Pat Fitzgerald very complimentary of Michigan State football halfway through spring practice

DETROIT – Michigan State football held their seventh practice of the spring on the outdoor fields of the Tom Izzo football building on Tuesday (March 31st).

Similar to the first training session that was open to the media, head coach Pat Fitzgerald had his team stretching and warming up just after six o’ clock in the morning.

Not only that, but he made the spur of the moment decision to move practice outside when it was apparent the weather would allow for it, meaning sleeping students in neighboring dorm buildings we’re likely awoken by whistles and cracking pads.

Hopefully they were not too upset knowing that it’s these practices that are laying the foundation and creating a culture for a MSU football program that has undergone a lot of change since the end of the 2025 season.

The green and white have a new head coach, a new offensive coordinator (among other staff members), and a vast new group of incoming freshmen and transfers. With so much turnover, Fitzgerald says the team had to focus on simply getting to know each other before taking a deeper dive into how they’ll work together on the field.

“Let’s just start with relationships before we even get out to the field. I think we had our hands go up in a meeting and it was more hands up that were new, including the coaching staff, that weren’t,” said Fitzgerald.

“We’ve been pouring into that since we got together in January. It’s every meal, every meeting, every day, one relationship built at a time and I think the guys are doing a terrific job.”

Four full months still separate the Spartans from their home opener against Toledo on Sept. 5. The program also has eight more practices to go before the return of their ‘Spring Showcase’ on April 18th, and until then the coaching staff has more than just formations and cadences to teach the players.

“We’re still putting new things in and we’ll go all the way through practice 15 schematically and then we’ll go all through the summer doing the same thing, so there’s a long way to go for this to be kind of like ‘okay we are ready for a game.’ Just the knowledge of what we want to practice, how we want it done, where to go, and what to do, they’ve done a really good job,” says Pat Fitzgerald.

Lions fans have already seen it done with Dan Campbell, and Wolverines fans are going through the same thing right now with new head coach Kyle Whittingham.

In order for a head coach to succeed with a new team, they must first gain the trust of the locker room by mutually holding each other accountable while also establishing standards and values that every player and coach is willing to buy in to.

“How you do one thing is how you do everything right? And we want to have that mindset that everything is done at a championship level,” said Fitzgerald after Tuesday’s practice. “It’s not going to be [right away], so be humble enough to be coachable, be humble enough as a coach to admit your wrong and then meet together, learn, and grow. It’s kind of a wholistic approach that we take. There’s a lot of balls up in the air. It’s a lot of fun. I go home and I sleep well for no other reason than I am exhausted.”

Michigan State football hasn’t put together a winning season since Mel Tucker led them to a Peach Bowl championship in 2021.

Four consecutive losses to their in-state rivals and ten plus years without a win over Ohio State are just a couple of things that have Spartan football fans longing for a more watchable product.

Pat Fitzgerald has only been on the job for a few months, but what he has said at press conferences and what the team has shared on social media show signs of promise.