How 2 Ex-FC players are vital for Spartans
MSU Football: Video analysis looking towards Youngstown’s state game
Lansing State Journal Columnist Graham Couch and Detroit Free Press writer Chris Solari discuss MSU’s football in Youngstown’s state game.
- Two of the offensive liners holding the state of Michigan, Conner Moore and Caleb Carter, are transfers of the subdivision of the football championship.
- Coach Jonathan Smith is not worried about a “traps game” against Youngstown State, emphasizing that the team’s approach should not be in the opponent’s division.
- FCS teams have an annoying FBS team history, with four of this type of victories in the first two weeks of the current season.
- MSU has largely used the transfer portal to acquire lower division players, including five FCS this low season.
East Lansing-Conner Moore arrived with All-American expectations. Caleb Carter emerged silently in August as a surprise opener along the offensive line of the soccer of the state of Michigan.
Both know one or two things about the subdivision competition of the football championship. Because they played that competition not even a year ago.
“I have a lot of respect for the FCS level,” Moore said after practice on Tuesday, September 9. “Obviously playing there, I know there are many good players at that level, there are many good types in each team.”
When Spartans (2-0) receive Youngstown State on Saturday, September 13, at Spartan Stadium (3:30 PM, BTN), two of their probable offensive linens, brought as transfers in winter, both spent their years of training playing in the FCS schools.
Moore, a native of Millbury, Ohio, 6 feet and 56 inches, 306 pounds, with two years of eligible, began the first two MSU games in the right Tackle after obtaining FCS American honors in the second team last season and the first year-year-old honors in 2023 in the state of Montana.
Carter, 6-3, 305, by Jacksonville, North Carolina, began half of its 36 games in four seasons in western Carolina.
“It is definitely much faster in everything,” Carter said Tuesday about what he has noticed between the two levels. “The guys are much larger, much stronger … I think since I got here, I began to play much faster, which is what (the offensive line coach Jim Michalczik) wants.”
When leaving an exciting, emotional and electrifying 42-40 extra extra time on Boston College on Saturday, September 6, who moved a National Television audience, coach Jonathan Smith was asked if he was worried about a possible disappointment. After all, going against the Penguins (2-0) It is a step in competition based on the NCAA football hierarchy.
“I’ve never believed in this idea of ​​a trap game,” Smith said on Monday, September 8. “If you enter this traps game (mentality), your approach is in the wrong place.”
It is not unheard of that a helpless from the small school bothers one of the greats of the subdivision of Football Bowl.
In the first two weeks of this season, FCS opponents have four victories about FBS’s enemies. Which includes Eastern MichiganThe impressive defeat 28-23 against the University of Long Island on Saturday. FBS schools lost six times to FCS opponents last season, four times in 2023 and eight times in 2022, including Northwestern defeat against southern Illinois, which was the last time a Big Ten school lost to a low division team.
And perhaps the most impressive surprise in the history of the interdivisional work occurred in 2007, when the state of the Appalaches surprised the then not. 5 Michigan in Ann Arbor, seven years before Mountaineers He moved to FBS.
In the past, the players of the power programs in the FBS (previously AI) would be transferred to the FCS (previously I-AA) to have the opportunity to have more play time, and at the same time they would be immediately eligible to play when lowering a level. All that changed as the NCAA began the portal in 2018 and when the coaches in each division began to arm themselves as a tool for reconstruction of the list when transfers received immediate eligibility to play in 2021.
The recent list limit legislation by the NCAA blurred one of the historical differences between divisions, and both were now allowed to provide up to 105 scholarships from this year; Previously, FBS schools were allowed only 85 Cholars players, while FCS programs could divide 63 scholarships for 85 players.
Smith and his staff have gotten into the FCS transfers market, with Moore and Carter among five FCS transfers (plus the Rodney Bullard Jr. receiver of Division II) added this low season. Last year, MSU brought the titular guard Luke Newman in Holy Cross and the northern Dakota Tommy Schuster seafood as one -year transfers to provide a depth experienced in the Smith debut season.
“There are good players at all levels,” said Field Marshals of the First Year MSU, Jon Boyer on Tuesday. “There are players at all levels that can play for us. And we are seeing that with Conner now, came here and could win an initial job.
“When you start looking at it now from the point of view of recruitment, I am not looking at the list (of YSU) to see who could recruit. But there is definitely that part that stands out. As, ‘Oh, this type can play'”.
MSU is 9-0 of all time against FCS and 3-0 opponents against Youngstown State Spartans‘First FCS opponent. Dantonio was an assistant there of 1986-90 for Jim Tressel, whose YSU teams won four National Championship of the I-AA Division of 1991-97 before he changed the nomenclature of the NCAA.
The Penguins have 20 wins and a draw in 56 games against opponents of the upper division since the creation of level I-AA/FCS in 1979. Those predominantly presented themselves at the enemies of the Mid-American conference, but Ysu surprised Pittsburgh in 2012. Even so, the Penguins have never defeated a great opponent in Nine Attempts, they also lost three times before Ohio State, TWOX
“They are great, they are physical, they are strong,” Penguins coach Doug Phillips MSU said on Tuesday. “Coach Smith has shown: he arrived there last year and, just as he did in the state of Oregon and built the program. And you can see how much better (the Spartans) are this year.”
Together with Moore and Carter, MSU’s staff has a lot of experience in coaching at the FCS level, although much of that came more than a decade ago. Nine of the Full Time Trainers of the Spartans, including Smith, have worked at a FCS school in a moment during their career as a coach.
Boyer was the Campo de Campo del Norte de Colorado coach in 2004-05 when the Bears moved from division II to the FCS, then returned there as an assistant and offensive coordinator of 2011-18, before joining Smith in the state of Oregon. A field marshal in the north of Colorado in 2000-01 before a level went up, Boyer said that the key to make sure that Goliath mates David on Saturdays is to treat the FCS school like any other opponent in the calendar.
“And at the end of the day, I can’t speak for them, but it’s really about us (as a team),” Boyer said.
“The way in which (penguins) are trained, are disciplined. So for me, this is a great opportunity for us to continue and play against a very good opponent and see where we are in our next stage of development.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow it @chrissolari.
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