INDIANAPOLIS – Let’s go back exactly eight months and there was Michigan State Football mangled and crumpled, a green and white mess. The 42-0 loss to Penn State on a cold November night at Ford Field was the latest disaster punctuating the disaster of a season, as the Spartans endured the midseason firing of their coach, a historic loss to their rival state championship and several other shameful Saturdays as they closed in on a 4-8 record that left their proud fans on the sidelines.
How did this happen? Just two years earlier, MSU won 11 games, defeating rival Michigan in an epic showdown in East Lansing and prevailing in the New Year’s Six Bowl. That magical year, 2021, revived the good vibes of the Mark Dantonio era, when the Spartans were perennial contenders, punching above their weight class and delivering one knockout after another.
“The Michigan State that I was used to growing up, they won championships,” junior safety Dillon Tatum said Wednesday. “In the (second) College Football Playoff, we were there.”
But when the Spartans’ season ended last fall, they were so far from that elite realm, so out of contention in their own conference, that it was hard to imagine when — or even if — they could get back there. Then, suddenly, a ray of hope revealed itself 24 hours later when Jonathan Smith was hired to be the Spartans’ next head coach. Landing Smith was a huge coup considering MSU plucked him from Oregon State, his alma mater that he resurrected the previous six years.
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From the moment he stepped foot in East Lansing, Smith rekindled his faith. So there he was on Wednesday, projecting measured optimism inside a differently domed stadium on a sunny summer afternoon, 243 days before the sad end of Mel Tucker’s tortured tenure.
“Low ego, high performance,” he said on stage at Big Ten Media Days, reminding the audience of his creed.
That mantra, the one Smith claims to live by, rolled off his tongue at his introductory press conference last November.
Since he first spoke those words at the Breslin Center, it’s hard to argue that he doesn’t live up to them. After all, Smith showed no signs of coveting the spotlight or thirsting for praise. Instead, he seems content to go to work and not make a big deal out of it. Quietly and efficiently, he stabilized the program, revamping the roster and installing his systems in a volatile environment where, at times, it seemed like he was overshooting the crumbling cliff that is college football in 2024.
Thirty-eight players left the team through the transfer portal this offseason, including all of MSU’s scholarship quarterbacks and top two defensive tackles, Derrick Harmon and Simeon Barrow. Some of these losses were substantial. But Smith did not regret his fate. Instead, he lowered his head and filled in the blanks. Twenty-four players have come to MSU from other college programs in the past seven months. Smith convinced talented dual-threat passer Aidan Chiles, tight end Jack Velling and rugged center Tanner Miller to follow him from Oregon State. He welcomed four new defenders to bolster a secondary that had been a weak link during Tucker’s tenure. He added reinforcements along the lines.
“We wanted to establish a physicality on both sides,” Smith said.
Tucker too. He often talked about MSU being a “meat and potatoes” team with a “snack” mentality. But Tucker himself didn’t fully embody that spirit. He also liked style and flash, which he sold to recruits. The contradictory messages gave the impression that MSU did not have a clear identity and the inconsistency was transferred to the field. Tucker always preached that he wanted the Spartans to play complementary football. But they rarely did. In each of Tucker’s four years, MSU finished among the bottom 30 Football Bowl Subdivision teams in time of possession. This left the defense overwhelmed and exposed. It created a vicious cycle that caused the Spartans to decline in 2022 and ultimately led to their collapse last year.
Smith was then left to pick up the pieces. But with time and his steady hand, he was confident he could reassemble them or perhaps make them all fit together better.
The scarred players who took the fall were also convinced he could handle a full-scale overhaul, welcoming Smith as a savior of sorts.
As Velling noted when he arrived in the winter, the remnants of Tucker’s roster longed for the kind of ballast Smith could provide.
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“They were happy to have someone who was stable and was going to be here and really help us get wins,” Velling noted.
As Smith recalled: “I felt like the response from a lot of guys was that they were looking for a fresh start, a different direction… I think as time goes on, the opportunity and our approach and the consistency of it, those who will be there for the long term will grow and develop.”
In theory, the same will happen with your program. With Smith, there is a sense that there will be no shortcuts on the way to your desired destination. Unlike Tucker, who tried to turbocharge MSU as the original “portal king,” Smith has a track record of progressive construction. In his first four full seasons at Oregon State, the Beavers increased their win total from two to five to seven to 10 wins. The climb up the Pac-12 rankings was slow and gradual. The progression followed Smith’s process-oriented thinking. Velling explained that his coach always talked about “trying to improve 1%.”
“This approach of always being in a constant state of improvement,” Smith said, is a key part of his philosophy. It’s not sexy. Maybe it’s even a little boring.
But this is Smith.
Even-keeled, he is determined to keep MSU on track, charting an upward trajectory.
After the Spartans crashed and burned under the previous regime, it’s a welcome change.
“I love what he’s doing,” noted athletic director Alan Haller.
How could he not? There is hope again. And Smith, a stabilizing force, is the one who inspired it.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin
This article originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football needs Jonathan Smith’s steady hand
