MSU HC Pat Fitzgerald's Electric Game Day

I want to, again, reiterate just how electric the atmosphere was in Spartan Stadium on Friday night. Thank our students, and they were in the building early, and to start the year off that way was awesome. The fans were incredible. On the Spartan walk, the band, as always, is just absolutely spectacular. So it was a great day, a great evening, and an awesome game day experience that I know our players are really thankful for. Our staff and our program is really thankful for. I look forward to being even more raucous on Saturday at 3.30. Looking back at the game, I thought Les had a great game. He made some big throws, especially on fourth downs. Rodney Bullard, I think his performance speaks for itself with a touchdown catch and a two-point conversion. And then Cam Edwards, 27 carries. It's probably a little bit too much, but nearly 100 yards, and he rotated seven alignments. So I thought that showed the depth defensively. Outside of a couple of mistakes, I thought it was a really good performance. But that's not the way the game or life works. So we've got to get those things cleaned up, get them fixed, and Kenny getting his first interception was great. And then the kick-in, Liam Boyd, was spectacular, like I said, on Friday night in his debut. It wouldn't have happened without a great battery. From a player-of-the-game standpoint, special teams-wise, it was Liam Boyd, 5 out of 6. 32, 42, 48, 35 in his career-long of 51. Six out of seven touchbacks on kickoff. Our offensive player of the week was Rodney Bullard. I've already touched on his stats. Big playmaker for us. He's kind of a big playmaker, tough guy. You can call both one and the same. Big playmaker this week was Trent Praley. As a staff, we thought he played really well. Defensively, our player of the week was Eli Conan. Eli had a really good game. Three tackles, a TFL, a sack, a QB hit, the PBU. I know that may be different than your stats officially. You can keep your official stats. We'll do ours that are more accurate. It's no disrespect to the statisticians in this world that we get the opportunity to go back and watch tape. I just have a bone to pick because I finished my career with 299 tackles. I have more than that. Not my fault that I wasn't the first guy jumping off the pile. We give Eli credit for all the plays he made.