‘We’ll see if we’re better, and we’ll see if I’m better.’
Forget the hype or the hope: Only actions matter for Tucker and his Spartans in 2023 Mel Tucker’s prove-it year for Michigan State begins tonight vs. Central Michigan
EAST LANSING — Words do not matter anymore.
Not anything Mel Tucker and his Michigan State football players have said during preseason camp. Nor anything about what they expect in Friday’s opener against Central Michigan, or about their belief of a growth in depth and talent. Not even about their mission for a turnaround season or a chip on their shoulder.
Is what they said since finishing 5-7 last season and throughout preseason camp important? To a point. But it also rings as meaningless as, when going into last year, they preached about standing on the precipice of greatness coming off an 11-2 record and top-10 finish in Tucker’s second season.
Words don’t matter in college football. Results do.
Tucker was the toast of his sport in November 2021. That was right after beating Michigan for the second straight time, in an epic showdown and the
Michigan State football’s Mel Tucker is about to start his fourth season as the Spartans’ head coach. It’s hard to gauge the status of his program.
Under normal circumstances, this would be alarming. But in the context of the circumstances in which Tucker has operated, the alarm should be downgraded to concern; a 5-7 record will do that and should.
To say he’s about to enter his fourth season may be factually correct, but it doesn’t account for when he was hired — February 2020, which was late in the recruiting cycle — or COVID. He essentially lost his first year. Which means this is akin to his third year.
Still, even if we give Tucker a mulligan, college football coaches need to show progress in Year 3. And to keep the serious pressure at bay, Tucker needs to show progress this season.
How many wins does that mean? Six is a start. Seven should quiet the murmurs, unless most of
Spartans’ eighth straight win to open that season. As MSU hit No. 3 in the polls, a buzz grew around his program and with recruits, and Tucker quickly was rumored to be a candidate for the already open seat at LSU, as another successful Spartans coach had been more than two decades earlier.
That’s when MSU’s power brokers moved to lock him up long-term, a 10-year, $95 million contract meant as an investment in the future (and a way of avoiding repeating the pain from MSU’s loss of Nick Saban to the SEC in 1999). But since that Oct. 30, 2020, victory, the Spartans are just 8-9, and they are coming off another winter without a bowl, the second in Tucker’s first three seasons.
When this season kicks off Friday night against Central Michigan (7 p.m./FS1), that history won’t matter, either.
Anything that needs to be said now must be done within the stadiums
Tucker’s 18-14 overall record in four seasons as a head coach (including his pandemic-shortened 2020 MSU debut) is on par with Mark Dantonio’s 18-17 record in three seasons at Cincinnati before heading to East Lansing. That turned out to be a touchdown of a hire that pushed the Spartans back into a national limelight they hadn’t seen since the 1960s, and Dantonio eventually surpassed Duffy Daugherty as the school’s winningest football coach. Few could have envisioned that type of success ... until it happened.
Which makes this season a pivotal year for Tucker, both as a coach and a leader of men. It’s particularly so after losing quarterback Payton Thorne and receiver Keon Coleman to the transfer portal. With so many new faces in critical roles, they, more than ever, need him and his coaching staff to put them in the best possible positions to reach their goals.
That doesn’t necessarily mean winning 11 games again — at least not yet. But it does mean returning to Dantonio’s baseline of making a bowl every season.
Tucker has the coaching résumé and opportunity to take the next step, like Dantonio did in the late 2000s before hitting his stride in the 2010s. Tucker’s big contract and the good graces from the quick rise in 2021 also give him a semblance of security (though no one in college football is immune from a hard, fast fall). But that will dwindle unless he his assistants and his players to show an upward trajectory on the field, in action and decision-making.
There can’t be egregious missteps, like not calling a timeout on fourth-and-1 in the waning minutes at Penn State after a formation shift left MSU’s defense shorthanded to one side of the field. That non-call in last season’s finale resulted in a touchdown that ended any hope of a comeback and a major road upset to sneak out a postseason berth.
Nor can there be the confusion on offense that almost proved costly in the upset win at Illinois, which the Spartans gave the Illini extra hope by not attempting to bleed the clock in the final 3 minutes. (That was hardly the first example of clock mismanagement; consider that 2021 win over U-M, which needed Charles Brantley’s game-clinching interception after the Spartans were forced to punt following an ugly three-and-out.)
Some of that doesn’t fall directly on Tucker. Offensive coordinator Jay Johnson and defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton shoulder plenty of responsibility for the missteps and struggles — as well as the successes from two years ago.
But should the offense continue its inability to run the ball and sustain drives, or should the defense continue to give up massive tracts of yardage to opponents, it will require Tucker to make hard decisions about his top assistants — something he has yet to do as the CEO of a college program.
Ultimately, though, college football success always comes down to the 11 players on the field at any given time. And thus, only 11 words Tucker said in August matter, the one quote over the past month that provides the truest substance for the fall ahead:
“We’ll see if we’re better,” he said, “and we’ll see if I’m better.”
We’ll see if that happens when Tucker runs out of the Spartan Stadium tunnel Friday night and then go from there.