East Lansing — The Pat Fitzgerald era at Michigan State has officially begun. Well maybe not officially, but it sure feels like it.
Today was the first fall practice, just four weeks before the program’s home opener against Toledo. It will be the start of what seems to be the modern-day rebuild in college sports now thanks to NIL and the transfer portal.
Michigan State’s football program enters this fall looking for a stable base to build upon. Four straight losing seasons and multiple coaching changes has led one of the most prominent programs in the Big Ten scraping for relevance as the conference boasts three straight national champions.
The practice went as most first practices usually do: mistakes galore as this team gets more comfortable with the grind of college football. Fitzgerald noted that everything, from the reps to even water breaks, had room for improvement.
“We were very rusty. Long, long way to go,” Fitzgerald said in a press conference after practice. “That’s kind of what I talked to the guys about as we went through team reps. It looked like Practice 1 at training camp.”
“Even though we went over it for the last X amount of hours, and last night logistically, it looked like our first time being out there collectively at a practice.”
Fitzgerald showed up with the same amount of passion and belief during Thursday’s press conference that he had during Big Ten Media Days over a week ago in Chicago.
If there’s one thing anyone should know about Fitzgerald through his 25-minute session today: He loves football. The process, the science, the leadership, all of it, and he wants his team to share that.
“But the guys, I thought, really attacked and embraced it. So now it’s gonna be all about how we lean into the grind, raise our expectations individually, and then hold each other to a standard that we want to be at a championship level every rep of every day of everything that we do.”
Alessio Milivojevic comes in as the projected Day-1 starter at quarterback after being former Spartan Aidan Chlies’ backup for most of last season, before seizing the starting role late in the campaign. The 6-foot-3 sophomore noted how different fall camp is from the other workouts that take place over the year.
“You could prepare as much as you want throughout that, it’s great to do it with your brothers, great to do with your teammates, but ultimately fall camp is just different,” Milivojevic said.
“It’s a different vibe out there, you’re preparing to go play someone else that you haven’t been with for weeks. You’re going to unleash something else on a different team.”
Milivojevic had moments where looked like the long-term starter for the Spartans, such as his 292-yard and four-touchdown performance in last season’s finale against Maryland at Ford Field in Detroit. But even he knows he has to improve into this season, and even said so.
“Being known as a pocket quarterback… it’s kind of the nature of the role, you gotta stay in there and take a few shots when you have a guy about to break or something like that,” Milivojevic said. “But ultimately, I want to avoid how many hits that I can. I think this year, the timing, the reads getting out even faster so I don’t have to take some of those unnecessary hits.”
There was one moment after practice Fitzgerald highlighted. While leaving, he found a couple of Gatorade bottles and other trash on the field, taking it upon himself to teach his team a lesson.
“Because the standard is… everywhere we go, we’re gonna leave it better than we found it, and so as that moves forward, that will be held accountable. It’s like the same thing in the team room, you guys should always walk in here, and it should be pristine,” Fitzgerald said.
“I mean obviously, the trash part is unacceptable. It’s something the team should be doing, something I should be doing as a leader, I should be picking that up instead of the coach having to pick something up off the field,” Milivojevic said.
Fitzgerald knows it’ll be a long first season at the helm, but is committed to creating the habits needed to make a championship team.
“I think that’s an ongoing process, I think it’s an individual choice, I think you’ve got to create the right mental habits, and when you do that, kind of individually, then we get it by position, each side of the ball,” Fitzgerald said. “Collectively as a team, we can reach our full potential. So we have a long way to go.”
Kameron Goodwill is a freelance writer.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Pat Fitzgerald prepares MSU to ‘lean into the grind’ as fall camp starts
Reporting by Kameron Goodwill, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Kameron Goodwill, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
