"Because Fitzgerald’s experience as a college football head coach up to this point has exclusively been at Northwestern, which is one of the most unique jobs in all of college football, it’s almost impossible to know how Fitzgerald will run the Michigan State program in terms of team building and recruiting. While the Michigan State roster did see quite a bit of turnover after the firing of Smith which happens with almost every coaching change in modern college football, it wasn’t the complete reset that we have seen in other places.
In writing this article it appeared to me that the 2026 Michigan State team is a strange mix of coach Smith’s final team combined with coach Fitzgerald’s first team. This time next year, once Fitzgerald has been through a complete High School and Portal Cycle, we should have a much better idea of what his vision for team-building and recruiting at Michigan State will be.
Further, some of Fitzgerald’s coordinator and assistant hires at Michigan State indicate to us that Fitzgerald isn’t simply trying to make Michigan State be a version of his old Northwestern teams wearing green and white."