Mark Dantonio is finally showing a chink in his armor, and it's not pretty
It’s been five months now and there’s still not an answer to one of the most pressing questions in college football.
What the hell is going on in East Lansing?
Michigan State had been one of the most consistent programs in the country since Mark Dantonio arrived in 2007. In five of the last six seasons before 2016, MSU had double-digit wins and at least seven conference victories. Only Alabama, Ohio State and Stanford could make that claim.
We saw the wheels fall off in 2016. For one reason or another — bad quarterback play, inexperience galore and injuries — MSU couldn’t do anything right for the last two months of the season. That was enough to make any Spartan fan nervous.
But more unsettling were the events that transpired after the season ended.
To put it kindly, it’s been a mess. In case you forgot, here’s a timeline of MSU’s offseason so far (the day the news broke):
- Dec. 8, 2016 — Senior captain Demetrious Cox charged with misdemeanor assault after allegedly punching cab driver in nose while drunk
- Feb. 1, 2017 — Defensive line recruit Donovan Winter doesn”t sign with MSU after being arrested, jailed two days earlier for stealing gun that belonged to girlfriend’s father
- Feb. 9, 2017 — Three Spartans, staffer suspended during sexual assault investigation
- Feb. 10, 2017 — Starting defensive lineman Demetrius Cooper facing assault charge after spitting in officer’s face
- Feb. 14, 2017 — Michigan State director of advancement and performance Curtis Blackwell suspended by university for unspecified reason
- Feb. 24, 2017 — Top returning linebacker Jon Reschke announces he’ll transfer after making “regrettable comment” about former teammate
That’s a whole lot of bad ink in February alone. As a result of MSU’s disastrous offseason in the news, Dantonio essentially instituted a media blackout for spring practice.
Notable: MSU hasn't released any internal photos or video from its Saturday practice, as they usually do. So it's a total media blackout
— Kyle Austin (@kylebaustin) February 27, 2017
Times are strange at MSU, and not in a good way. How can program 14 months removed from a College Football Playoff berth be in this kind of shape? It’s one thing to lose games and have a few players get arrested. Nick Saban and Urban Meyer experienced that in their careers.
It’s another thing to experience this kind of a free fall from the top tier of college football. That’s not to say Dantonio won’t right the ship and dig the program out of this hole.
It’s definitely a hole. And it’s as deep — if not deeper — than any hole we’ve seen an elite college football coach work his way out of.
By most metrics, Dantonio was on the short list of college football’s best coaches entering the 2016 season. Even before Dantonio led MSU to the College Football Playoff in 2015, Clay Travis ranked him behind Meyer and Saban as the No. 3 coach in the country. Say what you want about the outlandish opinions Travis has, but that wasn’t outlandish at all.
For the sake of this argument, let’s look at Saban, Meyer, Jimbo Fisher, Jim Harbaugh, Gary Patterson, David Shaw and Dabo Swinney. Those seven coaches should all be in the current consensus top 10 coaches in college football.
Here’s the worst season each of them had as head coaches:
| COACHES | WORST TEAM | RECORD |
|---|---|---|
| Nick Saban | 1996 Michigan State | 6-6 |
| Urban Meyer | 2010 Florida | 8-5 |
| Jimbo Fisher | 2011 Florida State | 9-4 |
| Jim Harbaugh | 2007 Stanford | 4-8 |
| Gary Patterson | 2013 TCU | 4-8 |
| David Shaw | 2014 Stanford | 8-5 |
| Dabo Swinney | 2010 Clemson | 6-7 |
As you can see, Harbaugh and Patterson were the only elite coaches who experienced a season that resembled the one Dantonio just had.
But there’s a difference.
Harbaugh and Patterson both had future NFL quarterbacks waiting in the wings after the horrific seasons. Trevyone Boykin flashed promise as an underclassman in that 4-8 season and he turned into one of the top players in the country in 2014. Harbaugh, on the other hand, brought in a blue-chip quarterback recruit named “Andrew Luck.”
We don’t know if Dantonio has that kind of quarterback talent on his roster. We do know that MSU only has nine returning starters coming back in 2017. That’s 13th in the B1G and tied for 124th nationally (via Phil Steele).
Key underclassmen like Malik McDowell and Montae Nicholson declared for the draft. As previously mentioned, MSU’s expected top returning linebacker is transferring. And we still don’t know who the three suspended players are that were involved in the alleged sexual assault scandal.
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In other words, MSU isn’t exactly returning a solid core. LJ Scott and Donnie Corley are promising skill players, and Brian Allen could be the one of the top offensive linemen in the country, but their efforts didn’t stop the bleeding in 2016.
Spring is supposed to be a time for optimism and hype. Instead, it’s been about turmoil and bad press for MSU.
Good vibes won’t get Dantonio’s team out of this funk. Because of his remarkable track record, he earned the right to get out of this funk.
Two years ago, Dantonio led MSU to road victories against Harbaugh and Meyer and his team blew out James Franklin’s Penn State squad to claim the B1G East crown. Sure, the Spartans hung tight against those teams in 2016, but 3-9 was a galaxy away from being in the CFP hunt like those three B1G East teams were.
The margin for error is smaller than ever for the Spartans. The college football world has every reason it needs to write off MSU in 2017, not that Dantonio ever cared about that before.
The hole is steeper than ever. It’s up to Dantonio to figure out what the hell is going on and lead the climb out of the B1G cellar.
