“There are friction points. We had a retired colonel come in yesterday and he talked about that line of departure. When you start to move ... you come out of the huddle and now you're in it,” Dantonio said. “You're in the thick of it and there are friction points that are involved and you've got to be able to keep your cool and maintain your level of concentration ... But at the same time, you've got to recollect yourself and reset the reset button every year, every spring.”

One area in which Dantonio showed confidence was, as expected, his defense, which finished first in the nation in rush yards per game. Undoubtedly, the 13-year head coach established his expectation for his defensive units' continued elite production.

“I think defensively, you could make a case for us having a top-five defense in the country,” he continued. “Mike Tressel has done a great job along with defensive coaches.”

Injury updates

Injuries ailed seemingly every position of MSU’s roster last season, so Dantonio naturally addressed his players' health concerns, namely at the quarterback position, claiming that he thinks Brian Lewerke is 100% healthy but has not yet thrown the football extensively.

Senior defensive end Kenny Willekes suffered an always-concerning broken leg in the RedBox Bowl vs. Oregon, so he, along with redshirt sophomore Jack Camper, is expected to spend the spring recovering. Dantonio went on to mention that he does not expect Willekes’ leg injury to deter him from August activities.

Coaching changes

The main headline overshadowing the Spartans’ offseason came when Dantonio made coaching changes on the offensive side of the ball, promoting Brad Salem to offensive coordinator while demoting Dave Warner to quarterbacks coach. Senior linebacker Joe Bachie asserts that the locker room has handled the change well, however.

“When we first heard it, a bunch of us are kind of in shock because we haven't seen that before,” Bachie explained. “But Coach Warner's worked with quarterbacks in the past. Brian's (Lewerke) got a relationship with him. You see that guys have worked with each other. Coach Salem's a great coach. He's going to do a great job. ... It's just something to change and I'm excited to see what happens in the spring.”

Potential position battles 

When asked what he expects of his starting quarterback after his personal slump of a season, Dantonio said of Brian Lewerke: “He's fine. I think his head's in a good place and he's got to lead our football team.”

And while he showed confidence in the signal-caller, when asked about a potential quarterback competition this spring, Dantonio didn’t rule it out of the question.

“We're going to always play the best players and we're going to measure that collectively in every aspect. So if our backup quarterback plays like he did against Purdue the whole season, then you take it from there,” he said. “If (he’s) playing like he did against Rutgers, then you take it from there. So everybody's going to be judged on what they've done lately and that's what we'll continue to do."

Defensive adjustments

The elite 2018 MSU defense, while returning many starters once again, must adjust for the loss of talent, namely with the departure of Justin Layne for the draft, and the graduation of Khari Willis and Andrew Dowell, all of whom started for the Spartans.

“We've got to find a second MIKE throughout the spring as someone who we can just trust there. Byron (Bullough) was a guy who was a leader. We need that guy. … We look at just the LB room, we lost Andrew Dowell, Grayson Miller, ... Jon Reschke. We lost a bunch of guys that we've got to find, and that's what we need to find this spring.”