EAST LANSING – Kenny Soares Jr. swam past imaginary linemen and dove headlong into a blocking sled. Thwack, shock, release. One rep after another, slowing only to focus on improving his technique.
All while wearing his newly printed No. 1 jersey. A sign of how important the defensive end quickly has become to his teammates and program. A hope that the fifth-year-senior transfer can be the one to revive Michigan State football’s once-ferocious pass rush prowess.
“For me, I know the way that I come into every single day, I attack it,” Soares said after practice Monday, Aug. 10. “A random Monday, it doesn’t matter what day it is of the week. Every single day, I tell everybody I’m going to be the same exact person coming into the building. I give everything, and I put it on the line every single day. …
“Yes, it’s the number and it’s a big thing. But it’s just the same person in a different number.”
The more important number defensive coordinator Joe Rossi wants Soares to help change is 22. That’s how many sacks the Spartans’ defense registered last season, Rossi’s second season at MSU. The Spartans finished tied for 15th in the Big Ten in 2025 and were 16th the previous year in sacks.
Still, Pat Fitzgerald retained Rossi after the firing of Jonathan Smith, and Rossi believes his unit that turned a corner late last season is prepared to continue the building ascent under his new head coach.
“Up front, it’s a series of efforts. Pass rush, a lot of it is just being relentless and just having a high motor,” Rossi said Monday, following MSU’s fourth preaseason practice. “(Soares) is a high-motor guy. There are times where we have to pull him back. But as a defensive coach, that’s what you love.”
Soares is battling with returnees Anelu Lafaele and Isaac Smith for snaps in the two deep at edge rusher. That group also includes three-star freshman Cory House Jr., who picked MSU over Iowa, along with depth returnee Chris Piwowarczyk and Leonard Ah You, who Soares said recently joined the edge rushers from linebacker. Rossi also added two Football Championship Subdivision transfers in Trey Lisle from Southeast Missouri State and Keahnist Thompson from Weber State as well as Aidan Boehle from Division II Winona State.
Their task: Get to opposing quarterbacks and be disruptive forces in the backfield. For a multitude of reasons beyond just generating more sacks.
“If you look at interceptions, most interceptions are the result of pressure,” Rossi said. “And the most fumbled play in a football play is a sack-fumble. So pressure creates takeaways, it helps coverage, and then it creates minus-yardage plays. You get sacks, and it’s hard for an offense to overcome a sack on a (potential) scoring drive.”
MSU has led the Big Ten just four times in sacks: 1999 (54), 2003 (45), 2011 (45) and 2021 (42). It was only officially recognized as a stat category by the NCAA in 2000.
Only 12 Spartans have registered 10-or-more sacks in a season, four of them as part of Mark Dantonio’s dominating defenses during his 13-year tenure. Most recently, All-American defensive ends Kenny Willekes in 2019 and Shilique Calhoun in 2015 had 10½ each, while linebacker Denicos Allen had 11 in 2011 and ranks sixth in school history, one spot ahead of Calhoun and Willekes. Defensive end Jonal Saint-Dic in 2007, Dantonio’s first season, had 10 and remains in a four-way tie for ninth.
Their physical and attacking nature was a critical reason Dantonio’s program won three Big Ten titles and went to 12 bowl games in his 13 seasons.
And Fitzgerald, a former All-American linebacker, wants to return to both playing that style of defense and winning big again after going 4-8 last season under Smith and 33-38 overall with a paltry 18-35 conference record since Dantonio retired after the 2019 season.
“They say that defense wins championships, so I 100% agree with that,” Soares said. “Within our role, too, us being a D-line and just getting to the quarterback, I feel like we can make a lot of different plays. You can go anywhere from just sacking the quarterback to scoop-and-scores. You can really control the game up front and in the trenches.”
In 2021, the only time MSU made a bowl appearance since Dantonio’s retirement while going 11-2, 16 different players contributed to the 42 sacks, led by 7½ from defensive end Jacub Panasiuk. However, the secondary was porous against the pass – particularly during the two losses that season to Purdue and Ohio State. It showed why coaches preach the symbiotic nature of rush-and-cover to a strong defense.
Senior cornerback Tre Bell after practice Monday said the high intensity, demanding style of new defensive line coach Winston DeLattiboudere III “is working out” for the pass rushers up front.
“They’re obviously making our job (in the secondary) a lot easier. So we have to do the same thing and make their job easier, so they can get paid, too,” said Bell, an Iowa State-via-lower division Lindenwood transfer. “If they do their job rushing the passer, we can get some batted balls or maybe some hurried throws. And if the quarterback can throw it off the mark, we can go make plays and vice versa if we’re holding the receivers for 7-8 seconds and they get sacks.
“It all works as one.”
Enter Soares. And Rossi hopes that allows for his defense to soar again back to Dantonio-era heights.
The 6-foot-2, 234-pound Soares spent three seasons at Northwestern from 2022-24, then transferred to North Carolina State last year and had a career-best 80 tackles while playing 656 snaps in 13 games. Most of that was spent at linebacker due to injuries on the Wolfpack’s defense.
“I feel like since I’ve been in college, I’ve been a hybrid kind of dude, where I’ve played multiple positions. So there (at N.C. State), I played edge and I played a little bit of WILL backer, too. With injuries, I ended up playing more WILL last year, which honestly helped me grow a lot as a player because I hadn’t been able to play that inside backer as much.”
Fitzgerald calls the player wearing the No. 1 jersey “The Spartan” because “he’s the one that embodies our values, the work ethic, the commitment, the giving of himself for the greater good of his teammates better than anybody else.” And it is perhaps coincidental that his players voted for the first such honor in his time at MSU goes to the one player who was a high school recruit of his at Northwestern after a late flip from Colorado in 2022.
“It means everything, honestly. … I’m honestly pretty blessed and I’m so blessed,” said Soares, who is from Trumbull, Connecticut. “It’s still a surreal feeling for me.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Is Kenny Soares the man to fix Michigan State’s ailing pass rush?
Reporting by Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Chris Solari, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
