Michigan State Football: Love it or hate it, Mark Dantonio made right staff moves
Love or hate the staff shuffling by Michigan State football coach Mark Dantonio, he made the correct decisions for 2019 and beyond.
The murmurs from the fan base grew so deafening over the past couple of months that Mark Dantonio couldn’t avoid them even if he tried. Michigan State’s “fire Warner” crowd was growing by the day and each week that passed seemed to lower the chances of a staff change.
On Thursday, the 12th-year head coach called a press conference to sort of ‘reset’ his staff and set Michigan State back in the right direction moving forward.
Co-offensive coordinators Dave Warner and Jim Bollman were both given new roles with the program on Thursday and quarterbacks coach Brad Salem was promoted to the position. Like any decision made with coaching changes, this was met with an overwhelming groan from the fan base, and one that is completely understandable.
Michigan State had the 126th-best scoring offense in the nation and didn’t make any firings and no one retired, but Dantonio did make a couple of demotions — though he would never refer to them as such.
Some have even called it “reshuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic” in response tweets, which seems rather appropriate for an offense that continued to sink in 2018.
But this is a good move — just hear me out.
Not only will Warner no longer be calling plays, he promoted a coach in Salem who had a hand in developing all-time leading passer Connor Cook as well as aiding in the breakout of Brian Lewerke in 2017 — though Warner, who Dantonio dubbed “a quarterbacks coach”, will need to get him out of a rut in 2019.
Salem has been an offensive coordinator before and was instrumental in leading the 2014 Spartan offense to the best numbers in school history.
If Dantonio is right about Warner being a quarterbacks coach, he can simply worry about getting Lewerke back on track and not about running the offense. Warner was the quarterbacks coach with Dantonio from 2007-12 and helped develop Kirk Cousins and the start of the Cook era.
On top of all of this, Mark Staten was reassigned to tight ends and special teams and Jim Bollman moved from co-offensive coordinator to offensive line coach. Both moves that should benefit the team as the line was a weakness last year, as were tight ends. These could each place these coaches in their specific specialty areas.
Don Treadwell and Terrance Samuel switched roles as the latter will be the assistant defensive backs coach and freshman coach and the former will be in charge of receivers.
Mike Tressel, who led one of the nation’s best defenses in 2018, was also named the team’s associate head coach in place of Staten — to say he’s earned this is an understatement.
Like the moves or not, they make sense. No one ever expected Dantonio to fire anyone and some even believed no moves would be made, but by doing this, he acknowledged something needed to be done to get the Spartans trending back in the right direction.
Next. MSU football: Final report card for 2018 season. dark
Will this work? Time will tell, but Dantonio seemed angry about 2018’s outcome in his presser and excited about the future. He didn’t become one of the best coaches in school history by remaining content.