Jonathan Smith gives encouraging injury update ahead of season opener

For the past few years, getting injury updates was almost impossible for Michigan State football media and its fans under Mel Tucker.

Times are changing.

Jonathan Smith is a coach who happens to be more open about the injuries to his players than his predecessor. He is not afraid to update the media on his team's health and won't leave everyone in the dark like Tucker did on many occasions since 2020.

On Monday, Smith spoke to the media about his team's health and had a positive update that should make fans pretty optimistic heading into the season opener against FAU.

"No long-term injury concerns" is music to everyone's ears. It feels like there's always a major injury during fall camp that leaves the coaching staff scrambling to ease in a replacement or find the necessary depth. Fortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case this year.

In fact, Michigan State doesn't have any post-camp injury concerns long-term, according to Smith, which is big considering Montorie Foster Jr. was banged up a couple of weeks ago.

On top of that, Michigan State has a couple of guys coming off season-ending injuries who are trying to get back into playing shape and improve their conditioning. Guys like Alex VanSumeren and Stanton Ramil not being mentioned along with the phrase "long-term injury concerns" is promising.

Michigan State opens the season Friday against FAU and as long as everyone can stay healthy over the next three days, it looks like this might be the most full-strength the Spartans have been in years.