Michigan State coach Mel Tucker pleased with QB competition following Spring Game
East Lansing, Mich. – Michigan State’s Spartan Football Kickoff event on Saturday allowed fans, coaches and media alike to get an up-close look at the Spartans’ ongoing quarterback battle.
Redshirt senior Payton Thorne, redshirt junior Noah Kim and redshirt freshman Katin Houser have been battling for the starting job since head coach Mel Tucker declared every position, including quarterback, an open competition ahead of spring ball on March 13.
Following 15 days of spring practice that culminated in Saturday’s Spartan Football Kickoff, Tucker said that the quarterback battle will remain ongoing.
“We’ll continue the competition throughout the summer and into fall camp,” Tucker said. “It (the Spartan Football Kickoff) was a practice format and so you see guys getting work with different groups. You get a lot of reps. We grade everything and we like the way that they’re competing. It’s a very healthy competition and competition makes us all better. We have really good competition at every position. I thought we had good work today. Today was very indicative of what we’ve seen out of those guys throughout the spring.”
The second half of Saturday’s practice session was largely composed of 11-on-11 situational scrimmage work. Thorne, Kim and Houser each received game-like reps to prove themselves in front of the Spartan Stadium crowd.
Kim played roughly 25 snaps during the live scrimmage portion. Thorne played roughly 19 snaps and Houser played roughly 14 snaps.
Kim led the Spartan offense in a two-minute drill to end the event. The five-play drive was capped by a touchdown pass from Kim to Antonio Gates, Jr., who caught the ball in stride at the right side of the endzone.
A few sequences earlier, in a similar two-minute drill, the Spartan defense closed in on Thorne before he used an opening created by the offensive line to scamper 15 yards for a touchdown.
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The three quarterbacks also did footwork drills, one-on-one passing drills with wide receivers and handoff drills with running backs throughout the first half of the event.
Thorne, Kim and Houser continue to work together on and off the field to better the Michigan State quarterback room as a whole. Thorne said he didn’t feel any adverse effects of the position battle during spring ball.
“We’re just playing,” Thorne said. “We’re going out there and playing. We’re not playing against each other. I’m not dropping back at safety and neither is Noah and neither is Katin. We’re just working together and reading defenses, working together in the meeting room and doing all of that. It’s been good.”
Tucker has been pleased with the competition at quarterback and every other position so far. Overall, the Spartan Football Kickoff event served as a nice ending to what he feels has been a “very productive” spring.
“Every position has had a really good competition and guys have gotten better,” Tucker said. “We’ve added some new coaches and they’ve done a really good job. This is a very strong staff – a lot of experience, really good teachers. I just feel like our team has really bought in and we’re in a good place going into the summer. It was a pretty clean practice. I didn’t see anything that was unusual. It was just a step in the right direction and another step forward for us.”
