On October 1st, Michigan State Football and Head Coach Mark Dantonio lost running back Connor Heyward to the transfer pool. Then, this week, they lost another running back, La’Darius Jefferson in the same fashion. Now, Michigan State is going to have to turn to three freshmen in Elijah Collins, Anthony Williams Jr. and Brandon Wright to carry the load. Wright is the only one of the three who hasn’t received a carry yet this year, but he is close to finding his way into the action due to the recent transfers.
“The transfer portal is interesting, there’s no question about that,” Dantonio said on his weekly radio show Thursday night. “There’s over 800 players in the transfer portal right now from this year so everybody’s experiencing this to some degree – probably a little bit of a product our society today. But I want players to be happy and I want them all in. At times, guys want to play a little bit more football, they want to play so they opt for that.”
Brandon Wright is in a tricky position because with Heyward and Jefferson on the roster, he probably was never going to play this year. Suddenly he becomes an important player for the Spartans.
“It’s all about reps,” Dantonio said, talking about Wright. “If you get repetitions, you get better. When you’re the fifth-team tailback, you’re not going to get many reps. But, two of them go, all of a sudden you’re the third-team tailback, you start looking a little better as you’re getting reps and your learning curve is so great because now you’re getting the opportunities in there. That’s been a positive and we’ll keep drilling.”
One thing is for sure though: if one of these three guys get injured, this season is going to get very, very stressful and difficult.
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