Pat Fitzgerald: Michigan State football remains 'a work in progress'

EAST LANSING – Upon further review, there remained a significant sting for Pat Fitzgerald two days later.

Michigan State football showed promise and potential, along with the requisite toughness its new coach demands, in a 27-10 loss at No. 3 Notre Dame on Saturday, Sept. 19. But Fitzgerald also saw the flaws from his initial watch from the sidelines magnified when he reviewed the game film that led to the Spartans’ ultimate undoing.

“We’re a work in progress, but we’re gaining on where we want to be from a consistency standpoint,” Fitzgerald said Monday. “To me, that’s my biggest job to do now. It’s to get us to play consistently. This team believes it can win, it knows it can win, it trusts it can win.”

READY FOR BIG RED? Michigan State football in need of a health check as Big Ten play hits

MSU (2-1) must put aside the platitudes from outside and the critiques internally to move on to the next phase of Fitzgerald’s debut season. That begins with the start of Big Ten play and a visit from Nebraska (3-0) on Saturday (5 p.m., Big Ten Network).

“I would fully expect we’ll play with great effort,” said Fitzgerald, whose previous team, Northwestern, went 65-76 in conference games (including two Big Ten West Division titles) over 17 seasons. “I mean, it’s a choice, it’s something we stress every day and in everything we do. We got a huge challenge – Nebraska is playing at a very high level.

“So we gotta play much cleaner, much more consistently. I’m not gonna stop saying that until we get there. And once we get there, it won’t be good enough.”

Some of the mistakes Fitzgerald pointed to, beyond the dropped pass in the end zone by Nebraska transfer Kenneth Williams that would have been a touchdown, were “one-man breakdowns” – assignment errors in blocking, tackling and coverage on both sides of the ball. He said quarterback Alessio Milivojevic’s first of two interceptions came from not throwing the ball to the outside on the deep route as he was instructed. Fitzgerald also expressed his frustration with his special teams units again, even criticizing them for their read and alignment issues despite snuffing out a fake punt in the first quarter.

“There was a lot of things that we didn’t execute on that play, but we got off the field,” he said. “If it was fourth-and-4, they would’ve got it. So yeah, we recognized that we didn’t get it communicated to the field. We thought we had prepared the guys well enough, and we didn’t, so it’s our fault as coaches.

“But we got the stop. So everybody’s like, ‘Woohoo!’ And I’m pissed off on the sideline like, why did we not do this, why did we not do that. And so we’re a work in progress there, guys, for sure. Not there yet.”

However, Fitzgerald’s biggest concerns are with cleaning up individual plays and not procedural mistakes and penalties. The Spartans committed just two against the Irish – pass interference flags on cornerbacks Tre Bell and Charles Brantley – and enter Big Ten play tied for sixth in the nation in fewest penalties per game (3.33), a positive for a team and a coach that knows the razor-thin margin for error in high-level games.

“They have an excellent team, very balanced,” Nebraska coach Matt Rhule told reporters Monday. “They don't beat themselves. … They had every chance to win on Saturday night. So they've certainly played some big-time competition.”

The Cornhuskers have yet to face a power-conference opponent, feasting on two lower-echelon Mid-American Conference schools (49-21 over Ohio and 56-7 over Bowling Green) and an always-tough FCS-level foe in North Dakota (34-7 on Saturday). All three of Nebraska’s games have been at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, and the trip to MSU is their lone road trip in their first six games.

The Spartans, who won just one Big Ten game a year ago, made things tough last year at Nebraska before falling, 38-27. The Huskers rallied for 17 straight points after MSU took a third-quarter lead, and it got jumpstarted when the Spartans muffed a kickoff – hence Fitzgerald’s hyperfocus on shoring up his special teams unit.

Rhule is 10-17 in three Big Ten campaigns and 22-19 overall, with a 4-10 record in true road games. That includes a 20-17 loss at Spartan Stadium in 2023 that came after MSU fired Mel Tucker.

Fitzgerald expects a strong home crowd to back the Spartans, one he hopes will arrive energized from what they saw from his team at Notre Dame. But he also won’t put too much stock into the growing optimism and compliments he and his players are hearing from them, not when he sees so many details amiss that need to be corrected to compete for a Big Ten title.

“Listen, we’re taking the standard up and getting it to where it needs to be. And that’s my job to get it there,” Fitzgerald said. “I’d be lying to you if I didn’t tell you a little of that is rat poison – ‘Hey, good job, you played hard.’ That drives me crazy. Nuts. … We need to earn that support. And not winning games is not earning it.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

Subscribe to the "Spartan Speak" podcast for new episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Pat Fitzgerald: Michigan State football remains 'a work in progress'