson and Brandon Baldwin.