EAST LANSING – Everything old is new again.
A new coach seeking a return to past glory. A new quarterback looking to prove himself. Massive roster turnover with a lot of new faces, from many different places.
And a lot of the same concerns that have been prevalent for Michigan State football since the late 2010s and the end of College Football Hall of Famer Mark Dantonio’s legendary tenure. A golden era Jonathan Smith hopes to return the Spartans to.
Someday. Maybe soon, maybe not.
For now, much like in 2007 when Dantonio took over a program left in tatters (from a different Smith, John L.) and eventually turned it into a multi-time Big Ten champion and national title contender, the building blocks for the new Smith are clear.
The first step to achieving close to what Dantonio did – making a bowl game in all but one of his 13 seasons, winning three Big Ten titles and earning a spot in the four-team College Football Playoff – is to rediscover consistency at the granular level.
“We want to be in a constant state of improvement and build it the right way,” Smith said last week at Big Ten media days in Indianapolis.
MSU opens practice Tuesday morning, one month out from the Friday night Aug. 30 season-opener at home against Florida Atlantic (7 p.m./Big Ten Network). Here are five storylines to follow as the Spartans prepare to see if Smith 2.0 can become extraordinary like Dantonio did.
Regime change
A year ago, Mel Tucker arrived at the start of practice for the 2023 season dealing with questions about his quarterback, offensive line, running game and defense coming off a second season in three years without going to a bowl game.
“Oftentimes,” Tucker said at Big Ten media days in July 2023, “you have to get kicked in the face before you can be great.”
Plenty more face-kicking ensued. For the coach, the team and the university.
Two games into the season, Tucker was suspended and eventually got the boot after embarrassing Title IX allegations of off-field indiscretions, sending an already wobbly program into a downward spiral. MSU missed the postseason again and finished 4-8, with interim head coach and alum Harlon Barnett and all but one coach from Tucker’s staff dismissed after the season.
Enter Smith, whose job now is to clean up a mess on both sides of the ball.
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MSU’s offense scored just 15.9 points per game, the Spartans’ lowest average since 1991, and averaged a program-worst 89.5 rushing yards. Their defense gave up a school record 713 yards against CFP runner-up Washington and allowed more than 413 yards per game in four years under Tucker, a former NFL and college defensive coordinator. MSU got outscored 170-10 and outgained 2,306-693 in four games last fall against the Huskies, national champion Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State.
“All of us are competitive, so we don’t have a long patience for (not) playing quality football,” Smith said. “At the same time, I think you’re always building. You’re starting somewhere, you’re going to create a foundation, and then you’re building off of that. So I’m looking forward to that approach of we built something before.
“Not going to panic on the first adversity we see – understanding that, yeah, sometimes there is a process to it.”
Like Tucker did after his pandemic-disrupted first season in 2020, Smith and his staff are undergoing a massive roster overhaul. The Spartans have lost 38 players to the transfer portal, including more than a dozen with starting experience at MSU, since last season. That includes 21 since the spring. The new staff brought in 24 replacements via the portal, as well as a group of freshmen who could see the field early out of necessity.
How all those new faces gel on the field remains to be seen, as does whether Smith’s offensive-minded approach will play in the smashmouth Big Ten. So what does a successful debut look like for Smith?
“Winning. Winning more than we lose,” he said. “Playing our best football at the end of the year. We want to be in a constant state of improvement.”
Chiles’ time
Easily, the Spartans’ biggest offseason roster addition is transfer quarterback Aidan Chiles, who followed Smith from Oregon State after seeing action in nine games last season as a true freshman. The 6-foot-3, 217-pound California native was ranked the No. 8 transfer, according to 247Sports.com’s portal rankings.
Chiles takes over a quarterback spot that was a disaster last season after Payton Thorne’s post-spring transfer to Auburn in 2023. Former Dantonio recruit Noah Kim started early and was overmatched against Power Five competition before getting hurt, then redshirt freshman Katin Houser took over and struggled mightily. Those two, along with true freshman Sam Leavitt, all bolted for the portal shortly after Smith’s hiring, which came a day after MSU’s season ended with a 42-0 loss to Penn State on Nov. 24.
It was the final mark of the Tucker ear, as his staff went out with a splat that told the story of the post-Dantonio era – a third shutout defeat in four seasons and second of 2023, the Spartans’ worst single-game offensive output in program history (53 yards…
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