Washington's Jedd Fisch says ‘no better guy’ to revive MSU than Pat Fitzgerald
· Yahoo Sports
EAST LANSING — Jedd Fisch knows what it’s like to build a program from the ground up. His first Arizona team in 2021 went 1-11 before going 10-3 with a bowl win in 2023. His third year at Washington will yield a third straight bowl berth after a 21-14 win over Michigan State on Nov. 14.
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Take it from Fisch: It may be slow going for Pat Fitzgerald to turn around Michigan State, but he’s convinced the first-year Spartan coach can lead a revival.
“He knows what it’s going to take, and there’s ups and downs when you’re building a program,” Fisch said. “Whether what we did at Arizona, or coming here and we had 21 starters gone from the year before we got here. There’s no better guy, I think, to do that than him.”
Michigan State (3-7, 1-6 Big Ten) will miss a bowl game with its fifth straight losing season after Saturday’s loss to the Huskies (6-4, 3-4), as star quarterback Demond Williams Jr. lit up the Spartans for 288 yards and set up a game-winning touchdown with 2:25 to play. Multiple starters left injured including quarterback Alessio Milivojevic, one of at least 18 one-time starters injured at some point this season.
Though a bowl is off the table, Fitzgerald balked at any sense of quit from his team.
“That’s not how our program is going to be run,” Fitzgerald said, promising he’d throw players off his sideline if he saw any quit these next two games.
It’s that toughness that Fisch praised.
“He’s consistent. He’s disciplined. He’s tough,” Fisch said. “He demands excellence from his team, and I know that Michigan State is going to be a very tough out for years to come.”
Fisch’s ties to Fitzgerald go back to the former’s days at Michigan, when he joined Jim Harbaugh’s first staff as a quarterbacks coach in 2015. Back in simpler times when college football controversies centered on satellite camps instead of NIL bags and portal poaching, Harbaugh became a lightning rod of controversy for visiting offseason camps where high school recruits trained. When he held his own “Exposure U” camp at Michigan, Fitzgerald was a keynote speaker.
“It was great at that time to spend time with him,” Fisch said.
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald has been spending most of his time trying to build back a Michigan State program that has lost 20 of its past 24 games in the Big Ten as of Saturday’s loss. That included a visit to East Lansing bars on Nov. 11 to recruit students to attend the game, and the student section might have been the fullest, at least the most densely packed, of the season-low 60,275 fans in attendance.
A number of college football coaches this season have vouched for Fitzgerald, dating back to Illinois’ Bret Bielema back at July’s Big Ten Media Days, Eastern Michigan’s Chris Creighton after a Week 2 loss to the Spartans and Nebraska’s Matt Rhule after a Week 4 win.
“I think if you’re watching it critically, you’re watching it as a fan, you see the team fighting,” Fitzgerald said. “I mean, we are fighting, scratching and clawing at times today.”
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This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Washington's Jedd Fisch says ‘no better guy’ to revive MSU than Pat Fitzgerald