EAST LANSING – Michigan State football takes another big step towards its season opener on Thursday, when the pads finally go on and the hitting gets intensified. In front of the Big Ten Network cameras.
And new offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan said that it isn’t only vital for the defense to get back to tackling. It is an important step for his offense, too.
“It’s real football with consequences,” Sheridan said after the Spartans’ practice Wednesday, Aug. 12. “I think it reveals people in this sport when you put the pads on. That’s our sport, this is contact, tackle football.”
The BTN crew will be on site during the network's annual preseason camp visit, getting an inside glimpse into Pat Fitzgerald’s nascent program as it prepares for his Sept. 4 debut as MSU’s coach against Toledo. The show will debut Friday at 6 p.m. and reair at 11 p.m. that night, as well as overnight (3 a.m.) and Saturday morning (8 a.m.).
The school also announced it will hold its popular Meet the Spartans fan event, which will be held from 4-6 p.m. on Aug. 26 at Spartan Stadium. Admission is free.
MSU is coming off a 4-8 season that cost Jonathan Smith his job after two years as the Spartans are in the midst of a third coaching change since 2020. After the first workout last Thursday, Fitzgerald derided seeing a slight lack of focus and precision that he demands – “It looked like practice No. 1 of training camp,” he said. Since then, the attention to detail that he and his staff preached during the spring began to quickly take hold.
The program released a video of Ken Mannie, MSU’s longtime strength coach who arrived with Nick Saban in 1995 and retired with Mark Dantonio in early 2020, giving the Spartans high praise after he watched Saturday’s session.
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“There was discipline, there was effort, there was toughness, there was leadership,” Mannie told the team on the video. “I was thoroughly impressed.”
Players and coaches this week have echoed Mannie’s words, with multiple Spartans pointing to the “brotherhood” and “bond” as a team that is being built both on the field and in Case Hall, where Fitzgerald has the players staying for the first time since the Dantonio era.
“Overall, just everybody being here is buying in,” transfer running back Cam Edwards said Wednesday. “We could tell, everybody, that coach Fitz is very serious about winning the Big Ten championship and winning the national championship.”
The next step toward that is going live, putting pads on pads and helmets on helmets. Returning offensive lineman Conner Moore salivated at the chance to make that transition.
“It’s fun, man,” said Moore, who started at tackle last season but has been working some at guard in the spring and in camp this week. “I finally get to be able to hit people at full speed and stuff like that.”
Getting MSU to play more physically up front has been a priority for Fitzgerald and Sheridan.
The Spartans gave up 73 sacks the past two seasons, with their 37 allowed last season the 12th-most in the country. Aidan Chiles, who left for Northwestern in the offseason, was sacked 51 times in his 20 starts. Alessio Milivojevic got sacked 16 times in his nine games in 2026, including seven times in his first career start as he took over the job for the final four games.
That impacted everything on offense. MSU ranked 107th in rushing (122.8 yards) and 97th in total offense (345.5 yards) while scoring just 24.6 points a game (89th). Their 21 points a game in Big Ten play ranked 12th out of 18 teams, a big reason why MSU made another coaching change after going without a bowl berth for the fourth straight season and fifth time in six years since Dantonio retired after the 2019 season.
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Sheridan, a former Michigan quarterback, arrives from Alabama after coaching stops at Washington and Indiana. His father, Bill Sheridan, coached linebackers under Saban at MSU in the late 1990s. The younger Sheridan called it “a big pet peeve of mine” when outsiders think shifting to full contact only matters on defense.
“You find out the guys that can take care of the football. You found out the guys that play behind their pads. You find out the guys that can play downhill, which is what we’re looking for,” Nick Sheridan said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt the first couple days (of camp) are always a heavy emphasis on alignment, assignment, technique, communication – the things that you have to handle to even get going. But no doubt, when they put the pads on, you find out who can play football well, which is certainly important for us. …
“We still want these guys to go knock the heck out of people.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football will learn a lot about its squad today