Michigan State head coach Pat Fitzgerald has been chipping away at his coaching staff hires over the past few weeks, and it’s almost complete.
Fitzgerald has hired his offensive and defensive coordinators, his special teams coordinator, his receivers and tight ends coaches, a safeties coach, a linebackers coach (also a co-defensive coordinator), and his strength and conditioning coach. All that’s left is maybe another secondary coach, a running backs coach, quarterbacks coach (unless Nick Sheridan doubles as this), and offensive and defensive line coaches.
The last two coaches mentioned might be the most important hires left.
You can’t win in today’s college football without elite offensive and defensive line play — it all starts in the trenches. The lack of quality line play has been Michigan State’s Achilles heel for years.
It only makes sense that Fitzgerald is taking his time with these two hires because they could dictate how successful his tenure will be.
There are rumors swirling about a potential offensive line coach, however.
Rumors are swirling about Michigan State’s top OL coach option
Nothing is concrete, but the rumors on social media are swirling about a potential offensive line coach option that would definitely create some excitement.
Texas A&M offensive line coach and run game coordinator Adam Cushing would be a more than intriguing option. He helped get the Aggies to the College Football Playoff this season, and while they did have a disappointing opening-round loss to Miami, they still had one of their most successful regular seasons in decades. He would be a heck of a hire.
While these are nothing more than rumors and hopes right now, the move would make a ton of sense for Fitzgerald. Cushing coached under Fitzgerald from 2006-2018 and coached alongside him as an assistant at Northwestern for a few years before that. He was Fitzgerald’s offensive line coach from 2009-2018 before taking a head coaching job at Eastern Illinois.
This is the only name that I’ve really heard in connection with Michigan State’s offensive line coach position, and there’s just too much history between Cushing and Fitzgerald for it to be ignored.
Cushing would be a great hire to replace Jim Michalczik to get Michigan State line back on track.