Michigan State football's opener: Northwestern trying to 'get a snapshot' of new-look MSU

Pat Fitzgerald chuckled at the question. How exactly IS Northwestern preparing to face a Michigan State football roster that looks nothing like it did a year ago?

“Yeah, we've had overturned a lot of stones, bud,” Fitzgerald said Monday. “We've had to go find a lot of tape on a lot of guys and different schools, just to kind of get a snapshot.”

Up to now, the Spartans have been a collage of college football players from around the country — 21 transfer players and 20 new freshmen, along with 19 others who have yet to play a snap for MSU, arriving in East Lansing to build coach Mel Tucker’s vision of what he wants his program to be.

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The wait to find out if it his experiment works ends Friday, when Tucker’s overhaul goes from theory to reality as the season begins against Fitzgerald’s Wildcats at Ryan Field in Evanston, Illinois. Kickoff is 9 p.m. on ESPN.

While that game tape eventually will go a long way to future opponent scouting reports of the Spartans, Fitzgerald has little to go on with how Tucker has transformed his team. MSU’s open practice April 24 was televised by Big Ten Network, but that group featured only 10 of the program newcomers and others entered the transfer portal following spring workouts.

The Spartans have players who have arrived from Power Five schools, such as running back Kenneth Walker III (Wake Forest) and linebacker Quavaris Crouch (Tennessee). They picked up Group of Five players, such as quarterback Anthony Russo (Temple) and left tackle Jarrett Horst (Arkansas State). Adding lower-division defensive backs (Kendell Brooks from Division II, Spencer Rowland from Division III) and a junior college offensive lineman (Brandon Baldwin) who didn't have a season last year. They even brought in a national champion in cornerback Ronald Williams, who got hurt at Alabama after being a 2019 junior college all-America selection, and a former Cadet from Army in walk-on linebacker Samih Beydoun.

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Fitzgerald said that sent Northwestern’s staff scrambling to find footage of those players and coaches scouring the tape to identify players’ strengths and weaknesses.

“Our quality control guys did a good job getting that all organized,” said the Wildcats’ 16th-year coach, who guided his alma mater to two of the last three Big Ten championship games. “And then it's trying to project where those young men will fit into the scheme that coach Tucker runs in all three phases. So it's been a challenge, there's no doubt about that. But this isn't the first time we've had to deal with this.”

Tucker and his staff patchworked together what they feel is a more talented and deeper roster than the one that upset eventual West Division champ Northwestern last year at Spartan Stadium, 29-20. Whether they have developed the chemistry and cohesion needed to win in the Big Ten — let alone a season-opening, conference matchup on the road as their unveiling — won’t be known until they get on the field in a real game.

The second-year coach also knows that provides him with some advantages going into Friday, even though he also is preparing for a Northwestern team going through a more natural change in personnel with graduation losses from last season’s 7-2 squad.

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“The first game is always like that. And even when you get into the season, you still get unscouted looks. It's just in that first game, you know a lot less,” Tucker said last week. “People have had months and months to study themselves and maybe pick up some new things, so you're not exactly sure what you're going to get.”

One of the biggest question marks is at quarterback for MSU. Tucker has yet to publicly reveal who will start Friday after a protracted battle this spring and during preseason camp between Russo, who started 26 games at Temple over five seasons, and sophomore Payton Thorne, who started MSU’s final game of 2020 at Penn State and set a freshman record with 325 passing yards.

On the contrary, Fitzgerald announced two weeks ago that senior Hunter Johnson will start at quarterback for Northwestern. The one-time Clemson transfer started five games in 2019 but only made two appearances a year ago.

Fitzgerald called it “a coach-by-coach, individual decision” as when it is proper to name a starting quarterback. He said he has both announced it early like the Johnson decision and held it back until game week to try and keep it a secret from the Wildcats’ opponents. And Fitzgerald added he and his staff already have watched a lot of Temple game film to study Russo on top of the four games Thorne played in for MSU last season.

“You typically will always let your team know in advance, so I'm assuming Mel has already alerted his squad on who the starter is, and those guys know that. They're just not going to do it publicly,” Fitzgerald said. “Yeah, you have to watch more tape as coaches, but we do anyways. We're pretty big losers, so that's about all we do anyways is watch tape.”

Fitzgerald said he feels the transfer portal is here to stay, but he also wants to see it policed better so the power remains with athletes to find new opportunities and prevents “coaches running guys off the rosters.” And he also believes eyes around the college football world will focus on how Tucker used it to remake MSU’s roster — and to see if it succeeds or fails.

“I think we're the great plagiarists of athletics in football,” Fitzgerald said. “So if it works, absolutely people will emulate it.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football: Northwestern trying to figure out Spartans