A Michigan State football coaching legend stopped in to see Pat Fitzgerald

A new era of Michigan State football is being ushered in by Pat Fitzgerald, and there’s some legitimate excitement surrounding the program for the first time in four years. Sure, there was excitement when Jonathan Smith was hired, but it was pretty obvious early on that his personality didn’t quite fit.

Fitzgerald, on the other hand, shares the fire that a former head coach had that made him so successful for over a decade.

That former coach, of course, is Mark Dantonio.

No, the personalities of Fitzgerald and Dantonio are not the same, but their mindsets are — and that’s the most important thing. Fitzgerald preaches hard-nosed football centered around having an elite defense, and Dantonio, as we all know, was the same way. He had some of the best defenses in the country for a decade, and arguably the best in program history. Fitzgerald is going to try and replicate that.

If the new head coach makes the right offensive hires, the Spartans could be entering an intriguing era. Keeping Dantonio around the program would certainly help.

On Thursday, Dantonio stopped by for the first time to see the new head coach.

You can almost feel the defensive genius through the screen.

Fitzgerald needs to use Mark Dantonio as a resource

There will, no doubt, be more meetings between these two who happen to be former foes. They met plenty of times as opponents in Evanston and East Lansing, and they had some great battles. Now, they’re on the same side.

Dantonio got the better of Fitzgerald overall, but the new Spartan head coach got the better of his old counterpart on four occasions. They have learned a lot from each other already.

It will now be up to Fitzgerald to utilize Dantonio as a resource during his time as Michigan State’s head coach. Dantonio knew how to win, how to recruit, and how to coach at an elite level in East Lansing. Fitzgerald has done fractions of that at Northwestern, but he’s the head coach of a high-level Power Four program now. He has to pick Dantonio’s brain.

I can already see the two celebrating a Rose Bowl win together. Why not us?