J Batt has the ball, and Michigan State’s first-year athletic director has made the most important move of his young tenure.
The Spartans “plan to fire” Smith after just two seasons, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel on Sunday, Nov. 30, a day after MSU (4-8, 1-8 Big Ten) ended an eight-game losing streak with a 38-28 win over Maryland in Detroit.
Batt, who was hired away from Georgia Tech in June, now has a personally vested stake in the football program’s future with his decision. Here is a checklist of what it will take for the Spartans to return to competing for Big Ten championships and beyond.
1A: Immediately improve offensive line
This is far and away the most significant on-field personnel need for the Spartans to return to competitive football again – and has been since the tail end of Mark Dantonio’s tenure in 2019.
MSU has struggled to run the ball consistently since 2017, with the offensive lines rarely providing much traction due to injuries, attrition, misses in recruiting and developmental failures. Even in 2021 with All-American Kenneth Walker III – the Walter Camp national player of the year, the Doak Walker Award and Big Ten Running Back of the Year winner – an eye-popping 70.5% of his 1,636 yards came after contact for the one-year Wake Forest transfer in the only 1,000-yard rushing season by a Spartan since Jeremy Langford in 2013 and 2014.
MSU has averaged 127.4 yards on the ground a year over the past eight seasons. Take out Walker, and it’s an average of 111.5 rushing yards in the other seven seasons, purely a byproduct of substandard Big Ten line play and a major cause for the Spartans’ 26-43 conference record the past eight years. And the strain of increased pressure on the passing game with a lack of a run game has affected every quarterback since Connor Cook graduate in 2015.
1B: Immediately improve pass rush
This is the defensive equivalent to the offensive line, because winning in the trenches is an absolute necessity to compete for Big Ten titles.
On the defensive side, despite having depth and talent at defensive tackle, MSU has not had an elite pass rusher since Kenny Willekes from 2017-19. Consequently, that has at times taxed the players on the interior of the defense as well as the linebackers in attempting to generate pressure from the second level. In doing so, any scheme in the secondary gets compromised because defensive backs are having to cover far longer and on more plays in the pass-first era of college football.
3: Improved NIL
You can’t have one 1A. or 1B. without the money required to get top-tier talent in this era of legalized pay-for-play college football. Regardless of the NCAA or College Sports Commission’s attempts to say it doesn’t exist.
The absurd amount of money flowing in college football is necessary to build a competitive roster these days, and finding those funds mostly falls outside of the coach’s purview. Batt needs to accumulate a war chest among the top five in the Big Ten to build depth in the trenches, along with paying the singular high-dollar price tags of elite quarterbacks and skill players, to get MSU back in a position to contend for a conference championship and College Football Playoff berth. Then it falls to the staff to allocate those funds with their talent evaluation. Which leads to the next item on the checklist.
4: Develop talent
One of the key calling cards Smith and his coaches arrived in East Lansing with was the ability to put players into the pros and develop them toward that goal. Two seasons in the portal world is hardly a gauge to say whether or not they were doing that, but in-season growth of young players has been slow while others such as Aidan Chiles and Jack Velling showed regression from a year ago.
Development takes time, as well as sticking to the process (as Tom Izzo loves to say). Whatever happens from here out, more patience will be as important as better teaching. That comes with putting players in the schemes and position to maximize their talent both individually and collectively. And it will be imperative this time around to have a more clearly defined concept of what is considered progress from the top of the leadership chain – starting with Batt but also extending to the donors that fund the program.
5. Rebuild fans’ trust
While everything now revolves around those donors and their dollars, MSU cannot continue to ignore its fans who have supported the program. A sizeable chunk of younger Spartan faithful have not been down this road before of enduring losing season after losing season thanks to Dantonio’s once-a-generation success, but older ones remember the lean years of John L. Smith, Bobby Williams, Muddy Waters … and, yes, even Nick Saban.
However, the fanbase started to splinter as three of Dantonio’s final four seasons fell below the elevated bar he established and he refused to make changes to his coaching staff. How MSU handled the search for his successor after an abrupt retirement announcement added to fans’ frustration with the stewards of the program. The tumultuous tenure of Mel Tucker, from self-promotion to self-destruction, further fractured feelings.
Smith barely got a chance from a group whose patience started wearing thin well before he arrived. It is up to Batt and the department he has been overhauling in the past six months since to provide tangible plans and far better communication about the steps they feel are needed and when they can get back to the days where Dantonio made alums and supporters believe the Spartans can compete for titles year in, year out.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football path to glory after firing Jonathan Smith
