Grinz on Green: Spartans Staying Committed During Difficult Stretch
11/9/2016 12:00:00 AM | Football
By Steve Grinczel, MSUSpartans.com Online Columnist
EAST LANSING, Mich. â€" Championships and New Year's Day bowls are beyond Michigan State's reach in 2016, but the Spartans have a lot at stake in their final three games.
Even more important than wins is how about the 2-7 Spartans go about preserving the never-say-die attitude that has lifted them to so many dramatic wins, often in the waning moments, in recent years.
Tenth-year head coach Mark Dantonio took a holistic approach to treating MSU's mind, body, heart and soul by holding what he called town-hall style sessions in the quarterback, offensive line, running backs, receivers, tight ends, defensive line, linebackers, defensive backfield and special teams meeting rooms.
Each player, regardless of academic class or depth-chart status, was given the opportunity to voice his thoughts and concerns about the state of the program. Based on the comments of a sampling of players, the air wasn't filled with startling revelations, claims or grievances.
However, it does appear the Spartans reached a consensus heading into Saturday's game against Rutgers.
"It's tough, especially seven (losses) in a row now," said fourth-year junior quarterback Damion Terry. "It feels like it's almost repetitive and Coach D definitely made a point about that, but he's like, ‘Guys, we're never going to stop fighting.' That's just something embedded in us.
"A lot of people were looking forward to next season and all that, but we still have three games. We just have to take it one week at a time and get this win."
True competitors never concede defeat until they have exhausted all options to exact even the smallest measure of victory. It's why they invented "double or nothing," "last shot wins" and "winner takes all."
The last three games will be a testament to or indictment of each Spartans' competitive spirit.
"A hundred percent," Terry said. "Not only as a team, but as an individual as well. You don't want to be known as someone who's a quitter. Coach D was saying, ‘Guys, yes the season isn't going how we thought it was, but we can't just look forward (to 2017) now.'
"We've still got three games and we can't just pass on them…So we've got to prepare and we've got to keep fighting to give us some confidence going into next season, which will be huge, especially with a young team."
Last year at this time, Michigan State was on a championship footing.
Like everyone with an interest in seeing MSU succeed, and objective observers who ranked the Spartans among the top 10 teams in the nation earlier this season, Dantonio is surprised at his team's precipitous reversal of fortunes since winning a second Big Ten title in three years and getting within one victory of playing for the national championship.
Had Dantonio been able to foresee a rash of attrition that has dropped the level of MSU's experience to at least a 10-year low â€" the Spartans haven't started the same offensive or defensive lineup in any game this season -- he may have tempered his preseason expectations of defending the conference crown.
But no coach's crystal ball provides more than an educated guess.
"You ask me to go back 10 or 12 weeks, and I really can't like that," Dantonio said, snapping his fingers. "I can't really pick one thing, sit there and say, `OK, if we had to do it over, this is what we would do.' We had very high goals coming into this season. I do not think our goals should have been less. You can't go to a College Football Playoff, win the Big Ten the last two out of three years and sit there and say, `Gee, guys, I hope we go 7-5.' You can't do that.
"The only goal to go for was to win this thing back-to-back. Anything less than that was not going to be acceptable, not to our players, not to our fans, not to me."
Every team assesses its objectives as the season unfolds. Maintaining the status quo is rarely an option. Goals get bigger for some and less ambitious, though important in their own right, for others.
And that's where Dantonio and the Spartans find themselves this week.
"First of all, I asked them if they want to be in those (meetings)," Dantonio said. "If they don't want to come in them, don't come in. I asked them to fill out a survey for themselves, for self-analyzation, on those things I talked about. Then I asked them if they want to talk to their position coach (about) things that are bothering you â€" playing time, whatever it is â€" get everything on the table.
"I asked each coach how everything went, and talked to each coach a little bit more in-depth of what went on in terms of their meetings. I think anytime you have an obvious situation going on, or you're not being successful, you do the best you can to get problems out in the open, identify the problems, but then try and find the solutions to those problems. So that's what we're trying to do."
Some issues are more readily fixable than others. Anxieties and self-doubt can be relieved through reassurance.
"It can help by resolving a problem of what possibly could be going on, (discussing) changes with what we need to do the future and just clearing the air of any tension you had between a person or a coach," said junior tailback Gerald Holmes. "That was the time to let it out.
"I felt like us personally, as players, we probably could have communicated more (sooner), but nothing was really a big issue. It was just time to think. We all agreed to really just keep pushing and go forward. The ‘dawg' mentality has to come out now. It should have come out weeks and weeks ago, and that's hard to say, but we still have to keep fighting as a team. "
However, perfecting a power kick step, adding 30 pounds of necessary muscle and developing reflexes to high-point the ball with a strong safety closing in don't happen overnight.
"All the problems can't be solved right now," Dantonio said. "Some of them are hard-line blocking, tackling, catching the ball or making a call. They're just things like that.
"We'll try and control the things that we can control. My biggest concern is when you're going through something like this is, what is the chemistry like? What is their emotional state like? What is their emotional state today at practice? I wanted to make sure we can do everything we can to try and alleviate these issues."
Redshirt freshman offensive tackle Cole Chewins thought the sessions were therapeutic.
"Everyone was pretty good about voicing their opinion," he said. "We had guys from seniors all the way down to the new freshmen who came in try to contribute and collaborate as a group so we can learn how to get better from this.
"In the end, our results are still what they are. So we're just going to continue to work hard, keep improving on our assignments and our play and keep growing as a team so we can get to where we want to be. In the short term, we're just focused on Rutgers. We want to get a win on Saturday and go from there."
