Injuries to Kristian Phillips and Gavin Broscious, along with transfer defections, 'decimated' Michigan State football's offensive line in 2024.
EAST LANSING — A little more than two weeks after his 2024 season ended, Kristian Phillips found himself going from despondent to counseling his replacement, his former roommate who he beat for a starting job.
Gavin Broscious took over as Michigan State football’s right guard after his classmate – affectionately known as “Big Dooley” – injured his left knee in the season-opener against Florida Atlantic. In Week 3, Broscious suffered his own left leg injury against Prairie View A&M. Neither played again.
“As soon as that happened, I made sure to call him and tell him, ‘You’re not alone,’” Phillips said after practice Thursday, Aug. 14. “‘We’re gonna get through this process together.’”
Those two injuries, along with a half-dozen portal defections ahead of the 2024 season, left offensive line coach Jim Michalczik scrambling to find five healthy and productive bodies the rest of the way. A year later, with Phillips and Broscious back – and with a few offseason transfer additions – Michalczik's second season with the Spartans feels like a fresh start in some ways.
“It was hard. It was hard,” Michalczik said Thursday of last season’s 5-7 debut. “The portal got us pretty bad, and we knew we had to stay healthy. And then we didn’t stay healthy.”
Chris Kapilovic, the offensive line coach during four seasons under Mel Tucker, helped rebuild MSU’s depth in the trenches. By the time Michalczik coached his first game at Spartan Stadium, the Spartans had lost almost all of it – Keyshawn Blackstock, Ethan Boyd, Spencer Brown, Braden Miller, Geno VanDeMark and Kevin Wigenton II all left as transfers from their 2023 team. Then came the injuries to Phillips and Broscious, along with continued injury issues for another highly touted Tucker recruit in Cole Dellinger.
Despite showing slight improvement last fall on the ground over the previous few years, MSU continued to struggle to run consistently. The Spartans averaged just 115.3 yards per game, ranking 110th out of 133 FBS teams. It was an improvement over a program-worst 89.5 rushing yards per game in 2023, as Tucker’s tenure also produced the second-worst average in school history (91.7 yards in 2020) and averaged 113 yards per game in 2022.
VanDeMark and Boyd, both returning starters, left the program after going through spring practice under coach Jonathan Smith and the new staff. Michalczik said the timing of their departures made finding replacements of that caliber difficult even with the portal.
“I would rather not bring guys in from the portal,” he said. “In hindsight, we probably should have been more active in it a year ago, because we kind of got decimated in the portal when we first got here. Or even before we got here. In the same respect, I think it’s important if we’re gonna have to fill in spots. And I think we did a great job with the guys we brought in, not just as football players but the people, the character, the teammates to help everyone else be better.”
Michalczik blended one-year transfers Tanner Miller at center and Luke Newman at left guard with Ashton Lepo, a 2022 recruit (along with Phillips and Broscious) who started every game last season at right tackle and is back this season as a fourth-year junior. Since-graduated Brandon Baldwin started the first three games at left tackle then moved to right guard after the injuries mounted, with redshirt freshman Stanton Ramil – another Kapilovic recruit who remained under the new staff – taking over at left tackle for eight of the final nine games. He was replaced against Ohio State by true freshman Rakeem Johnson, in the one game Ramil missed.
Ultimately, that was the extent of the depth Michalczik had to work with against the bludgeoning bigs of the Big Ten. And both Phillips and Broscious had to watch and bide their time on the sideline recovering and getting ready for this season.
“I think it definitely was a blessing and a curse at the same time,” Broscious said Thursday. “The blessing being I got to see the game a different way. Coming into a new offense, I got to learn it more. And now that I had that time to see the outside of it, looking on the inside at it, it’s so much easier and so much faster.”
This year, MSU added three potential starters via tranfer – center Matt Gulbin (Wake Forest), tackle Conner Moore (Montana State) and guard Luka Vincic (Oregon State) – in the winter. The Spartans didn’t lose any transfers after spring practice along the offensive front. And getting Phillips and Broscious back, along with another year of development for Lepo and the other young linemen who arrived the past three years, gives Michalczik far more options than he had at the end of last year.
“You look at them, and they were significant injuries last year – I don’t see them as injuries anymore,” Michalczik said of Phillips and Broscious. “I don’t think they play and think about injuries anymore. You don’t notice it, so that’s a good thing.”
Though Ramil and Lepo return as starters and both Phillips and Broscious got some exposure to it, Michalczik isn’t ready to anoint anyone with a job or role, with the Spartans’ second preseason scrimmage coming Saturday, Aug. 16. He feels a lot of that will shake out in the coming days, but he likes what he has seen from his linemen as they shift from position to position in case attrition hits this fall.
“As of right now, there’s no starters,” Phillips said. “We just rotate. That’s how it’s been since camp started.”
When Phillips and Broscious returned to the practice field at the outset of camp, it marked a culmination of work they put in together to mend and grow. Together.
“We always would say, ‘We’re gonna come back. And we’re gonna (pick up) where we left off at,’” Phillps said. “It’s just a reminder that pain is only temporary, the injury is only temporary. … We had a smile at each other (in the first practice). And we were just like, ‘It’s go time now.’ We’re just excited to get back out there.”
Broscious, who said Phillips is like a brother, now once again are competing with one another for a starting spot in preseason camp a year later, back to full strength because they teamed together to attack their rehab.
“We’ll fight all the time, we’ll bicker to each other. But we both understand it’s all out of love,” Broscious said. “I push him, he pushes me. And that’s how always how it’s been.”
Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football OL depth surging with returns of Broscious, Phillips
Category: General Sports
