Nick Sheridan looks to revive Michigan State football glory, offense
NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos...
EAST LANSING – Nick Sheridan rattled off the names like family members.
“Bill Burke, Chris Baker, Plaxico Burress, Gary Scott, Amp Campbell, Sorie Kanu. I mean, I remember all these guys. These were really my heroes, these guys were giants to me,” Michigan State football’s new offensive coordinator said Tuesday, MArch 31. “TJ Turner, Josh Thornhill – I could go on and on.”
Sheridan had a personal view of the Spartans’ stars on some of the best teams of the 1990s, with his dad serving as Nick Saban’s linebackers coach at MSU. Even though Bill Sheridan migrated south to Ann Arbor in his professional journey and his son would eventually play quarterback for Michigan, that passion and those preteen memories made for “an easy decision” for Nick Sheridan to join the staff of Pat Fitzgerald – someone else whose football life he admired – at MSU.
“When I was growing up, in college and after college, I looked up to Pat Fitzgerald,” Sheridan said after the Spartans’ seventh spring practice early Tuesday morning. “That was really just someone that I tried to emulate, someone I wanted to be like. This was a very easy decision for me, one I’m extremely grateful and appreciative of.”
After learning under the tutelage of Kalen DeBoer – over the past four years at Washington and Alabama, as well as 2019 at Indiana – the 2006 Saline High grad returns to his home state and the school where the now 37-year-old Sheridan watched his dad work alongside Saban and Mark Dantonio from 1998-2000.
That experience, along with coaching in the College Football Playoff in two of the past three seasons, enticed Fitzgerald to bringing Sheridan back to MSU.
“As we went through the interview process, Nick doesn’t like football; Nick loves football. He exudes it every day,” Fitzgerald said Tuesday. “He’s an unbelievable teacher. The way that we’ve gone about building relationships offensively, it really has been directed by him.”
The relationship between Sheridan and Fitzgerald began years ago, with a letter written when Sheridan was a young up-and-coming coach looking for a foot in the door after playing quarterback at U-M from 2006-09. Sheridan kept the reply he got while he was serving a graduate assistant on Willie Taggart’s staff at Western Kentucky in 2011.
“It was really one of admiration on my end,” Sheridan said. “When I was a young coach and I was a graduate assistant, I wrote him wishing him luck and having him keep me in mind if he had any graduate assistant positions open in the future. And he wrote me back. I still have that note. …
“I can say I wrote a lot of notes – that’s what young people do as you’re trying to just establish yourself in whatever profession and career you try to do. I’m sure many of you have similar stories about trying to reach out to people. I wrote a lot of notes. And I can promise you, I didn’t get a ton that wrote back. I thought [that] spoke a ton about who he is.”
Now, the two of them are working together to get the Spartans back to playing winning football after missing a bowl game in each of the past five seasons while going just 31-37 overall and 22-34 in Big Ten play (not counting vacated wins) since Mark Dantonio’s retirement after the 2019 seasons.
After serving as Indiana’s tight ends coach under DeBoer as he ran the offense, Sheridan spent the following two seasons as offensive coordinator for the Hoosiers. He rejoined DeBoer as Washington’s tight ends coach then followed him to Alabama to become offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2024. With Jalen Milroe at quarterback, the Crimson Tide went 9-4 and missed the CFP. Sheridan’s offense ranked 22nd nationally in scoring (33.8 points) and 42nd in total offense (410.2 yards).
Last season, DeBoer brought back longtime play-caller Ryan Grubb from the NFL and split offensive coordinator duties between him and Sheridan. Alabama ranked 82nd in total offense (367.7 yards) while relying heavily on the pass (263.5 yards, 27th in FBS) and struggling to run the ball (104.1 yards, 123rd). The Crimson Tide averaged 29.5 points a game, 50th in FBS, in going 11-4 and making it to the CFP quarterfinals. Sheridan left for East Lansing following Alabama’s 38-3 loss to one of his former programs, eventual national champion Indiana.
MSU’s offense under coach Jonathan Smith and departed offensive coordinator Brian Lindgren ranked 97th nationally in total offense (345.5 yards), 110th in rushing (122.8) and 68th in passing (222.7). The Spartans’ 24.6 points a game ranked 87th nationally, but their 21 points a game in Big Ten play was 13th out of 18 in the league.
“Offensively, we tell a lot of people that we’re an attacking, answer-based offense that features its playmakers. And so there’s a lot of layers to that,” Sheridan said. “The acronym we use on how we want to play is FAST – Fundamentally sound, Attacking, Smart and Tough. … We want to put our players in the best position to be successful. And that includes everybody, wide receivers, running backs, tight ends, quarterbacks, certainly the offensive line. We’ve had great success in that offense doing that and utilizing people in a lot of different ways at all positions.”
Sophomore quarterback Alessio Milivojevic said “getting knowledge and building on your skill set” have been his early lessons so far from his new offensive leader.
“Coach Sheridan, it's been good to learn from him,” Milivojevic said after the first spring practice March 17. “He’s got a lot of energy also. He's similar to coach Fitz, he always brings it.”
Come August, when preseason camp is going full throttle, that’s what Sheridan will demand from the Spartans. Right now, he said, is about the education process, which is one of the things that drew him to follow his father’s path into coaching.
“We’re in the infant stages of finding out what our players do well. And that’s really what spring ball is for – to establish the style of play, the way that we want to play, the effort and toughness and discipline that we want to play with. But also trying to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the players so that we can expand on those things after spring, into the summer and shortly into the fall.”
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: Michigan State football spends spring getting FAST under Nick Sheridan
More at NCAAF College Football News, Photos, Stats, Scores, Schedule & Videos