alum96

December 24th, 2014 at 1:50 PM ^

Hearing Dantonio, Urbz, and Brian Kelly are all under consideration by the red headed kid from Oakland Raiders.

Am going to post a story on the "Edge of the Internet" and begin linking to their team blog fansites.

I will also create 3 twitter accounts and begin to fabricate tales of reasonable conversations an agent and his client (in this case those 3 coaches) would have about said NFL job.

This should work out swell.

Tater

December 24th, 2014 at 1:08 PM ^

Let's see how "great" Mark Dantonio is without Narduzzi.  Glad to see him go: it makes the job of putting Sparty back in their place a lot easier.

FreddieMercuryHayes

December 24th, 2014 at 2:01 PM ^

Yeah, I believe it's been brought to this board before, but Narduzzi was the one that come to Dantonio with the current defensive scheme they run, and had to get Dantonio to buy into it.  That said, Dantonio is a good coach and a smart guy, so I bet he just keeps it going, especially if he promotes from within for the new DC.

BlueHills

December 24th, 2014 at 1:17 PM ^

Wasn't Dantonio DC for Tressel's BCS-winning OSU team? If I recall, that was an excellent defensive football team.

This blog too often fails to recognize that Dantonio, for all of his negativity toward our team, is a very fine football coach.

WolvinLA2

December 24th, 2014 at 2:22 PM ^

It's a little bit of both.  Dantonio is a very good coach, but he wasn't running the defense all by himself, and like others have said, the D that has been so successful at MSU the last handful of years was Narduzzi's D, not Dantonio's D.  Narduzzi was also especially good at watching opponents' film and scheming to stop it - it's not like a DC just implements a defense and then says "go run it" every week.  Narduzzi was the one gameplanning in practice every week and tweeking the D for each opponent.  He was obviously quite good at that, and that will be lost.  

Now, Dantonio knows defense well himself and they'll likely hire someone good.  But this is certainly a loss for MSU.

Everyone Murders

December 24th, 2014 at 1:12 PM ^

I hope he has a long and modestly successful career at Pitt.  Successful enough to keep him employed there for years.

Even more so, I hope he does so on the strength of a great defense, and that his taking the new position reveals that he (rather than Dantonio) was the "secret sauce" that made MSU's defenses so formidable the past few years.

LSAClassOf2000

December 24th, 2014 at 1:11 PM ^

There's some interesting speculation about staff for Narduzzi already flying around too. For example:

 

Everyone Murders

December 24th, 2014 at 1:15 PM ^

The Detroit News was reporting this, although it is largely speculative:

The most pressing issue for Dantonio will be replacing Narduzzi. He has shown desire to promote from within and defensive backs coach Harlon Barnett and linebackers coach and special teams coordinator Mike Tressel would be at the top of the list. One could stay at Michigan State, freeing the other to go with Narduzzi, but Dantonio could also offer Barnett and Tressel co-coordinator jobs, similar to Warner and Bollman on offense.

I'd love to see Dantonio lose one of Bennett or Tressel.  Icing on the cake, from my perspective.

Indonacious

December 24th, 2014 at 1:16 PM ^

I'm sure narduzzi helps their defense's cause but Dantonio captains that ship. Dantonio has a national title as a DC and is a great DB coach in his own right. I think one thing to keep an eye on is Narduzzi poaching positional coaches... never sure how that works when people leave, is there an unwritten rule on who one could take or offer to come with? It would likely have to be a positional coach getting a promotion.

los barcos

December 24th, 2014 at 1:34 PM ^

have close ties to that place. Them firing wannestach was a perfect example of "grass is greener" and now this is what, their 5th coach in 4 years? I think this is a good hire but it's still a barren wasteland over there, and basically has been ever since they moved into Steelers' stadium. It's an nfl town playing college ball in an nfl stadium and there is no school in America that gets less support from their students.

M-Dog

December 24th, 2014 at 1:40 PM ^

It was sad when they killed the on-campus stadium.  Completely runis the game-day atmosphere when you have to ride in buses for 40 minutes to go to a game.

Ask Miami and UCLA if they would like an on-campus stadium to be built.  Pitt already had one and they ditched it.