Couch: MSU football begins another telling season
CHICAGO – Michigan State’s football team is still processing the unthinkable loss of one its own. Mike Sadler’s name evoked sighs and shaky hands Tuesday at Big Ten media day, barely two days after the beloved former MSU punter died in a car accident.
It was too soon to discuss for long. Too painful to put Sadler in past tense.
“That topic is so hard to talk about, man,” MSU senior tight end Josiah Price said.
Better to talk football.
The annual Big Ten media days brought normalcy to a season that’ll be normal soon enough. And one that will be both compelling and telling of MSU’s program. So we’ll keep it there for the rest of this column — on football.
The Spartans are about to be tested in ways they haven’t since 2012. That’s the last time this rising program looked pedestrian. And the last time it endured such a changeover in personality and notable talent.
MSU didn't manage to avoid a natural slide backwards that season, finishing 7-6. Times were different then. The winning was newer, more fragile. The holdovers didn’t entirely realize how difficult their newfound place in college football would be to sustain.
Is MSU’s program now beyond having that blip every few years? Is the leadership and base of talent in Mark Dantonio’s 10-year-old program now strong enough to avoid occasional mediocrity? We’re about to find out.
If the answer is no, it won’t define the Spartans as a football program or damn their future. One could even argue that what took place four years ago — and the lessons and determination that came from it — spurred the last three seasons. But if MSU wins another 10 games this year, if the Spartans are in the hunt for an East Division title or College Football Playoff berth in November, it’ll be another sign that the impossible is being done in East Lansing.
Two of the three MSU players in Chicago Tuesday — tight end Josiah Price and linebacker Riley Bullough — were part of the program during that 2012 season.
“It’s the little things that are going to make or break a team, and you’ve got to do the little things right, whether that’s workouts, practice, academics,” said Bullough, who redshirted during that 2012 season. “All of those things add up. I think sometimes we let things slip in 2012 that we’re trying not to have happen again.”
“I think that’s one of the biggest challenges we’ll have this season,” Price said, “is me, Riley Bullough, Tyler O’Connor, all those guys who came in my class … all of us trying to relay to all of these freshmen who are in and who are really talented kids but that might think, ‘I’m going to play as a freshman, because I’m whatever, five-star, four-star, top for my position, top for my state’ ... it’s not easy. You’re not going to be the best thing on this field right now. Now if you work your butt off, you can help us out this season.”
MSU’s roster is full of players who’ve rarely experienced losing. There is good in that. They expect to win, know what it feels like to finish games. In some cases, they know how to. But as their roles expand, do they truly understand what separates winning big from something less? What separates 2012 from 2013 and so on?
“We’ve got some young players in certain positions that have never experienced defeat, not very often,” Dantonio said.
Earlier Tuesday, Dantonio described some of his youngest expected contributors as being born on third base.
“Now, if a guy is on third base and he can get home, more power to him,” Dantonio said. “We’ve got some freshmen who are going to be able to do that.”
Therein lies one of the differences between now and 2012 — the noticeable increase in blue-chip talent.
There are others. Winning is further embedded in the culture of MSU’s program. Four years ago, the bluster coming from the Spartans was excessive and careless. They talked about national titles instead of the painstaking process. They spoke of disrespect instead of ignoring predictions.
“The results will speak for themselves,” Price said plainly Tuesday, as a reporter prodded him with a question about being picked behind Ohio State and Michigan in the Big Ten’s East Division.
Dantonio has learned from his mistakes, too — mostly involving the quarterback position. MSU was replacing a three-year starter in 2012, as it is now. Andrew Maxwell was put in place and touted as ready to pick up where Kirk Cousins left off. There is no such boasting about Tyler O’Connor as Cook’s heir apparent, even if O’Connor is more proven than Maxwell was.
“I think what I learned, as a head football coach, don’t anoint somebody and put the pressure all on one individual,” Dantonio said. “Because then this all comes on one individual, and I want it to be spread over the position group as a whole. Then allow that individual within that group to come forward and play. Now I don’t know that we could have prevented it because Andrew was the guy, clearly. (But) Andrew Maxwell had an enormous amount of pressure on him in 2012. … That’s why I said this is going to be on our position as a group and we’ll all play our way out of it.”
Dantonio described this August as “ground zero.” It might be for this team. But the program is beginning from a different place.
“We need to make sure we stay grounded as people and continue to try to do things as you’ve always done them,” he continued. “Critique them for the good, but I think it’s important that we don’t take things for granted, that there are no givens.”
Dantonio didn’t arrive in Chicago with a slogan for the season, as he did with “Chase it” before the Rose Bowl run and others after. Perhaps the news of Sadler distracted him or simply made it inappropriate.
When pressed, though, he had one: “Go back 2 back” he said, holding up two fingers, smiling at his cleverness. “We’ve got two outright Big Ten championships right now.”
There are reasons to doubt MSU. Ohio State and Michigan are stronger programs than they were four years ago. And questions about the Spartans in the trenches on both sides of the ball are fair. At quarterback, O’Connor — or someone in that position group — will have to prove their decision-making and arm is ready for primetime.
But there are also reasons to think this time will be different. Guys like Price and others who helped build this thing.
“When I came here as a freshman, my role was not to lead, my role was to do whatever Max Bullough told me to do,” Price said. “And to do it to the best of my ability. And now that role has changed. We are the Max Bulloughs, we are the Chris Normans, we are the Blake Treadwells. It’s time for me to do those things, to tell the younger guys, ‘You do this and you do it that way because that’s how we do it here at Michigan State. No questions asked, that’s just what we do.’
“We haven’t won all the games we’ve won the last three seasons for no reason.”
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.
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