Michigan State and team-building with transfers

In the 2020 season, which for the Big 10 in particular was hampered by the COVID pandemic and the conference’s hesitancy about playing, Michigan State’s new head coach Mel Tucker had an inauspicious start to his tenure. The Spartans went 2-5 with the only bright spot a 27-24 win over in-state rival Michigan.

In the following offseason, Tucker added 16 transfers to his roster, including five players who’d own starting roles for the 2021 team. Then the Spartans turned in an 11-2 season replete with another win over Michigan and a Peach Bowl victory over Pitt. Were it not for a 40-29 setback against Purdue, they’d have been in a three-way tie for the Big 10 East title.

Consequently, Michigan State is getting a lot of attention as a model for a new style of roster building. Is it possible to actually build out the whole roster with transfers? Many teams are hoping so in 2022 as the portal has been whirring like mad with coaches at big time stops like USC, LSU, Texas, and Miami making considerable changes to their rosters with transfer additions.

Mel Tucker signed a massive contract with the Spartans in the offseason after his own name was floated with some of those job opportunities (namely LSU) and has thus far added six more transfers to the team (along with a heavy dose of high school recruits). To what extent were the 2021 Michigan State Spartans a transfer portal success story and how sustainable or repeatable is this method for other programs around the country?

The 2021 Spartan formula

Michigan State’s success in 2021 boiled down partly to a massive improvement from their offense. The 2020 Spartans averaged 18 points per game while yielding 35.1, but in 2021 they scored 31.8 points per game while yielding 25.3.

Those are considerable improvements for both units, but the leap on offense was unbelievable. They made a number of changes to the lineup in between the 2020 season and 2021 opener but one of the big ones was at quarterback, where the transfer portal has been notorious for dramatically changing teams for a while now. The Spartans said farewell to Rocky Lombardi, who threw for 1,090 yards at 6.9 ypa with eight touchdowns and nine interceptions, he left to start for Northern Illinois. Then they promoted redshirt freshman (sophomore in 2021) Payton Thorne, who’d gotten four reasonably promising starts during the 2020 season.

Thorne was one of the few holdovers on Mark Dantonio’s roster who actually looked like the sort of player who powered the good Dantonio teams of the early 2010s. He’s a very strong-armed quarterback with decent size (6-foot-2, 210 pounds) who immediately brought some punch to the Spartans’ spread-I offense. In 2021 he threw for 3,240 yards at 8.3 ypa with 27 touchdowns to 10 interceptions.

State also moved top running back Connor Heyward, a 6-foot-0 and 230 pound power back, to a Y-back/off-ball tight end position where he caught 35 balls for 326 yards, doing much of his damage on tight end screens where his running back feet were dangerous. In came Wake Forest transfer Kenneth Walker at running back, who’d been consistently solid for the Demon Deacons, and he ran wild in the spacing afforded by the Spartan’s spread-I spacing and the threat of Thorne hitting play-action to former Western Michigan receiver Jayden Reed (transferred in a year earlier) or homegrown Jalen Nailor.

Michigan State’s offensive line was nearly all Dantonio holdovers save for left tackle Jarrett Horst, who transferred in from Arkansas State. Center Matt Allen and right tackle A.J. Arcuri were 6th year seniors who used the COVID exemption to return while right guard/tackle Kevin Jarvis was a redshirt senior.

Everything went up a notch for the Spartans on offense. Reed went from 407 receiving yards and three touchdown catches in 2020 to 1,026 yards and 10 touchdowns in 2021. Heyward was the leading rusher in 2020 with 200 rushing yards at 3.1 ypc with ZERO rushing touchdowns. In 2021 Kenneth Walker ran for 1,646 yards at 6.2 ypc with 18 rushing touchdowns. Wild stuff.

Defensively they made some nice improvements as well. Holdover defensive ends Drew Beesley and Jacob Panasiuk used the COVID exemptions to return and after combining for four sacks in 2020, racked up 12.5 in 2021. Their main back-up Jeff Pietrowski added 5.5 more. How did they manage so much more pass-rush after just one offseason when they’d already been playing college football for five seasons?

Mel Tucker dramatically overhauled the defensive backfield is how. He plugged in second year players and first time starters Cal Halladay at linebacker (two interceptions) and Angelo Grose at cover safety (five break-ups). He also started transfer cornerbacks Chester Kimbrough and Ronald Williams, all of which freed up big safeties Xavier Henderson and Darius Snow to play in the box more where they racked up 96 and 87 tackles respectively. Michigan State’s pass coverage was still lacking at times, especially their intermediate zone coverage, but it was vastly improved from 2020. They also started transfer linebacker Quavaris Crouch next to Halladay, although he wasn’t always one of the stronger components.

In a single offseason, Tucker was able to reconfigure the lineups on both sides of the ball with tons of new players and create coherent systems where players’ strengths bolstered each other. Does that mean the transfer portal is potential solution to misshapen rosters around the country?

Space force vs infrastructure in creating complementary lineups

The Spartans’ success and limitations in 2021 were really exactly where you’d expect to see some limits for the efficacy of a transfer-heavy lineup.

One of their biggest weaknesses, mentioned above, was their ability to tightly match routes in zone coverage in the middle of the field. Why? Because executing a team defense against the pass where different positions play on a string requires a lot of cohesion and practice, which is less available to a team when the players and system haven’t all been in place together for very long. Sparty was playing a second year linebacker and a transfer much of the time, which isn’t a quick path to tight matching zone defense.

Similarly their run defense was fairly reliant on receiving clean-up help from Xavier Henderson or Darius Snow to limit the damage when the front six didn’t fit the run with particular cohesion. This was enabled by deferring a lot of coverage stress to their cover safety and cornerbacks, who rarely got help over the top from a safety.

Michigan State ranked 28th in sack rate (4.9%) and was obviously effective running the football, all of which hinge on having a cohesive offensive line unit. The Spartans were bad on the offensive line in 2020, so they did make a big jump, but they did it largely with players who’d been in the program for four years or more and then a left tackle in Horst who could play on an island some covering Thorne’s blindside.

Overall, Michigan State’s offensive infrastructure in 2021 was built around players who’d been in the program for several seasons under both head coaches (Dantonio and Tucker). Their transfers bolstered their skill lineup and the space force (left tackle, deep threat receiver) in particular. You don’t necessarily need for a highly athletic running back or receiver to be in a program for more than a year, so long as he’s skilled within the typical practices of his position. He doesn’t need to work with teammates in a fashion which requires more than a single offseason to get right, the nature of those space force positions is to win high stakes, 1-on-1 matchups in space.

Their defensive infrastructure wasn’t totally put together in 2021, it was a weakness of the team, but they were solid enough and had three defensive ends and two-to-three defensive backs who could hold up in some 1-on-1 matchups in space which had a force multiplier effect for the overall unit. Ganging up on the run with their big safeties might have shut down offenses had they been more cohesive in the middle of the field, but at least they could make the attempt.

While the transfers were very noticeable for the team, the biggest change to the team was probably getting the formula right within the Spread-I offensive system. The Spread-I is about being able to attack nickel fronts with a two-back run game which can insert a lead blocker at different points along the line, draw in defenders, and then punish them with RPOs (notsomuch in 2021) and play-action (very much).

Having a system on both sides of the ball which could tie together the personnel on hand and then a line and quarterback who could execute it was a major step for the Spartans. Having highly talented space force players added through the portal gave them considerable punch on top of that.

Building teams in the era of the transfer portal

It’s obvious to everyone that the transfer portal is a useful way to boost the quarterback position. Quarterbacks don’t like to sit and be back-ups when they can go elsewhere and be in high demand as potential starters, consequently there are routinely talented quarterbacks available in the transfer portal.

However I think what Michigan State got largely right in 2021 was using the transfer portal to add space force players. They did add plenty of “infrastructure” players as well, but the starting quarterback, offensive line, and tight ends who drove their success were all program guys save for the left tackle. Of their four space force positions, three were occupied by transfers.

It’s tempting for teams to aim to upgrade their entire rosters through the portal, and Michigan State did take transfers at multiple positions beyond the space force guys mentioned above. However, most positions require fit and training within a given system and with particular teammates to really maximize. To try and build a team out of transfers, who will necessarily be somewhat mercenary, is always going to be difficult. If you get them for multiple seasons it can work but then you’re not talking about a quick fix. Patching a role here and there is also clearly possible, but rebuilding an entire O-line or linebacker corps with new faces is something else.

But the space force positions are another matter. If your job primarily involves using athleticism and skill to beat the guy across from you, the rest of the system is going to be oriented around allowing you to do so and not in asking you to work in concert with others. It’s very possible the Spartans will see dividends from their non space-force transfers over the coming seasons, but for quick impact it’s hard to beat those spots in the transfer portal.

For all the programs overhauling their rosters with transfers in 2022, it’s a reasonable bet that insofar as they are adding space force weapons and skill talents, they could see quick returns whereas if they are trying to beef out their infrastructure, it’s not going to happen overnight.

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