EAST LANSING, Mich. — The only thing we can say with any certainty about Michigan State's football team this fall is that we're going to need a roster to keep things straight.
But that was Mel Tucker's thought, too: He knew he'd need a roster of his own making to get things straightened out at Michigan State, particularly after a 2-5 debut season in 2020 that doubled as a sorting ceremony for the Spartans.
And that's how Michigan State's head coach explained all the turnover in his program back in the spring, as a new-look depth chart began to take shape in East Lansing.
"I just want everyone to understand," Tucker said, "we're gonna do what we have to do to build our team."
They have, indeed. A total of 27 players transferred out after Tucker's pandemic-altered introduction last fall. Not coincidentally, Tucker and his staff jumped into the NCAA transfer portal aggressively — as promised — and brought in 20 new players, including a handful of walk-ons. Add to that an 18-member recruiting class signed last winter, and the end result is a locker room where nearly 40% of the faces are new.
That includes projected starters at running back (Kenneth Walker III), left tackle (Jarrett Horst), linebacker (Quavaris Crouch) and cornerback (Ronald Williams and Chester Kimbrough), and considering 14 of the transfers are coming from Power Five teams, we should expect that list to grow as the season progresses.
But how should we expect it to look Friday night when Michigan State's season kicks off in Evanston, Illinois, with a Big Ten matchup under the lights at Northwestern?
"Coach Tucker said the other day, 'We are not a team of transfers. We are a team,'" said Michael Dowell, a fourth-year junior safety. "I think we're going to go out there and play tough football and just play together."
That's easier said than done, given all the changes in personnel on this team and how long they've been together. Still, it's a process Tucker says has been more seamless than you might think.
"There wasn't a lot of sharp elbows in that locker room," he said. "We knew we needed some more good players. We knew we needed to gain ground. And it was just a matter of 'Come on in, let's show you how we do it here.' The new players embraced that. The existing players taught that. Because of that culture, because of that atmosphere and the environment and the expectations, we've been able to indoctrinate the new players to our program."
Some of those new players have started to emerge as leaders, in fact. Like Williams, the transfer from Alabama who Dowell says is "someone who has not just showed out on the field with his play, but also his voice." Or defensive end Drew Jordan, the grad transfer from Duke that Drew Beasley — a sixth-year senior himself — points to as an experienced veteran who's "not afraid to speak up" and "a lot of the young guys look up to him."
Equally important, though, is the juice they've added at various positions, whether it's an explosive runner like Walker, who spent the last two seasons Wake Forest, or someone like Crouch, who started 10 games at linebacker for Tennessee last season, in the middle of the defense.
"He plays on the field with a lot of energy," defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton said of Crouch. "When he's out there, his energy is contagious to other guys."
Likewise, on the offensive line — a major stumbling block for the Spartans the last few years — coach Chris Kapilovic is hoping Horst's arrival will help set a different tone this fall.
"He's got an intensity to him," Kapilovic said. "He's got this will to finish that not a lot of people have. ... He brings something to the table that we were really counting on."
They're counting on continuity as well, though, and that's where all the change presents the biggest challenge, at least initially. There's more top-line talent here, sure, but depth remains a concern. And so is the players' ability to put all these pieces together on game day.
Consider that Michigan State had only one scholarship cornerback (Kalon Gervin) participating in spring ball. Since then, they've added a half-dozen more, with four transfers and a couple of freshmen. So it's probably overly optimistic to think that secondary will avoid the kind of breakdowns in coverage that can cost you in games. Ditto the linebackers' ability to read and react and play fast from the opening snap Friday night.
Then again, it's hard to imagine this season opener going any worse than last year's did for the Spartans. After Mark Dantonio's late retirement, and a whirlwind coaching search that eventually landed Tucker in mid-February, the new coaching staff had all 15 of its spring practices wiped out by the pandemic in 2020. And even before the Big Ten's haphazard return to play was announced, COVID issues within the MSU football program hampered the team's preparation. Not surprisingly, the Spartans committed seven turnovers among a slew of other miscues in a 38-27 home loss to Rutgers.
They're not expecting anything like that Friday against Northwestern, however. And as Hazelton noted, all that unfamiliarity in the spring actually "forced them to communicate, and that's what we really want: a player-led team."
What follows, then, is the obvious question: Are they ready?
"We know what we're doing now," Dowell said. "You know better, so you must do better. Now it's on us to do the right thing."
