How Mel Tucker, Michigan State can bounce back from Year 3 disaster

After falling well short of expectations in 2022, Mel Tucker and the Spartans get back on track this offseason...

Let's call a spade, a spade — Year 3 of the Mel Tucker era was a disaster for Michigan State football.

When looking at the Spartans' schedule before the season began, a 5-7 record was about as close to a worst-case scenario that I could come up with for MSU.

While I never felt like that scenario was likely, if it was going to happen for Michigan State, this is about how I imagined it would — early losses to both Washington and Minnesota, an 0-3 mark against Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State, and a 3-6 record in conference (though I imagined a loss to Wisconsin, not Indiana).

In some ways, the loss to the Hoosiers — as opposed to a loss to the Badgers, or Illinois — made this an even worse season for the Spartans. 

Michigan State went 0-3 in their trophy games this season, losing the Paul Bunyan Trophy to Michigan, the Old Brass Spittoon to Indiana and the Land-Grant Trophy to Penn State. The Spartans also failed to reach a bowl game, costly themselves valuable extra practice time and reps for younger players who will compete for larger roles in 2023.

So, how do Tucker and the Spartans bounce back from the disappointment of the 2022 campaign? How can this head coach deliver on the promise of how high this program can climb on a national level?

It's actually fairly simple — Mel Tucker has to be the recruiter that Michigan State believes him to be. When he was hired in February of 2020, Tucker brought with him the reputation of being one of the nation's top recruiter.

So far in his tenure, I'd argue that Tucker has delivered on that promise.

During the 2021 cycle, Tucker's first at Michigan State, the Spartans pulled four-star wide receiver Keon Coleman out of SEC Country and landed a pair of three-stars in cornerback Charles Brantley and defensive tackle Derrick Harmon who have been hidden gems at their positions.

While each of the players above have already made immediate impacts, the '21 class might be defined by the impact the offensive line signees — Geno VanDeMark, Ethan Boyd, Brandon Baldwin and Kevin Wigenton — make in 2023 and beyond.

This class was assembled mostly via Zoom meetings and phone calls, with in-person recruiting impossible due to the COVID-19 restrictions implimented by the NCAA that year.

With the in-person restrictions lifted, and on the heels of an 11-2 campaign in 2021, Tucker and Michigan State were able to land the country's No. 23 class for the 2022 cycle. The Spartans signed six four-star prospects in the '22 class, two more four-stars than Michigan State had signed in the previous three classes combined.

Having been on campus for just one season, it's going to take time to accurate evaluate how good the 2022 class is, but a few players make instant impacts. Defensive backs Dillon Tatum and Jaden Mangham were both pressed into action in the Spartans' depleted secondary this season, and showed what made them four-star prospects. They've got plenty of room to grow and will need to develop, but they performed about as well as you could expect from true freshmen.

Likewise, wide receiver Germie Bernard showed what made him a highly-coveted prospect with seven receptions for 128 yards and two touchdowns. Unfortunately, Bernard entered the transfer portal recently, but he's still an example of Tucker's staff identifying and landing talented high school players.

Looking ahead to the 2023 class, which Michigan State hopes to get signed during the early signing period next week, Tucker and his staff have once again assembled a Top 25-caliber list. It's a smaller class, for now, with only 14 commitments as of Dec. 17, but features nine four-star prospects.

If the Spartans sign all nine of those four-stars, it would tie the program's record for the most four-stars in a single cycle in the modern recruiting era (since 2000). That would be a pretty remarkable accomplishment considering the season that MSU just struggled through.

When Kenneth Walker III arrived in East Lansing ahead of the 2021 season and turned into the best running back in country, he masked how big of a rebuild job that Michigan State was when Tucker arrived here. It's not hyperbole or exaggeration to suggest that Walker added 3-4 (maybe more) wins to the Spartans 11-win total that season.

After winning his third Big Ten championship in 2015, former head coach Mark Dantonio went just 27-24 overall and 17-19 in Big Ten play over his final four seasons, and that includes the 2017 season in which the Spartans went 10-2 overall and 7-2 in the Big Ten. Dantonio's recruiting had stagnated as well, and MSU wasn't hitting on as many undervalued and overlooked prospects that Dantonio routinely turned into stars during his earlier years.

Tucker stepped into a significant rebuild in 2020 and, with a monster assist from Walker, delivered an 11-2 and Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl victory in 2021. His other seasons have resulted in losing records, the second of which was massively disappointing.

Yet, I don't believe the 2022 season will define the Tucker era at Michigan State. The head coach has proven an ability to bring talent to East Lansing, and that should soon result in Spartan rosters that are much deeper and able to go toe-to-toe with the best teams in the Big Ten.