EAST LANSING — Alante Brown’s first year with Michigan State football fulfilled a longtime dream, even if it did not go the way he had hoped.
Starting with the first play of the Spartans’ season in his green and white debut.
Brown watched the opening kickoff of the season against Central Michigan sail to Tyrell Henry. As Henry took off, Brown collided with the Chippewas’ Thomas Pannunzio and immediately crumpled to the Spartan Stadium turf.
He left the field on a backboard, controversially returned to the field later in that game for one play, then missed most of the following two weeks after going into concussion protocol.
“That could have been my last play. … Football is a dangerous sport,” Brown recalled Thursday. “Thank God, God allowed me to get back up after that hit. That’s what comes with the game.”
It is a lesson the fifth-year senior wants to impart to the rest of MSU’s wide receivers going into the upcoming season. Something he learned first-hand, something returning position coach Courtney Hawkins is leaning on to get the most out of his wideouts in head coach Jonathan Smith’s new offense.
“Every day, we come out there to compete. That’s his character. He’s installed that into each and every one of our guys in our room,” Brown said of Hawkins, himself a former MSU and NFL receiver. “We just try to carry that chip on our shoulder, because you never know when our last play is. He harps on that every day. …
“I love this sport. If you really love this sport, you’ll go to next level to do what you got to do for this sport. It won’t really affect me, I would say, to continue to go down ball and do what I do, because I know what I’m capable of.”
Brown, a 5-foot-11, 189-pound native of Chicago, never got on track after getting knocked out of the first game. He finished his first season after transferring from Nebraska with just three catches for 27 yards, but Smith and new offensive coordinator Brian Lindgren believe Brown can be one of the veterans MSU can rely on during their first season and in bringing changes to an offense that struggled last fall.
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“We’ve been shuffling guys around, particularly at receiver,” Lindgren said Thursday, with the Spartans preparing for their second spring scrimmage Saturday. “They’ve been playing inside, they’ve been playing outside, kind of trying to get a feel for what they can do there, rotating through groups. … We’re getting a feel for some of the playmakers.”
MSU’s returning receiving corps is relatively inexperienced beyond fifth-year senior Montorie Foster, who led the Spartans with 43 catches for 576 yards last season with three touchdowns. Tre Mosley graduated, and both Henry and Christian Fitzpatrick transferred. That opens opportunities for Brown, junior Jaron Glover (14 catches, 261) and sophomore Antonio Gates Jr. (five catches, 82 yards, TD) — as well as redshirt freshmen Aziah Johnson and Jaelen Smith and true freshman Nick Marsh — to take a step forward and emerge in Smith and Lindgren’s pass-heavy scheme they are bringing from Oregon State.
“He definitely brings a different regime, for sure. Different concepts, definitely with the offensive schemes and stuff like that,” Foster said of Smith last month. “It’s definitely fun. … It’s starting to get pretty simple. The concepts are all making sense now, so it’s easier to just go out there and just have fun and just make plays.”
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The Beavers last season ranked 51st in the nation at 242.2 passing yards per game and 45th in total offense at 409.2 yards. Smith and Lindgren also brought with them sophomore Aidan Chiles, who is expected to bring experience and expertise in their system to an MSU offense that shuffled through three quarterbacks a year ago and ranked 96th in passing (199.8 yards) and 125th in total offense (289.3).
“They bring excitement, especially when you get to see the system,” said Brown, who originally committed to MSU and Mark Dantonio in 2018 before going to Nebraska in 2020 following a year at prep school. “You can hear this coming in, ‘They throw the ball a lot’ or ‘They’re a throw-first team.’ But when you see the system, you actually see what they’re doing for the guys and what they’re good at. It definitely bring joy and excitement in what you can bring to the game.”
With so many young talents behind them, both Foster and Brown are eager to provide a vocal presence for this season and to serve as a building block for Smith’s future MSU teams after they graduate.
“We need some leaders on this team,” Brown said. “We got Montorie, we got me — two of the older guys in the room. So just set the example and try to share my knowledge with the team and bring a good culture, showing what my character is. And just continue to play ball and have fun.”
Contact Chris Solari:csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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