If I were to write this article at any point in the recent past, it would likely follow the tired "compliment sandwich" format: a few paragraphs on things that I liked from the season thus far, a tired recitation of what's bothered me, and a mealy-mouthed assertion that things would get better.

This year, I think that starting with the negative aspects of the 2024 season for Michigan State is apt: if I were to poll the fan base, I imagine the vast majority of complaints would rotate around one thing: an 18/19-year-old quarterback being careless with the ball and that carelessness being the difference between a record of 3-3 and 4-2. This is not to infantilize or minimize the problem: Aidan Chiles needs —Needs — to take better care of the football, effective immediately.

However, he's only had one, inconsequential, interception in the last two games, both against elite competition. That speaks to better processing and decision-making, fumbles notwithstanding (and yes, the fumbles have to stop).

Chiles also makes occasional NFL throws!

If you squint, you can see growth.

Going up against a well-drilled Phil Parker-led Iowa defense, with Michigan State coming out of the bye week, will be a benchmark for the Spartans. An unsound Michigan defense the next week will provide another data point before the traditional (if overperforming, for now) bottom of the Big Ten looms in November.

Consider what this exercise would have looked like in almost any year post 2016: concerns that the game had passed Mark Dantonio by; angst that Luke Fickell had spurned the Green and White; deep, pressing questions about the defensive architecture; concerns that MSU was locked into a decade-long contract with a sinking ship; or serious complaints about the offensive structure.

Today, I would wager that the majority of complaints revolve around something that is generally fixed as a quarterback ages.

On that note, consider what this program has been since making the College Football Playoff in 2015: the ballyhooed 2016 recruiting class self-destructed, Dantonio lost three out of four games to the Michigan program he built his tenure on beating, and he retired late in the hiring cycle in 2020. The mediocrity of the ensuing Mel Tucker hire was obscured only briefly by a one-year portal rental of elite running back Kenneth Walker III supported largely by Dantonio holdovers. Even then, an 8-0 start in 2021 was parlayed into a mere third-place finish in the Big Ten East. MSU had lost not only its in-state primacy, but also its standing nationally.