MSU’s Pat Fitzgerald Hire Disrespected Among Coaching Signings
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It has been nearly a month since Pat Fitzgerald was hired as the new head coach of Michigan State football. In that span, Fitzgerald has worked quickly to assemble his coaching staff, retaining Joe Rossi as defensive coordinator and Courtney Hawkins as wide receivers coach, while also bringing in Nick Sheridan from Alabama to serve as offensive coordinator.
While several outlets have praised the hire as the type of move Michigan State needed to restore stability and competitiveness, ESPN analyst Bill Connelly offered a far more critical assessment.
Connelly recently ranked every head coaching hire from this year’s coaching carousel and placed Michigan State’s decision to hire Fitzgerald 30th out of 30, assigning the move a C grade.
Why Fitzgerald Gets a C Grade
In his evaluation, Connelly pointed to Fitzgerald’s struggles late in his tenure at Northwestern, particularly during the sport’s transition into the NIL and transfer portal era.
“At first glance, this seems right,” Connelly wrote. “Fitzgerald, still only 51, won 110 games at Northwestern with a pair of division titles and three seasons of double-digit wins. Who better than a known Big Ten overachiever to take over a program that has fallen into quite an underachieving rut?”
However, Connelly argued that the résumé loses shine when examining Fitzgerald’s final seasons in Evanston.
“That logic falls apart pretty quickly,” he continued. “Even including his success during the 2020 COVID-19 season, Fitzgerald went 14–31 in his last four seasons at Northwestern. Its average offensive SP+ ranking over those four years was a ghastly 108.5, and perhaps more worrisome is that, following the retirement of longtime defensive coordinator Mike Hankwitz after 2020, his last two teams sank to 49th and then 62nd in defensive SP+.”
Connelly also highlighted Northwestern’s sharp decline during that stretch, including a 3–9 season in 2021 and a 1–11 campaign in 2022.
“If Michigan State had employed Fitzgerald from 2019 to 2022, the school would have fired him,” Connelly wrote. “Jonathan Smith was just fired for going 4–15 in part of two seasons, and instead of embarking on a thorough replacement search, the school replaced him the very next day with a guy who went 4–20 in his past two years.”
He also questioned Fitzgerald’s lack of success in the NIL and transfer portal era, arguing that Michigan State is taking a financial gamble by paying roughly $6 million per year for an unproven fit in the modern college football landscape.
Connelly additionally referenced the hazing scandal that led to Fitzgerald’s dismissal at Northwestern, noting that while Fitzgerald was found not to have known about or encouraged the misconduct, the situation still raises concerns for a “buck-stops-here” head coach.
“This is the one power-conference hire I just don’t like,” Connelly concluded. “Maybe things will work out great. Our guts are wrong about hires all the time. But with so little recent success and so much recent change in the sport, I assumed he would need to prove himself at the Group of Five level before being handed the keys to a big-time program again. State is taking a massive risk.”
When Michigan State moved on from Jonathan Smith and pivoted quickly to Fitzgerald, the decision came as a surprise to many. While rumors circulated, the hire initially felt abrupt and unconventional.
However, as Fitzgerald continues to build out his staff with a blend of continuity and fresh perspectives, the vision for Michigan State football is beginning to take shape.
Michigan State’s decision to hire Pat Fitzgerald may not have won over national analysts, but it reflects a calculated gamble on culture, experience, and long-term stability. While the concerns raised by ESPN are valid — particularly regarding recent results and the NIL era — Fitzgerald’s early staff decisions suggest an awareness of what must change.
Whether this move ultimately proves inspired or misguided will depend not on past résumés, but on Fitzgerald’s ability to adapt, recruit, and modernize a program searching for its identity once again.
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