MSU QB Tyler O'Connor hopes legacy is more than as a loser

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – Red eyes and a creaky voice showed just how much the end meant to Tyler O’Connor. And how much it affected him.

It had been three months since the senior quarterback decreed that he did not only want to be known as the backup who led Michigan State’s win over Ohio State in 2015 with Connor Cook out and injured.

O’Connor never could have expected that his larger legacy would be this, the scapegoat for the Spartans’ tumultuous 3-9 season this fall.

“Giving my senior speech at the beginning of the season, I just remember saying, ‘Put your head down, go in to work, do what the coaches say and work your butt off, and you’ll be OK in life.’ That’s kind of what I’ve taken through all of this,” O’Connor said after Saturday’s 45-12 loss at Penn State, his final game. “My biggest thing I guess leaving here is, if I negatively affected people for nine weeks out of this season, I hope the rest of the 4 1/2 years I was a positive influence on enough people, whether it’s little fans or older fans or whoever I could’ve positively affected. I hope I did that.”

Many of MSU’s problems had nothing to do with the quarterback. But in those early days of the season, O’Connor passed along a lesson Drew Stanton had given him about the position: the quarterback must deflect praise when things go right, and they must shoulder the criticism if they go wrong.

Right or wrong, O’Connor had plenty of blame heaped upon his shoulders this fall.

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With the Spartans’ bowl hopes over, O’Connor ceded the starting job for the finale at Penn State to Pennsylvania native Damion Terry. The junior was 7 of 12 for 101 yards passing before getting knocked out late in the second quarter with a concussion, and O’Connor took over for the rest of the game.

“Every quarterback that we’ve had, whether it’s Tyler, whether it’s (Brian) Lewerke, whether it’s Damion, I’ve been saying this the whole season,” senior receiver R.J. Shelton said afterward. “It doesn’t matter who’s in there. We’re going to ride with whoever is in.”

Fifth-year senior O’Connor struggled, with the Nittany Lions often sending five or six defenders on the pass rush. He was sacked four times, fumbled a snap and went 17 of 33 for 118 yards.

It was a snapshot look at many of the problems surrounding O’Connor’s 10 starts in 11 games played – he sat out with a foot injury at Maryland and did not start against Northwestern, with redshirt freshman Brian Lewerke getting the nod.

O’Connor got sacked 21 times this season. He completed 58.8 percent of his 262 passes for 1,970 yards with 16 touchdowns and nine interceptions.

►Related: MSU encouraged by Damion Terry's play in finale

As he said, though, those nine losses — eight of which were games in which he played – will be the stats most fans are going to remember. Yet all season, O’Connor continued to answer tough questions for his teammates, continued to bounce off the turf after every sack, continued to take the blame for his mistakes and deflect the shortcomings of others.

When it all came to an end Saturday, soaking in the reality of the finality of his college career, he continued to maintain the same perspective he had before the season even began.

“My biggest thing is feeling sorrowful for not being good enough for the coaches, for the guys around me, the other seniors, Spartan nation, everybody,” O’Connor said. “Me personally, I don’t feel bad for myself. I feel bad for the people around me….

“I guess there’s two things I can think of – look at the bright side of things, and it can always get worse. That’s just, I guess, being an eternal optimist as Coach D says. You know, I can take all the criticism there is. But no one feels worse about it than me. So people can say all they want. Me personally, I’ll never stop fighting. No matter what it was, no matter what the situation was, I was all for the team. I never gave any problems about quarterback rotations or what was going on or complained about other positions. I just came to work every day.”

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Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@chrissolari. Download our Spartans Xtra app for free onAppleandAndroiddevices!