MSU HC Pat Fitzgerald Coaching Lessons & Game Week Prep

Tue, Aug 25, 2026

Video Transcript

Do coaches ever learn anything from I know you have a pretty good feel for who and who isn't, have never been in Spartan.

Yeah, I, I think you learn a lot, uh, not only through that exercise.

I think you learned it through our unity council that got elected earlier in the offseason.

I think you learned it through jersey number 1.

Absolutely these things, Jack, are not just by happenstance, you know, it's over time, you know, I've definitely learned to hear the voice of the locker room.

You've got to give them opportunities to lead.

And then the best teams I've ever coached were all player-led and player-run, you know, and so we had to go through this whole offseason basically to get to this point.

Of teaching the guys, you know, kind of what we do, how we do it, when we want it done, all those nuts and bolts while they're building relationships and I talked to the team about being in a storm, right, that, you know, we're kind of through the storm now and it's, now we've really come together and the brotherhood is, is really galvanized and now it, you know, now we gotta go compete, you know, I think you give yourself a chance to compete by doing what we've done.

But now we're going to have to go out and compete and find out how we handle adversity, how we handle success, how we handle traveling, and all the things that go along with game day.

What's the rest of the week look like?

I assume at some point you transition out and move into a game week, yeah , sort of thing.

Yeah, good question.

What else do you still want to get done, I guess.

Oh, we got a lot to get done, yeah.

So, you know, tomorrow we'll kind of transition to what would be a Wednesday practice for game week.

Um, so, uh, that, that we'll, we'll for the first time kind of start mixing in some things we anticipate seeing from our opponent while still doing a lot of things fundamentally that we really feel strongly we need to improve on.

Uh, we'll work, uh, then into our, uh, kind of way we practice on a Thursday, the following day, and then we'll do our mock game, uh, here this Thursday, um, that's kind of a scripted, kind of every situation that may happen within Spartan Stadium.

And then Friday we'll, uh, we'll, we'll do basically a special situations practice, OD and K. So like every little like one-timer that's ever happened in the history of our staff, I, I, I, it's long, it's a long list of stuff that we just want to touch.

Now we've been doing that throughout camp in situational football, but there's a like, all right, what have we not gotten done and then what do we want to really emphasize a little bit.

We'll also have the Big 10 officials come in and and do some rules education.

I'm sure that'll be a fun conversation with Coach Woods , um, and then, um, uh, they'll they'll educate, we'll do the education with the staff and the players.

I've always done that.

And then Friday afternoon, uh, I'll give the guys basically uh Friday afternoon and then Saturday the whole program's off and then we'll be, uh, that's kind of symbolic of the end and then we're really into the game week, uh, and that'll start on Sunday.

So Sunday for us will be a Monday of game week.