Pat Fitzgerald basks in U-M win, shifts MSU's focus to Washington

Nairavoice | Nov 10, 2026 34m ago 63 0 4 min read

Pat Fitzgerald basks in U-M win, shifts MSU's focus to Washington

EAST LANSING – They only count as one, even if Pat Fitzgerald immediately admitted “there’s one game that just means a little bit more” when he took the Michigan State football job.

The Spartans got that one and the Paul Bunyan Trophy. And after his congratulatory messages with Mark Dantonio following Saturday’s win at Michigan and a lengthy phone call with Dantonio on Sunday, MSU’s first-year coach Fitzgerald knows one more thing.

How you follow an emotional victory over the rival Wolverines can change a season. For good or bad. Especially now that his team has given itself new life for a seemingly improbable bowl berth with the Washington Huskies coming to town.

“Listen, I think our guys are really bright and really smart. I mean, we all know that that win gave us an opportunity and the right to have this be a big game this weekend if that makes sense,” Fitzgerald said at his news conference Monday, Nov. 9. “That’s the way I approach it with the guys. This is a critical game for this team.”

Needing to win all three of its remaining games to qualify for a postseason spot, MSU (3-6, 1-5 Big Ten) begins the final quarter of the season by hosting Washington (5-4, 2-4) and quarterback Demond Williams Jr., a Spartan legacy, on Saturday (4:15 p.m., Big Ten Network).

The Spartans have a short week after facing the Huskies, hosting Oregon in their home finale on Friday Nov. 20, before traveling to Rutgers on Nov. 28 to close out their 12 regular-season games.

“I said, ‘Listen, then that creates next week. And the week after, right, we’ll worry about them down the road,'” Fitzgerald said he told players when they convened for practice Monday morning. “But there’s no doubt there’s an opportunity, if we do what we’re capable of, to create an extra month with our seniors.”

Fitzgerald said the talk with Dantonio “was really rewarding.” He also heard from several former Spartan players after beating U-M, 15-6, and returning the Paul Bunyan Trophy to the Duffy Daugherty Football Building in the wee hours Sunday for the first time since 2021. Ex-MSU strength coach Ken Mannie also visited the Spartans’ practice Monday, Fitzgerald said.

And one of the biggest lessons Dantonio preached during his 13-year tenure as the program’s all-time winningest coach was as much as beating the Wolverines mattered, how the Spartans responded after playing them always would be just as important.

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Dantonio went 8-5 against U-M, but MSU was 11-2 in the ensuing games. Mel Tucker, despite beating the Wolverines in his first two seasons and winning 11 games in 2021, lost the next game after both of those victories.

“Some games mean more, and I got it. I think that’s a T-shirt being made somewhere,” said Fitzgerald, who joined Tucker and Nick Saban (1995) as the only MSU coaches to beat U-M in their first meeting. “You gotta grow up, you gotta mature. This is a test. And it’s a hard test.”

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Washington, under one-time Michigan assistant coach Jedd Fisch, has lost four of its last six games, three of them by four or fewer points. That includes Saturday’s near-comeback against Penn State after falling behind 28-6 at halftime and rallying to come up short, 28-25.

Williams, whose father, Roland Sr., played cornerback for the Spartans as a junior college transfer from 2005-06, has been both electric and erratic. The 5-foot-11, 190-pound junior – born shortly before his father’s senior season at MSU – has completed 65% of his passes for 1,667 yards with 11 touchdowns and four interceptions in eight games this season.

The younger Williams has 254 rushing yards on 73 carries with two scores despite being sacked 22 times and losing 125 yards on those. Washington has allowed 27 sacks on the season, tied for 11th-most among FBS-level teams.

“He presents huge problems for our defense in his holistic game. It’s everything that he does,” Fitzgerald said of Williams. “So, yeah, we got our hands full. There’s no doubt about that.”

Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him @chrissolari.

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