Why Retaining DC Rossi was 'No-Brainer' for MSU's Fitzgerald

Assistant coaches being retained after a head coaching change, especially a firing, is a big deal.

It's not uncommon for a head coach to "clean house" when taking a new job. The house is a lot different now at Michigan State with Pat Fitzgerald than it was with Jonathan Smith, but Fitzgerald is keeping one of Smith's top assistants: defensive coordinator Joe Rossi.

Michigan State's defensive coordinator Joe Rossi runs to the locker room before the game against Penn State on Saturday, Nov. 15, 2025, at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing. | Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Next fall will be Rossi's third season in East Lansing. His first two defenses finished 34th in 2024 and 72nd in 2025. Rossi grew in popularity within the fanbase towards the end of the season, when he moved from the press box to the sidelines and provided some much-needed energy to the MSU sideline (which didn't help make Smith look any better). It also helped that the Spartans did show some in-season improvement.

Fitzgerald expanded on why he decided to keep Rossi around during an off-podium interview while attending a Michigan high school coaches convention on Thursday.

What Fitzgerald Said About Rossi

Michigan State Spartans head football coach Pat Fitzgerald points while introducing himself to the crowd at a men's basketball game against the Iowa Hawkeyes on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. Fitzgerald was officially hired by MSU on Monday. | Starr Portice, Michigan State Spartans on SI

One key thing is that Fitzgerald said that Rossi had been on his radar since his time as the head coach at Northwestern. Rossi is about as experienced a Big Ten defensive coordinator as it gets, after all. He was the DC at Rutgers for its first two seasons in the conference, and was then the coordinator at Minnesota for five seasons from 2019-23. That means next fall will be his 10th season as a DC in this conference.

"I really wanted to vet Joe Rossi," Fitzgerald said. "I've said it multiple times, he was on my list [at Northwestern]. I was going to try to hire him. I didn't have the budget to do it."

Well, the budget is there at Michigan State. Rossi's contract runs through the 2027 season. He'll be the Spartans' highest-paid assistant coach for 2026 at $1.7 million. His contract was extended by one year just before the 2025 season kicked off as well.

"I didn't really know Joe," Fitzgerald said. "Joe and I sat down two or three times, and it was kind of like we were ending each other's sentences a little bit. And [keeping him] was somewhat of a no-brainer for me."

One thing that should help Rossi moving forward is that it seems he has more input on the defensive staff. A good chunk of the former defensive assistants were guys who followed Smith from Oregon State, and those may not necessarily be who Rossi had in mind, but he still knows that the head coach supercedes him there.

A big hire for Rossi's staff was defensive line coach Winston DeLattiboudere III. He played for and coached with Rossi at Minnesota, and joined MSU after being the DL coach for the Arizona Cardinals. The entire defensive staff has Midwestern ties, and that seems like something Rossi, native to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, would be looking for himself.

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