It’s been an eventful offseason for the Michigan State football program.
Hours after the 2025 season ended, J Batt and the athletic department made the decision to move on from Jonathan Smith as head coach and they hired Pat Fitzgerald as his replacement. The move was pretty controversial, not because Smith wasn’t expected to be fired (he was) but rather because Fitzgerald hadn’t coached in a few years and left Northwestern on bad terms.
Many believed that the Spartans were taking a huge risk by hiring Fitzgerald, but so far it looks like it’s working in a positive manner.
Fitzgerald has recruited a solid class of transfers to join the team in the fall and he’s slowly building his 2027 recruiting class into a top-30 worthy one. It’s currently ranked closer to 40, but I believe after a big month of official visits, it’ll be in that top 30-range.
The offseason hasn’t gone too poorly for the Spartans outside of losing Nick Marsh to Indiana and Alex VanSumeren to USC. The portal has replaced a lot of talent and people are excited about guys like Carson Gulker, Charles Brantley, Trent Fraley, Cam Edwards, Nick Sharpe, Tre Bell, Rhys Dakin, Ben Murawski, Kenny Soares, and KK Smith, among others.
All-in-all, I’d give the offseason for Michigan State somewhere in the B-range, but definitely not any lower because I feel like the hire of Fitzgerald and his staff choices have been major positives.
ESPN, however, disagrees.
Michigan State has apparently had a terrible offseason
Other Big Ten teams have had much worse offseasons so far than Michigan State. Surely that’s true, right? I mean some teams retained dead-in-the-water coaches like Rutgers with Greg Schiano, Maryland with Mike Locksley, and Luke Fickell at Wisconsin. Oh, and Purdue exists.
ESPN believes that Michigan State had a worse offseason than all of those teams. In fact, the Spartans were ranked No. 18 in terms of best offseasons in the Big Ten by ESPN’s Eli Lederman, Max Olson and Adam Rittenberg.
I’m a little surprised by this given that every major publication has seemed to like the hire of Fitzgerald and the moves that he’s been making have been mostly positive.
I’ve liked his transfer portal additions. He’s landed several likely starters in the portal and he’s addressed needs on the offensive and defensive lines. The major losses of Marsh and VanSumeren are probably contributing to this horrid ranking, but the new staff was able to retain a good chunk of the roster, including starting quarterback Alessio Milivojevic and star linebacker Jordan Hall.
Michigan State is going to prove a lot of people wrong next season.
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