GREEN AND WILD
Making sense of Spartans’ roster shakeup on Defection Friday
Michigan State’s mass exodus Friday concluded a week of roster overhaul Mel Tucker promised would happen. Deh vontae Dobbs, a former four-star offensive lineman. Gone. Cornerback Davion Williams and h linebacker Jeslord Boateng, young backups on defense. Gone. Rocky Lombardi, starting quarterback. Gone.
h h Four players into the NCAA transfer portal in less than eight hours, all joining former four-star defensive back Julian Barnett who entered a week earlier. Nine in total so far. A reset button that cleared some of Mark Dantonio’s cherished recruiting pieces in his final few seasons before retirement. It did not stop there Friday. Four-star run
h ning back Audric Estime, who had been the Spartans’ second-ranked commitment for much of the fall, opted to sign with Notre Dame in the middle of it all. A tough defeat on the recruiting trail, yet one expected in recent days after he picked up a Notre Dame offer on Monday.
It is nothing Tucker didn’t expect or plan for. It is why he loaded up on defensive backs and linebackers in the recruiting class that signed Wednesday, including his own four-star flip of linebacker Ma’a Gaoteote. It is why the Spartans immediately became players in the swelling portal themselves, plucking former Temple quarterback Anthony Russo on Wednesday and former Auburn running back Harold Joiner III on Thursday. They also are pursuing Gaoteote’s older brother, Palaie, a former five-star linebacker who left Southern Cal.
“The portal is here. It is not going away,” Tucker said Tuesday. “We’re gonna embrace it. I’ve gotten players out of the portal, and I’ve seen guys go into the portal. That’s part of that’s part of college football now.”
So is roster attrition of this magnitude when a new coach arrives. Though the circumstances and timeline for Tucker and MSU have been skewed from the start.
A roster purge typically starts on a normal hiring cycle after the winter semester before his first season. Tucker was hired Feb. 12, eight days after Dantonio suddenly retired.
More players tend to leave following spring practices, when they realize their spot on the depth chart and pecking order with a new staff. But the pandemic wiped out Tucker’s spring and summer.
Rosters then can experience some more losses during preseason camp as new coaches begin to define their players’ roles. MSU stopped and started with the Big Ten’s waffling of whether to play or not this fall.
Nothing has been normal for Tucker. Yet turning over this many players is far from unique at the major college level — even if it wasn’t during Dantonio’s 13-year tenure that focus on loyalty and upperclassmen.
“Ultimately, there’s transition — not only acquiring guys to the team, but there’s also guys that ultimately may a transition out,” Tucker said on Nov. 17. “Just because of there’s a certain type of culture and a certain type of player that we need to have here. That’s really nonnegotiable. Everything’s an evaluation.”
What has become clear with the Spartans’ 2-5 season is Tucker used it as a trial-by-fire for the players he inherited and an audition for 2021, if they choose to remain.
He has shown willingness to play newcomers over experienced returning veterans, particularly in the cases of Barnett and freshman Angelo Grose, and 2019 leading rusher Elijah Collins and freshman Jordon Simmons.
He showed the portal will be used to boost positions he feels need improvement, particularly by bringing in Russo after starting Lombardi and redshirt freshman Payton Thorne over the seven games. Lombardi even led wins over Michigan and Northwestern while they were top-15 teams.
And he showed recruits like Estime that if they are hesitant of not buying in to what he offers and wants from them, he is not afraid to look elsewhere to bring in high-end talent looking for a new home like Joiner.
“Michigan State is a national brand. We can recruit coast to coast,” Tucker said Tuesday. “All of the high school coaches and the players, they know Michigan State and they respect Michigan State, respect the brand and respect the history and the tradition. ... We have a lot to sell. If you can’t recruit at Michigan State, you probably can’t recruit.”
Friday might have been the final day of the early period to sign high school prospects — three-star offensive lineman Geno VanDeMark put pen to paper as the Spartans’ 18th signee this week — but Tucker emphatically reminded anyone who would listen that recruiting is an an ongoing process.
Expect there to be more players in the coming weeks who might look for opportunities elsewhere, particularly seldom-used veterans who get a bonus year of eligibility due to the pandemic. Expect Tucker to continue to mine the portal and junior colleges to bring in the size and speed he craves to take MSU back to national prominence. And expect him to keep examining the remaining high school prospects who remain unsigned to bolster the 2021 class for when the traditional signing period reopens Feb. 3.
Programs are neither built nor destroyed in a day or a week. Tucker is hoping to look back at these moments as when the foundation for the success began to take shape.