Mel Tucker addresses return of multiple suspended Michigan State players

With the turn of the new college football year, the Michigan State Spartans are getting back several players who were suspended last season because of a fight that took place against rival Michigan. The eight players in question are back on the practice field for the Spartans during their 2023 spring ball practices.

As Michigan State begins to prepare for their controlled scrimmage to cap off this year’s spring football, head coach Mel Tucker addressed how the suspended players have been performing this offseason.

“They’ve integrated well. They’ve been back with us for quite some time now. And so it’s something we’ve gone past it, and we’re moving forward,” said Tucker.

The Spartans suspended eight players in total for their role in the tunnel altercation against the Wolverines. There were who were suspended immediately: Tank Brown, Khary Crump, Angelo Grose, and Zion Young. Following further investigation, Malcolm Jones, Justin White, Jacoby Windmon, and Brandon Wright were also disciplined for their roles in the altercation.

Losing players to suspension is never a good thing, but it is especially bad when some of those players are starters for your team. As Tucker continued, he highlighted the importance of losing so many key players following that incident.

“You saw those guys were out there playing for us and starting for us. And obviously, they were doing that because we feel like they gave us the best chance to win games; with those guys being in those roles. You don’t necessarily get better when those guys aren’t in there. I’m glad that we have them back, and we’ll continue to move forward with them. You typically don’t get better when you lose good players.”

Tucker changes the format for the Spartans 2023 Spring Game

Despite getting those players back from suspension, the Spartans’ ranks are thin. That has resulted in Tucker changing the format of their spring game to resemble more of a scrimmage.

“We are going to have more of a practice type of format with some scrimmaging as opposed to a game,” Tucker said. “That’s worked for us in the past just with our numbers. It’s actually going to be more competitive. We can get more out of it as opposed to trying to split the team up and create some type of game.

“It will be uptempo. It will be organized. We’ll get a chance to see guys play fast and see players go good on good, ones on ones, twos on twos, which is really how we practice pretty much every day. So you get a chance to see guys grind and kind of compete and see some of the new guys that you haven’t seen go full speed. So I think that will be good.”

Last year, Michigan State did not have enough healthy bodies available to field two separate teams for a traditional Spring Game. That was especially true for the offensive line, which only had seven players available to practice. Two of those seven were converted defensive linemen.

This year, Michigan State began the spring with 19 healthy offensive linemen.

But Tucker said that defensive line availability has been an issue over the last few weeks of spring practice. That’s one of the reasons why dividing into two separate teams would have been difficult for this year’s Spring Game.