Spring football across America was wiped out by the coronavirus pandemic, putting Mel Tucker and his new Michigan State football staff behind the eight ball when it comes to player evaluations. Spring practices and scrimmages are paramount in stacking a football team’s depth chart and doubly so when the program has a new head coach and assistants.
That makes projecting depth charts as we enter the summer a bit more difficult. But that’s no excuse to not do it.
A couple weeks ago I projected the depth chart on the offensive side of the ball and earlier this week I took a crack at the defense.
Today I’ll look at the much less sexy, but always important, specialists. This is an area where only one job is guaranteed as we sit here in May.
Kicker
- Matt Coghlin (Sr.) or Jack Olsen (Fr.)
Kicker is going to be a very interesting battle this year. For the first time in his career Matt Coghlin will have a true battle to win for his job. Last year Coghlin struggled mightily and there was nobody to really push him. Olsen is an early enrollee and provides another scholarship leg to MSU’s kicking room. Coghlin may have a slight upper hand given his experience and success in the past, but his 2019 season makes this an open competition.
Punter
- Mitchell Crawford (Sr.) or Tyler Hunt (Jr.)
Redshirt freshman Jack Bouwmeester was expected to be the guy at punter in 2020, but he left MSU and returned to Australia after the 2019 season. Michigan State went the grad transfer route to secure his replacement, landing fellow Aussie Mitchell Crawford from UTEP. Crawford probably has a slight edge over Hunt based on experience, but his numbers weren’t great at UTEP. He ranked 86th in the country in punting average in 2019. Now, UTEP was a very bad football team last year and it’s not fair to put all of the team’s punting struggles on the punter. So we’ll see. I imagine Tyler Hunt will get a crack at the job, so I’m leaving it as an “or” situation for now.
Returners
- Speedy Nailor (Jr.) or Jayden Reed (So.)
- Laress Nelson (Sr.) or Anthony Williams Jr. (So.)
- Angelo Grose (Fr.) or Julian Barnett (So.)
For the first time in a while there is some legitimate excitement around the potential returners for MSU. I think a more accurate way to illustrate where I see this group is Nailor and Reed are 1A and 1B and the others are like fourth on the depth chart. There’s a gap. I’d be stunned if Reed and/or Nailor didn’t handle all the returns this year. Nailor has flashed a ton of open-field ability at MSU, but hasn’t been able to stay healthy long enough to really cash in in the return game. Reed was a return dynamo during his one season at Western Michigan. He averaged 17.9 yards per punt return with a touchdown. He is by all accounts electric in the open field. The other guys on the list are all capable returners that have had chances to return punts and kicks in games, but haven’t been especially exciting with it, with the exception of true freshman Angelo Grose who was an ace returner in high school.
Kickoffs
- Cole Hahn (Jr.) or Evan Morris (Fr.)
- Tyler Hunt (Jr.)
Hahn handled kickoffs in 2019 so I’d imagine he takes the same role to start 2020. However, he struggled at times keeping the ball in play on kickoffs, so we’ll see. Evan Morris did some kicking off last year and I thought did pretty well. His leg is strong as hell, that’s for sure. That’ll probably be a position battle in the fall, so I’ll go with the “or” designation for now. There’s a chance Morris didn’t kick more to preserve his redshirt designation in 2019. Tyler Hunt also is capable of handling kickoffs.
Long Snapper
- Jude Pedrozo (So.)
Jude Pedroze stepped in last season after Ryan Armour went out for the year with an injury and did a good job. I don’t even know who the backup would be. Probably a walk-on that hasn’t even made the team yet.
