Duck Dive: Michigan State Spartans Football 2025 Preview

Special thanks to Jonathan Schopp, contributor emeritus to Spartan Nation, for joining me to discuss Michigan State’s roster on this week’s podcast:

In my time observing Coach Smith build up his alma mater Oregon State from a team that went 3-21 in the two years just before and after he arrived to one that had 18 wins over his final two seasons, I’d mapped out several patterns and habits in his running of the program on the field and planning the roster well in advance. Over several preview articles in that time I had some criticism for neglecting the short-term roster construction while focusing solely on the long-term — I think a manager can successfully do both at once — but certainly thought that Michigan State knew what they were getting when they hired Smith for the 2024 season.

Most of what I saw in East Lansing last year played out as expected for a “win in 2026” plan of steady and piecemeal rather than immediate sweeping roster turnover and scheme change, as well as early playing time for developmental youngsters. As Jon and I discussed on the podcast, this might have come at the expense of a win or two and cost them a first-year bowl game which I’m sure disappointed some fans, but it was completely in keeping with Smith’s track record as a program builder who doesn’t pull out the stops for short-term success.

At the conclusion of the 2024 action most of the early offseason moves, in terms of retaining the same staff and Winter transfer activity, looked like a continuation of the plan and what would be standard operation for Smith going into the second of a three-year buildup. But in what Jon called “a lightning bolt of urgency” striking at the end of April, MSU fired the athletic director who’d hired Smith, Alan Haller, and at the time we recorded and press time for this article, has not yet hired a replacement. Jon and I both concluded that not only will there be an acceleration in Smith’s operational tempo for the 2025 season — making and winning a bowl game now seems like a must, to impress the new boss — there are observable changes in the way that Smith used the Spring portal window to reshape the roster and alter the plan.

While in 2024 Smith certainly used the Spring transfer period to acquire more talent including several starters, the focus at that time seemed to be on higher profile players with multiple years of remaining eligibility — 11 of the 13 were from Power conferences, including several former bluechips, and all but three were sophomores or juniors — and so those have simply been incorporated into the regular developmental pipeline. In 2025, the post-Spring practice transfer profile looks very different: seven new additions of whom six appear to be on their final season of eligibility, and almost all are from Group of 5, FCS, or the Juco level. This appears to be an attempt to immediately infuse the program with some experienced albeit lower ceiling players who don’t disrupt the development of the younger ones.

Throughout the podcast we tried to identify spots where, prior to the change in plans, Smith might have played the entire 2025 season with a younger guy and accepted the risk that came with it as worth the long-term developmental benefits, but now might use a lower profile veteran to avoid stumbles. This kind of tempo and operating without rock solid job security is something we haven’t really seen from Smith before, and it will be interesting to see how he handles the novelty.

The true sophomore bluechip quarterback whom Smith brought from Oregon State, #2 QB Chiles, showed both the expected potential and rookie mistakes in his first full season as a starter. He finished the year with a 128.7 NCAA passer rating, close to a full standard deviation below FBS median for a starter, with an obvious big arm for hitting the deep ball but frequent issues with accuracy and control. In the statistical subcomponents of passer rating, Chiles’ completion percentage at about 59% is in line with with the overall number, also about a standard deviation below median, while his TD per attempt at 4.02% and INT per attempt at 3.41% are even worse rates at about -1.25 z-score, but his 7.47 yards per attempt comes in almost exactly at median. That’s statistical support for what any observer could plainly see – MSU was hit-or-miss in the passing game, but when they connected it was for a big gain.

Chiles returns for his junior year in 2025 and the history of quarterback development suggests — as Jon stressed a few times on the podcast — that now’s the time when Chiles is likely to take the biggest step forward that he’s going to in his career, and determine whether he’s going to be a star and future NFL player or not. My expectation is that we’ll see some progress, but how much and how soon is anybody’s guess – he’s got a lot of command to develop. I’ve written repeatedly over the years about how poorly quarterbacks progressed under Smith’s longtime OC/QB coach Lindgren and was interested to see that Lindgren was going to give up the QB remit in 2025, but it’ll be to QB coach Boyer who was an off-field assistant under Lindgren and Smith at Oregon State for the entire time I had that criticism to make, so I’m less than sanguine about the change.

Last year Chiles’ backup was FCS grad transfer Tommy Schuster on his final season of eligibility; although I don’t think Chiles missed any serious amount of meaningful play with injury he did have a few scary moments as he frequently left the pocket, and we saw Schuster in action somewhat more often than strictly mop-up duty as I was expecting (Jon has often mentioned in our conversations that some politics may be at play with the newly imported staff making nice with the locals, and intimated something like that could explain Schuster’s packages as he’s from around the way in Clinton Twp.)

The three other QBs in the room besides Chiles are all very green, and as mid 3-stars not as highly rated by comparison: #16 QB Jessee and #11 QB Milivojevic were recruited last cycle and redshirted, and this cycle they got #15 QB Hannan. They all seem to have similar builds at around 6’3” and 215 lbs or so, and with no playing time or anything else to distinguish them we didn’t have a lot to make a guess on who the leader for second-string might be (I double checked the recruiting timelines after speculating on the podcast that Hannan might be more of Smith’s guy; the visits and offers indicate that Smith was well involved with the redshirt freshmen too and they weren’t just holdover recruits from the previous staff). I wouldn’t be surprised if later this offseason MSU takes another grad student QB to be the backup, as there are no timeframe limitations on grad transfers.

MSU’s rush explosiveness rate jumped five percentage points in Smith’s first year, a massive improvement. I don’t believe this was a fluke, but rather part of a long observed phenomenon that I’ve documented repeatedly: Big Ten offenses are systemically terrible at explosive rushing, and it’s not Big Ten defenses that are stopping them … in fact those defenses equally fail to account for modern run game concepts such as QB read options and so are even more vulnerable when they face outsiders. To wit, there were only five Big Ten offenses in 2024 which had above the FBS median (15%) rate of 10+ yard rushing: Ohio State, Oregon, USC, Washington … and Michigan State (the one Pac-12 newcomer who missed the cut, UCLA, had hired their OC from Kansas City then fired him). The throughline is obvious – each had a playcaller who was working on the West coast in 2023 and was more familiar with surfwax than silage.

To that end, Chiles was the most effective rusher on a per-carry basis, excluding sacks and scrambles, on designed runs and option keeps – 73% success rate, 6.0 adjusted YPC, and 23% explosiveness (the success rate stays the same if QB sneaks are excluded as well, but the yardage and explosiveness climbs to 6.8 and 26.7%). He had the third most number of carries behind the two leading backs, everything else during meaningful play was just a handful of WR sweeps and a few handoffs just before garbage time commenced to a pair of then-true freshmen RBs.

The two leading rushers in 2024 were Nate Carter and Kay’Ron Lynch-Adams. Carter was brought in from UConn by the previous staff in 2023 with two years of eligibility left, he had mediocre numbers in that run scheme at 49% success and 4.1 YPC, with under 10% explosiveness. In 2024 Carter wasn’t much better of a fit for Smith’s approach, with his efficiency falling to 40% and YPC down to 3.9, though his explosiveness rose a couple points. The new staff brought in Lynch-Adams, who’d started out at Rutgers, stayed through the covid eligibility holiday then transferred to UMass for the next three seasons, and so had one year left. Lynch-Adams was a much better fit for Smith at 52% success, 4.9 YPC, and 15% explosiveness – slightly above average numbers across the board, a first at MSU since Kenneth Walker III left for the NFL after 2021. (Both Carter and Lynch-Adams signed UDFAs, with the Falcons and Panthers respectively.)

I think the Spartans could do math, and knew that they were going to have both primary backs leaving at the same time when they sought Lynch-Adams’ transfer and were recruiting two promising preps from Texas, #5 RB Frazier and #7 RB Tullis (they wore jerseys #27 and #28 respectively last year). Frazier and Tullis played in most games last year, burning their redshirts, though it was mostly garbage time and with too few meaningful carries for good statistical evaluation. My suspicion is that the plan when Smith and his staff first arrived in East Lansing was to use garbage time in 2024 and the entirety of 2025 to pivot to these two as the backs of the future, so that they’d be really primed for a breakout 2026 – this would fit the two-back and ramp-up pattern from Corvallis. In 2025, they secured a borderline 4-star recruit, #25 RB Clarizio, who’s an intriguing addition, plus a low 3-star recruit, #28 RB Gist who looks like he’s built to be a short yardage thumper, and in the Winter portal window got a very seasoned redshirt senior FCS transfer, #4 RB Tau-Tolliver who was modestly fought over on the transfer market.

Smith has never operated a single “bellcow” running back room, he’s always had a relatively even split between at least two, so in all likelihood Frazier or Tullis has one of the spots locked up. Jon had a very interesting theory on the podcast: the initial plan was for both of the leading backs from the get-go to be the sophomores, and Tau-Tolliver was just brought in to be a backup in case something went wrong. But in the new circumstances after Haller’s firing, they can’t afford the risk of a young back fumbling or missing a blitz pickup — something they might have tolerated before, a cost they were willing to pay for more developmental time because of their assured job security — and so Jon expects that now the veteran Tau-Tolliver will be one of the two starters (and probably the leader of them by a good margin) at least for the first month and perhaps longer, and we’ll only see the second of the sophomores if and when he’s completely ready to take over. If Jon’s right about that, and it seems logical to me, it would be suboptimal from Smith’s usual long-term program building perspective but might goose the early 2025 stats enough for a key win.

The tight ends return just about everyone from 2024, losing just the walk-on Ademola Faleye who transferred out and Tyneil Hopper who’d come in the previous year from Boise State but almost immediately suffered an unfortunate severe injury and then finished out this last year on special teams. The leading target was Oregon State transfer #12 TE Velling, whose numbers were just as productive as they were in Corvallis from a fundamental stats basis and as we discussed on the podcast multiple times, played an entirely appropriate and well above average role in relation to a young QB as an outlet pass catcher. The only falloff was Velling’s historically atypical redzone TD count which was a quirk of OSU’s peculiarly short WR corps in 2023 and bound to happen since MSU had wideouts taller than 5’7” (this is not hyperbole … Jon told me that certain MSU fans and superficial commentators had talked themselves into believing that Velling had magical powers to produce redzone TDs on his own and were mad that these disappeared; as always, film study and non-motivated reasoning are preferable to heartbreak).

The staff’s preferred second tight end for 12-personnel sets looked to be #81 TE Masunas — he’s a year older, I’d see him earlier in games, and his blocking grades were far better — but he was hurt late in week 4 against Boston College and it turned out to be season-ending (some reports have indicated Masunas may get a medical redshirt for the year but I haven’t been able to confirm that), and so mostly I was seeing #82 TE Parachek. Masunas hasn’t gotten enough targets for statistical evaluation but I’ve watched him for enough blocking reps as a redshirt freshman and sophomore to grade him out and there’s some room for improvement. Parachek has had very poor grades, under 20% blocking success and under 40% receiving success, as both a true freshman and true sophomore under both staffs.

I asked Jon if he thought the staff was likely to make a change to get more production here, either by shifting to 11-personnel exclusively or replacing Parachek in the rotation with the redshirt junior FCS transfer they got in the Spring window, Kai Rios. Jon said he thought it was more likely that the Spartans emphasize an upgrade in blocking in order to shore up the line rather than get a new TE to supplement Velling with additional direct receiving production. That seems like a fair take to me, it was how Smith shifted the Beavs’ offense in 2022 and 2023 after a lot of TE production in 2020 and 2021, though it’s unknown how it’ll actually play out as Masunas’ injury recovery is uncertain, we haven’t seen Rios at this level, and the only other option is redshirt freshman #84 TE Hook.

Michigan State’s wide receiver unit gave us a lot to talk about. The inconsistency from the QB perhaps kept it getting from more attention, but this was one of the most dynamic groups of big play receivers in the country. Multiple injuries caused some unexpected rotation, and young players kept coming on who showed remarkable talent … then at the end of the year, nearly the entire unit transferred out.

The one returner who got real play in 2024 is #6 WR Marsh, who as a true freshman had some of the most impressive numbers on my tally sheet of any skill player in years: a 57% success rate and 10.1 adjusted YPT. At the beginning of the year senior #0 WR Brown, a Nebraska transfer, was part of the lineup but Jon reminded me that he got hurt in a scary collision on a kickoff return and missed most of the season, then returned near the end but played in just a couple of games to preserve a redshirt – he’ll be coming back for his final year in 2025.

The rest of the room — seven scholarship receivers — have departed. The most significant are the three other major targets besides Marsh from 2024: Montorie Foster, Jaron Glover, and Aziah Johnson. Foster was on his final year of eligibility (he signed a UDFA with the Seahawks), and had some peculiar numbers as Chiles heavily favored throwing the ball to him — a plurality of targets over Marsh by four percentage points — despite the fact that Chiles was disproportionately and wildly inaccurate on throws to Foster, coming in a massive -15 percentage points in efficiency and -2.6 yards per target lower than those to Marsh (I’m fairly certain on double checking the film that this was Chiles misjudging his throws rather than Foster running routes incorrectly, but it’s not like Smith has sent me the playsheets to verify). Glover’s numbers were excellent, though used as a bit of a shorter yardage receiver than Marsh, resulting in even better efficiency at 59% though lower (but still well above FBS median) average at 8.1 adjusted YPT. Johnson was a redshirt freshman who was pressed into action by injuries to Brown and Glover but came away with very intriguing numbers, 50% success but 9.5 adjusted YPT – that is, hot-or-cold efficiency but a very big gain when he caught it.

Jon played off Johnson going to North Carolina as returning to closer to home and getting coached by an NFL legend, and Glover going to Mississippi State as an opportunity to be a top receiver which he wouldn’t get with Marsh around. But he agreed that one-off explanations like these only fly if they’re one-offs, not six guys hitting the portal when there’s tons of playing time to go around, a QB with a live arm, and a combined 18 years of eligibility remaining. The four other wideouts who hit the portal are Antonio Gates Jr. (son of another NFL legend … history repeating in MSU letting him get away) and redshirt freshmen Jaylan Brown, Austin Clay, and Jaelen Smith. I think something is up with this unit, and it’s very mysterious because it was so good last year even with a haphazard QB and some injury turmoil, but I’m at a loss to solve it until I get some more clues.

MSU has gone to the portal to resolve their receiver shortage, something I was critical of Smith for failing to do for OSU in the 2023 offseason. #8 WR Boyd from Central Michigan is Jon’s pick for the other outside receiver opposite Marsh as a local to Lansing whose only reason for not going to MSU was the chaos around the previous coach’s firing (he’s also the only other receiver over six feet; if Jon is a political animal, I tend to the phenomenological), and on the other end of the size spectrum #13 WR McCray from Kent State at 5’10” and 168 lbs is probably Brown’s competition for the slot position. Two senior transfers come in listed at 6’0” even: #1 WR O. Kelly who began at Auburn then went to Middle Tennessee, and #3 WR Bullard who comes from two Georgia football powerhouses, Westover High in Albany and Valdosta State at the Div-II level. Each has been very productive (Bullard’s numbers in particular are astonishing, over a thousand yards at nearly 24 yards per catch) albeit at a non-Power conference level so we’ll just have to wait and see how each does in the Big Ten.

Each of the WR transfers came in during the Winter window and two of them, Boyd and McCray, have multiple years of eligibility remaining, while the other two, Bullard and Kelly, appear to be on their final year. In the meantime, MSU has recruited a trio of mid 3-star prep recruits from their typical stomping grounds to help repopulate the room. So as odd as the massive personnel turnover seems to be (it includes multiple receivers Smith’s staff recruited, and multiple receivers who obviously thrived in his system!), the transfer infusion doesn’t appear related to Haller’s abrupt firing and the possible change in plans, rather it just looks like its own thing and fairly well managed at that – the room cleared out so they needed a bunch of guys who could play, they got them all early and balanced them in terms of sizes and ages. The only outstanding question is whether it’ll work.

The offensive line situation took a while to talk out with Jon across a couple of podcasts to figure out the plan that OL coach Michalczik is implementing, but I think I’ve got it now that it’s been separated into tackles and guards with separate timelines for each subgroup.

My thinking now is that MSU was sorting out its tackle order for 2025 and onward during the 2024 season. They had one starter on the left side, Brandon Baldwin, who was on his final year (even that was kind of amazing, he was a 2019 recruit) and he was required to sub in due to a string of injuries at both right guard and right tackle. That gave them lots of changes to rotate through for Baldwin on the left, which they took by playing three other guys over the year with substantial reps prior to garbage time: 2023 low 4-star #65 OT Ramil, 2024 mid 3-star #55 OT R. Johnson, and 2024 low 4-star #73 OT R. Young (of whom Johnson, despite having the most modest recruiting profile, had the toughest four games while preserving his redshirt, and Jon was most enamored with). The starter on the other side, #66 RT Lepo, didn’t rotate, though he did miss some time with injury that Baldwin filled in for, and his grades weren’t so hot on my tally sheet (some of the rotational kids on the left graded out better, though on limited reps).

Only one of the four Winter transfers, #58 OL C. Moore who comes over from FCS Montana State and I’ve been watching as part of an upcoming film study project since Oregon plays the Bobcats in the 2025 opener, has experience at tackle, although for a few games he’s played guard as well. Lepo and the three rotational left tackles from 2024 all return. There are two other returners who I think may be in line for some playing time but I think both are guards; the other six linemen are all true or redshirt freshmen and unlikely to play for Michalczik in 2025, although I think I see several tackle body types in their number. I pressed Jon on whether Lepo has his RT job locked down or if he’s due a challenge in Fall camp and he said that he thinks everything is open as the line wasn’t good enough for anyone to be guaranteed a spot – I tend to agree. So that’s five options — Lepo the returning RT, Moore the FCS transfer, and the LT rotational trio of Ramil, Johnson, and Young — for two tackle spots, all of whom have at least some meaningful experience. I’m not sure which two will get chosen but it’s a good setup for a free choice with nice depth options, and I trust Michalczik as perhaps the best line coach in America as the developer here.

The interior line spots, on the other hand, I think are getting sorted after the 2024 season, that is in the 2025 offseason. The left guard and center positions were very stable last year, with every snap played by a couple of transfers the new staff brought in on their final seasons of eligibility, Luke Newman from FCS Holy Cross and Tanner Miller from Oregon State (Newman was drafted in the 6^th round by the Bears). The right guard spot saw several injury-based substitutions, starting with #71 RG Phillips, then #74 RG Broscious who came in at the same time in the 2022 cycle, then the much older Dallas Fincher who finally ran out of eligibility at the end of the year.

I think they probably like Phillips since he started, but they need to fill two more spots including center which requires a specialized skillset we haven’t seen out of anyone on the roster, and I’m not sure where Broscious stands. The two other returners I suspect are in the mix, despite never seeing them play, are 2023 borderline 4-star #56 OL Dellinger and 2024 low 4-star #77 OL Dennis whom they secured the transfer of from Illinois. Both of their talent ratings on paper are a cut above the rest of the room, Dellinger is older than the rest and has the body type that’s ideal for a Michalczik center, and Dennis has the higher talent profile in the unit.

The three other transfers besides Moore are #72 OL Carter from the FCS, #51 OL Gublin from Wake Forset, and #60 OL Vincic from Oregon State. All three were interior linemen; Carter was Western Carolina’s left guard, Gublin was a backup who Jon told me got some center snaps, and Vincic rotated last year at OSU with Colorado transfer Van Wells in their almost-exclusively run-based offense.

It’s possible that this is solved entirely without transfers if my hunch about Dellinger behind the center they’ve been preparing is right, because then it’s just him in the middle, Phillips at one spot, and Brocious or Dennis at the other. If I’m wrong or there’s an unavailability, then Jon’s thought that they’ll resolve this from the center out is probably correct, repeating the Miller model and using the OSU transfer Vincic as the new center and then finding the remaining two from the remaining returners and transfers, which would be between six and eight possible options. Like the tackles, there’s not enough available information to say who exactly, but they’ve given themselves so many bites at the apple that I like their odds of getting it right.

As was discussed in last year’s preview, the underlying challenge in reclaiming Michigan State’s identity as a defensive powerhouse is reversing the “roster rot” as Jon called it which had set in towards the end of the Dantonio era and which Smith’s predecessor responded to by getting a mish-mash of high impact players but often misfits for the structure and not building out the entire squad systemically:

The most significant negative area for the Spartans’ defense in 2023 was in stopping efficiency rushing (explosive rush defense however looked very good, as most Big Ten teams did inside the bubble), and this was driven by atrocious stuff rates in short yardage scenarios under 20%, with 2^nd & short being a particularly appalling 11%. This in turn has to do with the interior defensive line, which in MSU’s case had body mismatches – guys suited to be gap-shooters in a 3-down front trying to play 1- or 3-tech in a a legacy 4-down front.

It was painful that so much of the d-line hit the portal in the 2024 offseason, and the new guys that Smith’s staff brought in or elevated took some time to get going — through the first five weeks, their rush defense rate hadn’t budged from the 2023 numbers — but as the season went on the rebuilt d-line really solidified and patched up the biggest hole in the defense. The final numbers show significant year-over-year growth in short-yardage run stuffing, up by about +18.5 percentage points (+23.5 points on 2^nd & short alone), which brought everything in line with league averages.

The one holdover defensive tackle who was playing in 2023 and continued into 2024 was Maverick Hansen, who’s now graduated. The 2022 bluechip #91 DT A. VanSumeren had redshirted his first year and missed all of 2023 and Spring practices of 2024 with an injury, and at the beginning of the Fall campaign his grades on my tally sheet were the lowest of the rotation, but he showed the most improvement over the back half of the season as he got fully into form and at this point is probably the most valuable returner in 2025. The other four members of the interior rotation were all transfers brought in by the new staff: #88 DT Buckley from Nebraska, D’Quan Douse from Georgia Tech, #55 DT B. Roberts from Oregon, and #93 DT Satchell from Old Dominion. Douse graded out the most consistently over the year and he’s now graduated, but the other three return in 2025.

Buckley and Roberts have really grown into their frames, pushing 330 lbs apiece and living up to their borderline 4-star billing, and Jon and I agreed that because those two fill the space-eating role this defensive structure needs and has lacked for several years they’ve got a lot of rotational time locked down along with VanSumeren. Last year we saw less of the fourth transfer Satchell, at 6’1” and 290 lbs he’s built differently and VanSumeren was just more effective as a penetrator. Redshirt freshman #52 DT Beeler and senior transfer #16 DT G. Kelly (who played a lot at Colorado State then transferred to Florida State where he was hardly used, though given the irrationality of that program last year I don’t think much should be inferred from that) may be strong challenges to Satchell for playing time in the fourth spot in the rotation, although Jon pointed out that MSU last year was comfortable playing six guys here and so viewing it as a strictly traditional four-man rotation may not be appropriate.

All indications are that the interior d-line should at the very least hold steady – despite the departures of quality contributors in Douse and Hansen, they return much more than they’ve lost and are adding more appropriate body types into the rotation. The question is whether they’ll take another step forward and improve from average to a high quality rush defense here. There’s reason to think the returners have more juice to squeeze as they were on the upswing in the second half of last season so it’s certainly a possibility – we won’t know where their ceiling is until they reach it.

The new staff made several moves in the defensive end unit, reducing the playing time of certain guys, bringing in some others, and going with a generally slimmer and faster lineup. Most of my predictions from last year’s preview turned out accurately here – I didn’t think Avery Dunn, James Schott, or Ken Talley were going to be effective from their 2023 grades and the new staff effectively benched them, and they’ve now transferred out, and I thought that #9 DE J. Thompson was a lock for the rotation but his havoc stats were going to diminish for switching to the weakside which is what happened. Transfers Anthony Jones from Indiana and Oregon before that and #99 DE Dunnigan from MTSU (the one exception to type as a bigger end) were immediately added to the rotation as expected and played their roles well, though the third transfer #22 DE Gillison who was a productive mid 3-star at Cincinatti missed all of 2024 with an injury. That may have led to the biggest surprise on the defense for me, because I think it resulted in returner #2 DE Bogle getting his job back — I wasn’t impressed with his production to date at all — and Bogle really showed out under the new staff with a big leap in his havoc generation.

Bogle graduated, and Jones hit the transfer portal (he wound up at UCLA, his fourth Big Ten school now, one of two on the defense that looks like a poaching to me). Thompson and Dunnigan return, and Jon told me that Gillison should be back to 100%. There are two redshirt freshmen in the room who haven’t seen the field, mid 3-star #92 DE Burnett and high 3-star #11 DE Lafaele who came over from Wisconsin. MSU brought in three experienced transfers whose body types fit the lean speed rusher mold they favored in 2024 (two of whom I’ve happened to chart before for other projects and were used more like OLBs): #41 DE Santiago from Air Force, Isaac Smith from Texas Tech, and Cam Williams who toured three different Sun Belt schools, always as a backup.

I think Santiago is a lock for the rotation along with Thompson and Dunnigan, they got him early and I liked what I saw when watching his Mountain West tape. I think the fourth spot in the rotation is an instance of a change in plans with Haller’s firing, however – talking this out with Jon, I think the initial plan was to be patient with the redshirt freshmen Burnett and Lafaelle (who came in early in the Winter period) as well as Gillison’s recovery from injury since he has three years of eligibility remaining with a medical redshirt. The late acquisitions of Smith and Williams, who are on their final or next to last seasons but were initially rated as low 3-stars, appear to be filling a sudden need for immediate production in the rotation. That’s not to say they couldn’t step up and overperform with MSU’s new staff — Bogle did, after a ho-hum career in East Lansing and Gainesville — but it reads as more urgency and less patience which could play out with guys getting the hook fast if they’re not making a big impact right away.

I think the staff’s moves at linebacker have been interesting and a bit surprising. The 2023 season had quite a bit of turmoil as they were dealing with the fallout from the 2022 tunnel fight and multiple injuries sidelined several players. They converted a safety to be the SAM backer for their 4-3 sets but didn’t wind up using him much although I thought his previous tape made that look promising, #23 LB Snow. In addition to two longtime starters, they relied heavily on a highly recruited then-true freshman, #5 LB Hall, as the third main piece of the rotation for two spots in the 4-2-5 configuration. Then in 2024 when the new staff came in, all the guys who missed time in 2023 departed as well as one of the starters. To repopulate the room, they took four transfers – two were young high talent backers who hadn’t played and it was clear they were stashing away to develop for later (along with a prep recruit of similar profile), while two were experienced, Wisconsin’s starter Jordan Turner who was clearly coming in ready to go right away and ODU’s starter #10 LB W. Matthews who I thought had a talent ceiling but would insulate the developmental kids from having to hit the field too early in case there was an issue.

All of that proceeded apace in 2024, just with some tweaks to the proportional playing time that have struck me as unexpected. The two I thought were good moves were bumping up the frequency of 4-3 sets in response to heavier offensive packages and therefore Snow’s time on the field, because he definitely paid it off, as well as reducing multi-year starter (and as Jon has told me, fan favorite … apparently every Big Ten team has to have at least one linebacker in this mold) Cal Haladay’s time in the rotation because I had graded him as frequently too slow and out of position to make the play.

The 2024 moves that surprised me — because they seemed contrary to the “developmental build” nature of the new staff — were first drastically cutting back the now-sophomore Hall’s meaningful playing time in favor of more for both Matthews, who has a much lower ceiling and poorer grades, and Turner who played well but was on his final season of eligibility along with Haladay. The second was giving practically no meaningful play to the trio of talented youngsters – 2023 low 4-star #17 LB Bridgeman from Michigan, 2023 high 3-star #4 LB Pulliam from Miami, and 2024 low 4-star recruit #45 LB Pretzlaff.

In 2025, Haladay and Turner have graduated but everyone else returns. They’ve continued to recruit well at the position, a couple of high 3-stars, but I expect they’ll redshirt. They only brought in one transfer in the Winter window, #58 LB Moa from BYU who’s been a backup and has two years left, so Jon and I agreed he looks like more of an “in the mix” than a “guaranteed spot” guy. Jon told me the expectation is that Snow continues his dedicated SAM role and that this is the year that Hall will be stepping back into the full-time starter spotlight, which makes sense for his talent profile and grades so far.

To me, the question is what are they doing with the spot next to Hall and the likely third spot in the rotation? Jon told me he’s heard nothing negative about the health or development on Bridgeman, Pulliam, or Pretzlaff, but otherwise it’s been radio silence on what should be a good deal of excitement on some talented players, and I pressed him about the meaning of so much playing time for Matthews and taking Moa’s transfer instead of leaning into the kids who were already in the fold. Jon’s speculation was that Matthews was getting his test in 2024 and the kids will get their tests against softer competition in early 2025 prior to the week 4 game against USC, and we should expect to see the position in flux until then.

The secondary was a pretty mixed bag for MSU last year. Overall the pass defense numbers stayed stuck at the same fundamental performance levels as they have for the last several years, although there were several individual bright spots and a season-long analysis of 3^rd & short vs 3^rd & long defensive success rates against the pass shows a relatively minor differential even with a pretty good set of defensive ends, indicating the secondary was holding their own. It was also affected by quite a few injuries, to one starting corner very early and the other later on, and to several backups among the nickel and safety positions which limited rotations.

Although the Spartans return two starters who played all of 2024, one starter plus one primary backup who both got hurt early and basically missed the whole season, and four backups who had substantial meaningful playing time, they’ve taken a massive portal haul (on top of four prep recruits) into the secondary. Four of the seven transfers came late in the Spring transfer window, and almost all of them are seniors and from G5 or FCS schools. Jon and I discussed this big group of additions to the defensive backfield as essentially a threat to everybody except the three guys who had starting jobs in 2024 – both of saw the staff as unsatisfied with their options to find the two new starters and the entirety of the depth, and at this point lacking the patience to wait for the guys on the roster to develop into playable quality.

The two starters who are certain to have jobs are both of the deep safeties, #1 DB N. Martinez and #43 DB Spencer. There was quite a list behind them: then-true freshman #12 DB Denson got the most backup play, while another freshman backup, Jaylen Thompson, and an older backup, Dillon Tatum, got hurt then transferred out. We also saw senior Cincinnati transfer #19 DB A. Smith and a third freshman backup, #18 DB Brinson, get some backup time, while a fourth freshman, #20 DB K. Williams redshirted. My read of the transfer situation is that the late additions of seniors Devynn Cromwell from Texas Tech and Anthony Pinnace, a Juco who was at Wazzu but didn’t play for the Cougs, are probably safeties brought in to back up Martinez and Spencer because the staff decided they couldn’t afford for everything to be riding on freshmen if the starters were unavailable.

The starting nickel, Angelo Grose, graduated after five productive seasons for the Spartans. His backup at the very beginning of the year was a walk-on, #34 DB Majeed, but he was hurt in the opener and so the starter’s younger brother #30 DB Av. Grose, who’d just transferred in from the FCS, took over as the new backup for the rest of the year. Both of those backups return in 2025 but Jon and I both suspect that part of the giant portal haul is about finding a different starter at nickel. I think the initial plan was FCS transfer #0 DB Burt who came in during the Winter window, as his body type and playstyle is very similar to the older Grose, and then in the Spring window I think they got Bowling Green transfer Tracy Revels as a second option for nickel instead of just trusting Majeed and the younger Grose.

At corner, the starters at the beginning of the year were Charles Brantley and #25 CB Rucker. Brantley had the highest grades of any of the defensive backs, but he suffered an ankle injuy in November against Indiana and missed the last few games. Rucker was hurt very early in week 2 and missed the rest of the season. Rucker was replaced by Arizona State transfer Ed Woods for the rest of the year, while a rotating coterie of other backups cycled through: Caleb Coley, #6 CB Willie, UNC transfer Lejond Cavazos, and LSU transfer #3 CB Hughes. Willie’s playing time increased the most after Brantley’s injury.

Woods and Cavazos ran out of eligibility, while Coley hit the portal for lack of playing time, and I believe Brantley was the other defensive standout who got poached (by Miami). Rucker returns, and Jon told me he’s back to full health and should re-take his job as starter with a chip on his shoulder. I don’t really believe Hughes or Willie, the other returners, have the staff’s confidence, and I think the remaining three transfers here were brought in to compete for the other starting job and form the functional cornerback rotation. Those are: #14 CB Bell from UConn (Jon’s favorite), #7 CB Eaton from Texas State but who started out at Oklahoma, and the recently acquired Dontavius Nash from East Carolina who started out at UNC. Each of the transfers was a productive corner last year at his previous school and is the long, 6’2” frame that the staff prefers on the outside.

The secondary needed a personnel infusion in the worst way after some pretty bizarre neglect by the Smith’s predecessor (a former DB coach who didn’t feel like recruiting DBs when he got the head coaching job … some comparisons were made on the podcast to a certain fired coach to Oregon’s north). In these two cycles they’ve brought on eight preps and a dozen transfers, a necessity to restock, but they’ve split them up between younger and older guys with more than half of the transfers starting football in 2021 or earlier. I expect much of this older group to be done after 2025 and they’ll get back to the developmental guys for 2026, so what to watch out for this coming season is how much second unit early playing time and to whom as an indicator.