Cam, you had a real market and you picked Michigan State, and then about a week later the entire sport decided this program was a punchline. Is this a real program, or did you sign up for somebody's experiment?
Real program. Okay. I'm about to get in trouble on the first question.
I've been in a building that was a real program on paper and wasn't one on a Tuesday. Everybody who's transferred knows exactly what I mean. Banners are up, facility's beautiful, and then you get in there and the meetings are soft and can't nobody tell you why you're doing anything.
So I stopped grading places on what the sport thinks. I grade Tuesday. 6:40 in the morning, Tuesday.
Tuesdays here are real. That's all I've got so far, that's the whole thing. I'm not sitting up here in August telling you we're shocking anybody, 'cause you'd write it down and then read it back to me in October. I've seen y'all do that to a guy.
What did the head coach tell you your role was? From out here it looks like this offense runs through you or it doesn't run.
First thing that man ever did to me, he pulled up eleven of my worst runs.
Not the tape. Not — no highlights, none of that. Eleven bad ones. Runs where I bounced something that was sitting right there inside. One where I flat ran the wrong way on a zone and got two yards, and it looks fine on a stat sheet, and it's terrible. He had 'em cut before I ever sat down. Before I got there. He'd already done it.
And he's not mean about it. He's specific, which is worse. He goes, here's the version of you we think is in there, and here's the eleven things standing in front of him.
You know how many coaches recruited me by showing me a video of me being good? Like I'm supposed to be impressed. I know I'm good. I was there.
I called my mom that night. She thought it meant they didn't want me.
Cam, half my callers think the quarterback decision is malpractice. You're the best player on this offense. Do you think the right guy's starting?
Nah. You're not doing that to me.
I've got two quarterbacks and both of 'em are handing me the ball. I grade one into a microphone, then that's who I am after today.
I've got an opinion. I'm not spending it in here.
You committed to a staff that isn't here anymore. When the hire happened and the jokes started — did you think about leaving?
Yeah.
(pause) I mean — yeah. I had a call set up.
It was that Thursday. My mom knew about it, my trainer knew about it, and I'd already decided in my head, if I'm honest with you. I was gone. That's not on him, I'd never met the man. I've got one year left. I'm not doing somebody's rebuild with my last one.
Then he came to my apartment. Not the facility. My apartment. My couch is bad, I've got a genuinely bad couch, and he sat on it for two hours and never one time asked me to stay. Not once. Spent about twenty minutes on my brother's knee.
I canceled the call that night.
...Y'all can't — okay. No, you can use it. It's true. I just don't need the guy on the other end of that call reading — whatever. It happened. It's fine.
Totally different question. What's the food situation?
See, that's a better question than what he asked me.
It's fine. There's a lady named Roz who runs the eggs and she does not care who you are. She knows my order and she still makes me say it. Every day. I like her a lot.
Rustin, you're a tackle. They've moved you to center. What was your reaction when they told you?
They asked if I could snap. I said probably.
That's the whole reaction?
What's the other reaction.
It's a job. They moved the job about two feet.
People who do this for a living have real concerns about it. Pad level, leverage, a nose tackle playing under you. You're taller than every center in your conference by a lot.
Yeah. I'm tall. Been tall a while.
They might be right. I'm not going to argue with somebody about a thing that hasn't happened. Everybody who's told me a tall guy can't get under a nose has never had to make me get under one.
We'll know in a week and a half. Then you can ask me again and I'll say whatever the tape says.
What's actually the hard part? Snapping, or the calls?
Calls. Snapping's hands. You do it two hundred times a day and then it's just something your hands know. There's a guy on staff whose whole job now is standing there catching 'em. I ruined that man's life.
Calls is you looking at eleven guys in about six seconds and saying one number, and then five people do something because you said it. Say the wrong number, five people do the wrong thing very fast and everybody sees it at once.
That's the part. That's not a leverage thing, that's a talking thing.
Does it bother you that some people think this is a gimmick? That it's a young coach being clever?
No.
My dad thinks it's a gimmick. He's the only one who's said it to my face and I told him what I'm telling you, which is I've got a locker and I go to it and I put shoes on.
Is any of it fun, though? Being the guy they did the strange thing with?
(long pause) It's not fun or not fun.
One thing. In there you hear everything. Whole defense, all of it, every word they're saying to each other before the snap. At tackle you hear about four percent of a football game. That part's better.
That's the only opinion I've got about it.
Braylon, this is your first one of these, right?
Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah.
Um — is this, do I — okay. Sorry. Yeah.
What's the biggest difference between this staff and last year's?
The biggest difference. Um. Like, everything, honestly.
That's — no, that's not an answer. Sorry. Practice is shorter. Practice is way shorter and it's worse. Not worse. Harder. It's harder, sorry.
Braylon, I'm going to need a little more than that.
Yeah, no, sorry, sorry. Okay so — last year we'd be out there for like, I don't know. Forever. And you'd stand. That was a lot of it, you'd just be standing, waiting on your rep, and then you'd get one and then you'd stand again.
Now it's like everything's on a clock. There's a horn. Like an actual horn, a guy holds it, and when it goes you're already supposed to be somewhere else, and if you're not there you're the guy. Nobody yells at you. It's worse than that, they just kind of — everybody sees.
So you're tired way earlier and you did like half as much. I don't know how that works. That's not — sorry, is that what you asked?
What's the strangest thing about the new head coach? And don't say the age, everybody says the age.
Um. Honestly? He asked me what I thought.
Like — we were installing a thing, I can't say what, and I said something to Fredrick. I wasn't even talking to the room, I was talking to Fredrick. And he stopped. And he goes, no, say that.
And I didn't have anything. Like I had nothing ready, 'cause nobody's ever done that. So I said whatever I said and I'm pretty sure it was dumb, and he wrote part of it down.
He didn't use it. I'm not saying I — I didn't invent a play, I want to be clear. He just wrote it down.
I don't know. I'm nobody. I'm not supposed to be in that conversation. That's the strangest part.
Braylon, you catch balls from both those quarterbacks. Half this state thinks the wrong one's playing. Has any of that landed on you?
Leo's ball gets there different. That's not — I'm not saying anything about anybody, I just mean it gets on you and you're like, oh. Okay.
And Alessio's never wrong. Ever. About where you're supposed to be, where the safety's going to be, he just knows. It's honestly kind of annoying.
(pause) That's not what you asked me, was it.
It was not.
Yeah. Um.
I don't really — yeah.
Are you nervous right now?
Little bit. Can you tell?
Okay. Yeah, no, that's fair.
Dion, this is a brand-new defense that hasn't played a snap of football. What do you honestly know about it right now?
Not much. That's the real answer and I'll give you it first.
Here's what I keep coming back to, though. A defense in August is a rumor. Everybody's heard about it. Nobody's seen it. We stand around describing it to each other every single day like we're describing a guy none of us has met.
(pause) I've had that one in my pocket for like three days. I was hoping somebody would ask.
Your head coach has been a national joke for three weeks. Trombone bits, "content creator," all of it. Does that get inside the building?
Man. (long pause)
You ever been laughed at before you did anything? That's the specific one. It's not somebody laughing at a thing you did. It's them laughing at the thing you're about to do. It's getting booed on the way in the door.
And I can't argue back, that's what makes it stick. There's no receipt. We haven't played. I can't hand anybody a receipt.
So you carry it. Guys say they don't. They do. It'll be worth something later or it won't, and either way it's not up to me today.
What does your actual job look like in this defense? For someone who doesn't know what an edge does.
Rushing a quarterback is arguing with a man who's not allowed to answer you. He has to stand there. He's got four seconds where he just has to take it.
So the whole job is whether I can make his four seconds feel like six. You're not really beating a tackle. You're spending somebody's time for him.
(smiles) Yeah. I know. I do this.
Do what?
My mom says I talk like a documentary. She's not wrong about it.
It's how I hold onto stuff, though. If I can say a thing out loud, I can do it. Coach Rossi lets me get away with it about half the time and the other half he tells me to go be a football player.
He calls the offense and the defense. Has anybody ever coached you like that?
No, and that's the strangest thing in that building and nobody asks about it.
He calls their plays. Their plays. And then he walks over to our side and coaches us like he doesn't know a single thing he just did over there.
It should be weird. It isn't. I don't have a good line for that one. Sorry.
Leo, take us to the moment. Where were you when you found out you were the starter?
Um. In his office.
It was a conversation. I'm just really grateful for the opportunity and I'm trying to earn it every day.
What's this offense going to be? Anything you've seen that surprised you?
That's above me. Coach Sheridan's been unbelievable with us.
We've just got to take care of the football and stay on schedule.
What's Coach Mansour actually like? Day to day.
He's been great. He's been really great to me.
Leo — respectfully. That's three answers and I don't have one sentence I can use.
Sorry.
(pause) I'm not trying to — sorry.
Alessio Milivojevic is in that quarterback room every morning. A lot of people believe he earned this job. How do you walk in there?
Yeah. I knew that one was — yeah.
I'm not going to talk about the decision, because it's not mine, I didn't make it. Can I say something about him instead? Is that okay?
Two weeks ago my drop was garbage. One specific concept, my footwork on it, and I knew it was bad, and I was going to go fix it by myself at night so nobody had to watch me be bad at it. So I'm out behind the building setting up cones in the lot at like ten o'clock, and he pulls in. He's leaving. He's got his bag on his shoulder, he's got his car running.
And he just stayed. Forty minutes. Nobody made him do that. Nobody was out there. He's never brought it up since, not one time, not even as a joke, and there's a version of him that would've had every right to make it a joke.
He's the one person in that entire building with a reason to let me figure it out on my own, and he got out of his car.
So — I walk in that room knowing he's better to me than I'd probably be, if it was flipped. I don't know what else to tell you about it.
(pause) Sorry. I don't know if I was supposed to say all that.
Has anybody in that locker room made you feel like you didn't earn this? Any coldness, anything at all?
No. Everybody's been great.
Everybody in that room's been great to me.
Last one. What are you actually looking forward to?
Just playing.
I've never — yeah. Just getting to play.
Jordan, your head coach has been a national joke for three weeks. Does that reach the locker room?
Does it reach us. Man, we all have phones.
Yeah, it bothers me. Not the way you think.
I don't need y'all to respect my coach. He's a grown man. He's better about it than we are — he made the joke about himself in a team meeting before anybody else got to. That was smart of him.
What bothers me is when he's the joke, we're the punchline. They're not laughing at his résumé. They're laughing at Michigan State, and I'm Michigan State. I've been here for the bad part.
Laugh at us in November if we're bad. Earn it first.
You've been in that room longer than almost anybody. Can a twenty-eight-year-old command it?
Depends what you mean by command.
If you mean he walks in and everybody straightens up because of who he is — no. Nobody gets that. The old guys think they get it. They don't.
We're checking two things and we check 'em every day. One, does he know something I don't know. Two, is he the same guy on a bad day.
First one he passed in about a week. He'll tell you exactly what a guard's hand does before a pull and you go back and look at your own tape and feel stupid. That buys a room fast. Faster than being fifty.
Second one, I don't know. Nobody knows, including him, because we haven't had a bad day yet. We've had hard days. That's a different thing.
Ask me the Monday after we get beat somewhere. I'll give you a real answer then.
I want to ask this carefully. A young quarterback over a veteran a lot of people believe earned it — does something like that land strangely in a locker room? Even a little?
Who told you it landed strangely?
Nobody. I'm asking you.
Okay. Then here's what I've got for you.
It's a quarterback decision. Quarterback decisions have never been quiet at any school in the history of this sport. Anybody who tells you their room didn't have a thought about it is lying to you or he's not in the room.
Guys have feelings about everything. Guys have feelings about the breakfast.
And Alessio's my guy. That part you can print all day.
That's not quite an answer, though.
No. It's not.
If I've got something to say I go say it upstairs and then it's handled and you never hear about it. That's not me hiding something from you. That's a team.
And I'm not doing the fired-up thing for you either. You'd know it was a bit, and then nothing else I said today would count.
The room's fine.
Last question of the day, Jordan. Forget schemes. What's actually different in that building right now?
Meetings are shorter and they hurt more.
We used to sit in there two hours and I'd walk out and couldn't tell you one thing I learned. Now it's fifty minutes and you get called on and there's nowhere in the back to sit and be invisible. Guys hate it. Guys also come out of there knowing something.
But the real thing —
Last year, guys were counting. You know what I mean by counting? How many weeks till this is over. You could feel it in September. September, man.
Nobody's counting right now. That's it. That's all I've got, and don't turn it into a prediction about November.
The full availability ran eighty-four minutes. Two more players were on the sheet and were not called; a staffer said they would be available during game weeks. Michigan State's bye ends Sunday. The Spartans open at home against Grambling State.