EAST LANSING – Ben Murawski looks like a brick wall. Pat Fitzgerald needs him and the rest of his new additions to build one for Michigan State football’s offense.
The Spartans’ struggles since Mark Dantonio’s retirement can be traced to inconsistent offensive line production that has strained the rest of the team. An inability to run the ball forcing quarterbacks to pass more, an inability to block for them leading to sacks. An inability to sustain long drives on offense leading to more snaps and longer stretches being on the field for the defense.
Fitzgerald placed a priority and premium on adding massive, experienced bodies to combat those issues that have stretched back to 2018 and plagued Dantonio’s successors, Mel Tucker and Jonathan Smith, over the past six seasons.
“I think when I got here, his vision was super dead-on and super clear,” Murawski said after the Spartans’ first preseason practice Thursday, Aug. 8. “We want to win a Big Ten championship, we want to win everything. And that’s what I needed from a head coach. I didn’t want, ‘We’re supposed to be this,’ or ‘We’re supposed to be that.’ I needed the demand, and that’s what coach Fitz has given me. …
“It’s just being at your best when your best is required. All the time.”
After MSU lost 11 offensive linemen to the transfer portal with the offseason coaching change, Murawski arrives from Connecticut, along with guard Nick Sharpe from South Carolina, center Trent Fraley from North Dakota State and tackle Robert Wright Jr. from Georgia Southern. They are expected to blend with two other previous transfer additions in right tackle Conner Moore and versatile Luka Vincic and a number of inexperienced carryovers from Jonathan Smith’s two-year tenure.
All of a sudden, Fitzgerald feels he has “10 or 11 guys” fighting for playing time.
“There wasn’t a secret that we had to rebuild our O-line, and we went hard in the portal,” Fitzgerald said at Big Ten media days. “You guys saw who we signed, you see how many starts they had. It was all by design – to make this team, right now, competitive. We weren’t waiting three or four years. It was: How do we make this competitive? …
“If you don’t have the trenches in the right spot, you can’t win.”
That has been the case for the Spartans all the way back to 2018, save for one season in which Kenneth Walker III ran over, around and through blocking issues in front of him and had 70.5% of his 1,636 yards after contact in 2021.
MSU has averaged 127.4 yards on the ground per year over the past eight seasons, going 26-43 against Big Ten foes in that time. Take out Walker’s magical one-year stop, which produced seven of those conference wins, and the Spartans have averaged 111.5 rushing yards in the other seven seasons.
Last season, MSU averaged 122.8 rushing yards and ranked 109th out of 134 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision. That failure to generate ground traction allowed opposing defenders to pin their ears back and blitz frequently knowing the Spartans had to pass, and MSU’s 37 sacks allowed last season were the 12th-most in the nation.
In particular, the addition of the massive Murawski at 6-foot-7 and 340 pounds gives MSU a prototype left tackle with plenty of starting experience over the past three seasons at Connecticut (12 games at left tackle in 2025, six games at guard in 2024 and one in 2023).
“We had to rebuild the O-line, as you guys all know,” Fitzgerald said Thursday. “And [Murawski] was a big – pardon the pun – big piece of what we were trying to build.”
Murawski was a second-team Group of Five All-American last season at UConn. The native of Harleysville, Pennsylvania, anchored the Huskies’ line that allowed just 1.25 sacks per game (18th in the FBS) and averaged 159.0 rushing yards per game.
“I think the switch from left guard to left tackle, I was able to be more open. I wasn’t in a condensed space, I was able to move around,” Murawski said. “And then I just really honed in on the techniques, just being able to get everything down and have a great run game.”
Returning starting quarterback Alessio Milivojevic, who got sacked 16 times last season as a redshirt freshman, is relying on Murawski to protect his blind side and give him the time he was lacking in his four starts last season. In the first of those, he got sacked seven times in an overtime loss at Minnesota.
“Ben, he’s going to need to be a leader in that offensive line room,” Milivojevic said in Chicago. “Because the offensive line, it’s the concrete of the team is what I like to say. So he’s going to need to lead that room.”
Murawski is expected to line up at left tackle next to Sharpe (6-2, 351) at left guard, though both have the ability to flip sides. Fraley (6-1, 306), whose father Hank is the Detroit Lions’ offensive line coach and a former NFL center, takes a step up after winning the Rimington Award as the best center in the Football Championship Subdivision. Moore (6-6, 314) made that jump a year ago after being an FCS All-American at Montana State, and he also has played both tackle spots.
“There’s a lot that’s expected from the transfer guys,” Murawski said.
The other starting guard spot bears watching. Rakeem Johnson (6-4, 308) started there during the spring, with fellow third-year sophomore Andrew Dennis (6-4, 302) getting second-team reps. But Vincic (6-5, 306), who arrived last season after playing for Jonathan Smith at Oregon State, missed the spring after suffering a season-ending left knee injury injury in the second game against Youngstown State. He has the ability to play all three interior spots when healthy and worked out during the open portion of Thursday’s first preseason practice.
Wright (6-5, 294) and third-year sophomore Rustin Young (6-4, 308) have game experience at tackle. True freshman Eli Bickel (6-6, 310) also got significant snaps during the spring at tackle.
“If you don’t have healthy competition, good players can’t become great and great players can’t become special,” Fitzgerald said. “If you get complacent and feel like you got a job, you’ve arrived, and you just get a little lax, and all of a sudden, you start to not play as well as you can.”
Though new eligibility rules eliminate redshirts and will allow freshmen to play right away, that usually isn’t the case with offensive linemen, who typically must gain weight and strength in the high school-to-college transition before contributing. Fitzgerald said most of his younger linemen right now are behind “the other 11 are in the mix.” However, he is making it a mission for new strength and conditioning coach Joel Welsh to get the youngsters ready to join the competition by the end of the season and his program’s future.
“Joel’s got one job – put them where they need to be in the Big Ten,” Fitzgerald said. “Not the Little Ten, not the Weak Ten, but the Big Ten. So that group, for sure, without a doubt, will be getting developed their tails off.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: ‘Big’ Ben Murawski key to rebuild of Michigan State’s offensive line
Reporting by Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
