It's difficult to judge a team that isn't operating close to the way it was designed to operate.

Michigan State football is having a tough go in 2026. It has been a tough decade, really. An already-flawed roster has just been decimated by injury after injury after injury, making the Spartans nearly unrecognizable on both sides of the ball.

The Famine Side of Things

Coaches used to have a grace period of at least a few years to get things in order. Thanks to the transfer portal and Indiana's Curt Cignetti, though, judgments seem to be coming down earlier and earlier on head coaches. MSU just fired Jonathan Smith after only two seasons, the shortest tenure for a permanent coach in East Lansing in about a century, and will shell out about $30 million in buyout money.

Patience isn't exactly high for Michigan State fans with the longest bowl drought in the Big Ten, but the school asked for more when it hired Pat Fitzgerald. Most Year 1 success stories involve hiring somebody who could bring a bunch of luggage (players and assistants) with him. Fitzgerald couldn't do that after being out of college coaching for three seasons.

Plenty of Year 1 success stories these days also involve an increase in overall roster investment and NIL dollars. Given the roster Fitzgerald eventually pieced together and the estimates out there about the team's overall budget, it definitely doesn't look like he got a significant windfall.

MSU has been in a position where it has needed to overpay for top talent for a few years now. It doesn't have "overpay" money, though (at least not yet). That's how you get a paper-thin roster with a clear lack of "dudes" or playmakers in Year 1.

The Spartans actually seemed halfway competitive before the injuries hit. Not to get too sappy about moral victories, but the fight at Notre Dame was encouraging. Michigan State had generally looked completely overwhelmed in games against bona fide title contenders, but that wasn't the case in South Bend.

Cam Edwards' season-ending knee injury against Nebraska was a turning point. He had looked like a star through the first few weeks of the season and was clearly the offense's best (and really only) playmaker. That Nebraska game was particularly nightmarish. It felt like an MSU player was hurt every other play.

Fast-forward to the UCLA game, and it's only gotten worse. Michigan State played that game without its QB1, QB2, star RB1, RB2, CB1, CB2, CB3, CB4, and its star LB. Then the game started, and its RB3, star defensive tackle, and starting safety, who had forced two fumbles, all got hurt.

That's not actually Fitzgerald's football team. Sure, it's his players, but true freshman Kayd Coffman wasn't supposed to start a game this year; fourth-string running back Kenneth Williams wasn't supposed to get 17 carries in a game; and true freshman Jeremiah Favorite isn't supposed to be a starting corner. Alas, here we are, and judgments have to be made nonetheless.

Sports Illustrated's Pat Forde wrote a piece on Monday judging the jobs done by first-year head coaches in the Power Four. Some coaches were "feasting", some were "eating well," some got "appropriate portions," some got "one plate only," and some were in the "famine" category.

"Dreams of renewed, spit-in-the-eye competitiveness from the Spartans have dissolved into a likely fifth straight losing season under three different coaches," Forde wrote. "Fitz does not have great talent and his roster has been decimated by injuries, but the Big Ten is a no excuses league."

Sure, 2-6 is 2-6, and the "famine" assessment seems fair, but the injuries are a legitimate excuse in this "no excuses" conference. Fitzgerald is a very experienced Big Ten coach from his time at Northwestern. This is a unique circumstance, though, even for him.

"I've never seen so many injuries, and they've all happened in games," Fitzgerald said after the UCLA loss. "That's what's so crazy to me. If it was in practice, I could turn the dials up or down, left or right. When they happen in games, I don't have a big solution for that besides 'next guy up.'"

Year 2 Plans

Year 2 and 2027 will sort of be the actual Year 1 for Fitzgerald. He said after the Notre Dame loss that Michigan State would be a "completely different team" when the Spartans host the Fighting Irish next year.

That was already a bit of a given. MSU is the oldest team in the Big Ten this year and will lose a fair number of its starters due to the exhaustion of their eligibility. The transfer portal also makes it impossible to know which starters or key reserves will be back.

That looming portal window will be very revealing. The number of holes Fitzgerald will have to fill is countless, but it feels like he'll need at least 20-25 new players this offseason.

Again, the issue is that Michigan State needs "overpay" money. The good news is that the Spartans and new athletic director Dan Bartholomae have expressed a lot of confidence that the football program will be better resourced in 2027. The question is just how much more money that could mean, and whether it will be enough to get enough difference-makers to turn the tide in 2027.

The concept of a "Year 0" for a coach has largely gone extinct in this era, but Fitzgerald deserves to have a still-blank slate after this season from "h-e-double-hockey-sticks" is done. The team he's putting out there right now isn't even really his team, and he doesn't even seem to be operating with the level of resources he'll have moving forward.