Michigan State head coach Pat Fitzgerald has been slowly piecing together his coaching staff over the past few weeks, but he still has some work to do with a handful of spots still open.
The Spartans have addressed some big-time positions like offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator already, and Fitzgerald has won a lot of fans over by bringing a Spartan legend home to help lead the linebackers and the defense.
Fitzgerald’s special teams coordinator hire was also an important one as he poached one of the best in the business from Iowa. With the assistant coach salary pool seeing a nice boost from the Jonathan Smith era, it makes sense that Fitzgerald is aiming for the stars. He’s assembling a staff that he believes will contend for Big Ten titles in the near future.
It’s going to take some time, but Michigan State has a nice staff coming together, led by Joe Rossi and Max Bullough as co-defensive coordinators. Now, it’s time to focus on the offensive staff.
The staff is coming together nicely, but we’re going to make sure it’s easy to track all the hires in one place. Here’s your official assistant coach hiring tracker.
Who has Pat Fitzgerald hired so far?
Fitzgerald has filled a handful of positions thus far, including his offensive (reportedly) and defensive coordinators. Those were the two more important hires on the staff.
Who else has he hired?
Offensive coordinator: Nick Sheridan (reported, not officially announced yet)
Defensive coordinator(s): Joe Rossi and Max Bullough
Safeties coach: James Adams
Linebackers coach: Max Bullough
Special teams coordinator: LeVar Woods
As you can see, the staff is coming together nicely, but Fitzgerald still has some important hires to make. Here’s which positions still need to be filled:
- Cornerbacks (or another secondary) coach
- Defensive line coach
- Offensive line coach
- Tight ends coach
- Wide receivers coach
- Running backs coach
Fitzgerald still has some big hires to make, and he could really win fans over if Courtney Hawkins is retained, and it looks like he might be considering how many receivers have tagged him in scholarship offer tweets over the past few weeks.
The staff is looking pretty good so far.