Why Mel Tucker thinks last year's struggles will lead to success for Michigan State football

INDIANAPOLIS — Two years ago, Michigan State football arrived for its season-opening game with far greater questions than expectations.
A vacuum at starting quarterback. A sputtering run game. A ton of transfers with little experience playing together. Just two wins in Mel Tucker’s pandemic-impacted first year.
No one outside the Spartans’ locker room saw what came next: an 11-2 record, a New Year’s Six bowl victory and a top-10 finish. And the players who experienced that are trying to tell this year’s MSU teammates how quickly fortunes can turn around.
“Coming off that 2020 season, people kind of thought we weren't going to be anything going into 2021. We proved a lot of people wrong that year,” senior offensive lineman J.D. Duplain said Wednesday at Big Ten media days. “We've talked about that a little bit, and we're looking to just prove people wrong again. We know what we have, we know the talent that we have, the team that we have. And we know we can get the job done.”
Tucker enters his fourth season at MSU with an 18-14 record, 23-21 overall counting his one season at Colorado. The Spartans went 5-7 a year ago, battling injuries and suspensions on the defense and a downturn in performance across the board. They also lost their two-year starting quarterback, Payton Thorne, as well as fledgling star wide receiver Keon Coleman to transfer after spring practices.
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While this season might look like a pivot point for his program from the outside, Tucker feels that already happened with the trials and tribulations MSU endured coming off the high-bar success of 2021.
“What I prefer to do is really look at last year's team and really look at that team as a team that's going to lay the foundation for the program. Because I think oftentimes, you have to get kicked in the face before you can be great,” he said. “We have a chip on our shoulder. No one was happy with the way the season unfolded, especially there in the last couple of games. It was very disappointing. We're just, we're just hungry.”
Replacing Thorne, who led the 2021 resurgence and put together two of the best seasons statistically in Spartan history for a quarterback before transferring to Auburn, will be the prevailing theme throughout preseason camp, which opens Aug. 3.
Tucker opened the QB job for competition in spring practice, and junior Noah Kim and redshirt freshman Katin Houser remain. However, Tucker cautioned that it will be “a three-man race,” adding that true freshman Sam Leavitt — a four-star recruit who arrived this summer — also will be in the mix.
“A couple years ago, I don't think anyone knew who the starting quarterback was gonna be going into that Northwestern game,” Tucker said. “It may be that, we'll have to see. Our quarterback has to be our No. 1 competitor. … We'll see how it goes. We have 25 practices before the first game.”
Senior Tre Mosley said he’s “always gonna have love” for Thorne, who called his former classmate and wide receiver shortly after he entered the portal. But time moves on, and he saw first-hand how Thorne blossomed in 2021 when he got his chance — after beating out graduate transfer Anthony Russo, an experienced starter at Temple.
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“With the quarterback competition now, all those guys are going out there and competing their tails off every day because they want the job badly. And I like to see that, because competition is good. And that exactly what we need after coming off a 5-7 season. May the best man win every position.
“Coach Tucker told us after that season that no job was solidified, no matter how many games you started, what you accomplished individually, it’s a blank state.”
That’s how Tucker took that 2021 season, when he said, “We haven't really done anything.” He pointed to that again Wednesday and how that constant quest for improving needs to become a hallmark of his program.
“We didn't win a championship, we didn't win them all,” he said. “It was a step in the right direction, but we hadn't arrived. And so we feel the same way now. …
“Consistency in performance is how you become successful. That's the hardest thing to do, especially when you're building a program.”
Tucker continues to focus on promoting and pushing team-building activities in the offseason, particularly with how his program — like many others who have since followed his lead after MSU’s success in 2021 — has become reliant upon filling talent gaps and depth issues via the transfer portal.
The Spartans showed two years ago that it can work, even though they now are experiencing the other side of how outbound transfers can disrupt that building process. But when they reconvene for the first practice next week, Duplain plans to deliver a message for all the newcomers and returnees, young and old alike, about what he believes it will take for MSU to approach being able to get double-digit victories, if not their stated goal of winning all of them.
“Just lay it all out in the line,” he said. “I mean, don't be afraid to put yourself out there and go to a place you've never been. I mean, at the end of the day, if you want to do something you've never done, you gotta push yourself harder than you've ever pushed yourself.
“So don't be afraid of it, embrace it and just work as hard as you can every single day. And I promise it'll pay off. That's our message.”
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