Team-First Culture Permeates Through Spartan Program
8/9/2016 12:00:00 AM | Football
By Steve Grinczel, MSUSpartans.com Columnist
EAST LANSING, Mich. â€" As Michigan State embarks on its 10th football season under head coach Mark Dantonio, the time seemed right to reflect on the Spartans' progress and accomplishments since 2007.
Except, with the season-opener just 26 days away, Dantonio was hardly of the mind to reminisce about his three Big Ten Championships, the 2014 Rose Bowl crown, five 11-or-more-win seasons out of the last six, MSU's historic appearance in only the second College Football Playoff on New Year's Eve, or three straight top-six finishes.
Sentimentality was not part Michigan State Football Media Day's agenda Monday at Spartan Stadium. "I think you wait till later," said Dantonio, who's a long way from hanging up his whistle but admitted he couldn't seem himself coaching the team in 2026. "I think we're always a work in progress here, we're always going to try to do something else.
"I guess 10 (years) seems like a long time. At the other end of the spectrum, you're always starting over. You're sort of fresh. You've got new players that are coming in â€" it sort of keeps you moving forward. As far as for myself, I just wind ‘em up and go again."
Rather than dwell on the good old days, the players and coaches were unanimously looking forward to the even better times yet to come. Past success is reflected in the current cast of Spartans â€" newcomers and veterans alike -- who aren't looking back, but ahead at "Back-to-Back," as in repeating as conference champs for the first time in exactly a half-century.
External analysts argue that the "uncertainty" they perceive at the quarterback, secondary, offensive line, and wide receiver positions are prime reasons why the Spartans won't even win their division for the fourth time in six seasons.
Such rationale makes the players and coaches scratch their heads because of the program players who've been painstakingly stockpiled and developed to meet the team's needs.
Long gone are the days of quick fixes and crossed fingers; replacements have been carefully cultivated in recent years.
Fifth-year senior Tyler O'Connor, for example, is the consummate program guy. For a time early in the 2013 season, O'Connor was a legitimate candidate to win the quarterback job as a redshirt freshman. However, instead of making his mark on as four-year starting quarterback this season, he's competing for his first, and only, stint as the No. 1 signal-caller.
Nevertheless, O'Connor doesn't rue the three seasons he spent as Connor Cook's understudy.
"I'm in the spot that I want right now, I'm very used to it and this is what I've wanted since I've been here," O'Connor said. "I don't feel too much pressure. I'm very confident in what I can do and what I've done. Obviously, I wish I could have done it more often throughout my career, but I'm stepping into this role with nothing to lose and everything to gain."
Playing in place of the injured Cook, O'Connor led the Spartans to arguably their biggest regular season win in recent memory, a 17-14 triumph over Ohio State in miserable cold and wet conditions last November in Columbus.
Just a couple of years earlier he was tabbed by an informal media poll as the-Spartan-most-likely-to-transfer. But, despite having the ability to start for a lot of teams across the country, O'Connor refused to let his lack of playing time tempt him into making an impulsive decision.
"I never even once considered leaving," O'Connor said. "Things were too good. I was on pace to graduate in 3½ years. I've already got (a degree in supply chain management) and I'm working on a master's (in marketing research). The atmosphere here was too great and I loved everything about it.
"You just don't know what you're going to get and you don't want to go somewhere and sit out for something that's not what you expected. I always felt like I was one play away and always prepared like I was the starter and was going to play every game. It's the camaraderie with the guys and relationships with the guys and the coaches you're going to have for a lifetime and if you transfer may not have that."
 | "Everyone can have a great year every now and then, but the true test of a program nowadays is being consistent. To have the kind of years, year after year that Coach D has had, is a great thing to be a part of and a lot of fun to be a part of." -Co-offensive coordinator/tight ends coach Jim Bollman |
O'Connor, who coming out of Lima (Ohio) Catholic Center High was selected to participate in the Elite 11 Quarterback Camp in Malibu, California, said MSU is loaded with program players devoted to the Spartan mission and nurtured to take over when it's their time.
"I think it's more common here than anywhere else," O'Connor said. "It's crazy. I look back to my Elite 11 group and I think probably out of the 24 guys who were there, over half of them have transferred. It's unbelievable to see the route people take.
"There's a lot of fifth-year seniors here, and there are a lot of schools that don't even redshirt anymore, so it's a tribute to what Coach D has done here, how he raises his players and how he teaches us the system. He really has produced an awesome atmosphere. The younger guys do eventually see that. They might not come in feeling that way, but eventually they learn to play that role."
Fourth-year junior Damion Terry, who was in the thick of the quarterback competition as a true freshman in '13, is another program player competing with O'Connor for the starting job. He agreed that being a disgruntled presence in the locker room isn't going to help him advance or the team win.
"I feel like I'm right there," Terry said with regard to his place in the pecking order. "I'm just trying not to overwhelm myself and just take it day by day and take advantage of every opportunity they give me. It all started with (O'Connor), seeing him in his redshirt freshman year in the heat of the QB competition. We were just so young and a lot was coming at us fast.
"Just seeing the way he's carried himself over the years and then last year, bang, Connor gets hurt and he has to start. It was so awesome and no one's had a bigger impact on me in my time at Michigan State than Tyler, Connor Cook and (former backup) Tommy Vento. I've learned so much from them."
Putting the team first is the biggest lesson Terry has absorbed in the quarterback room.
"Tyler is always team first, and it's so important," he said. "No matter what, I want to play. I always want to be the No. 1 guy, but I'm always for the team first. They could try to convert me to offensive line and I'd work on my kick-step. These are my brothers and I love them all to death."
Another player putting the program above self is defensive tackle Malik McDowell, despite the fact that he's being lauded as one of the best players in the nation as a junior.
Dantonio wants McDowell to be motivated by his preseason accolades. Still haunted by the 38-0 loss to Alabama in the CFP semifinals, McDowell isn't consumed by individual acclaim.
"I'm just working," he said. "You can give out all (the awards) but I couldn't care less. I'm going to work how I need to work to meet my goals. My expectations are always to give the best I got. As long as I feel I gave my full effort, I'm happy at the end of the day.
"Nobody can say we played our best game, because there's no way possible that if we play our best we would have lost like that. I've never lost a game like that in my life, so that's something I never want to experience again."
Defensive line coach Ron Burton didn't find fault with the Spartans' effort, but said, "if that's how he felt about himself, that's fine. The experience is the true thing, being in that situation. It's a significant event for him because of having the opportunity to play in the playoff, having that experience, knowing that you could have done more and knowing that we had opportunities to be in the football game. But, we all took a part of that, no doubt about it."
Fifth-year senior offensive lineman Kodi Kieler embodies the find-a-way spirit that serves as the bulwark of the winning culture developed over the past nine seasons. Although he started 10 games at right tackle and one at left tackle last season, Kieler is looking to move to center as position coach Mark Staten tries to make up for 119 starts lost through the departure of Jack Conklin, Jack Allen and Donavon Clark.
What some may consider a sacrifice, Kieler sees as commonplace in Staten's mix-and-match system that rotates as many as nine linemen a game.
"The biggest thing for offensive linemen moving to different positions is having the knowledge and confidence to do it," Kieler said. "It's not about you; it's you as a collective team winning the game. Today I played left tackle, center and right tackle. It's all the same to me. I don't have any dropoff at any of the positions. I even played some guard on the first day (of practice).
"It's finding a place where the young guys are more comfortable and then they'll fit me in where they need to. It's just how we work. It's all about the team."
Said Staten, "It's due to the guys who came before. It's due to the way they did things and the way we allow them to do things in the room. They've earned it. It was crazy. We had eight different starting lineups in the first 10 games of the season and by the 11th game we finally got back to our first one. That says something about the way these guys believe and the toughness that's in them because…, there's still that fundamental of toughness and I'm going to keep pounding on you, and if I don't break you eventually will."
Co-offensive coordinator Jim Bollman has coached at other programs that had such an embarrassment of riches, they didn't rebuild, they reloaded. In his estimation, the Spartans are in that same mode, as the way they won a championship and advanced to the CFP, despite losing key players to injuries in the secondary, at linebacker and the offensive line, would seem to suggest.
"It's nice that some people remember those things, because many people don't," Bollman said. "All's they're doing is looking at what's on the left side and what's on the right. There are lot of things that went on last year and as a result this year we have a chance to have more depth than we ever had.
"Everyone can have a great year every now and then, but the true test of a program nowadays is being consistent. To have the kind of years, year after year that Coach D has had, is a great thing to be a part of and a lot of fun to be a part of."
