Michigan State conducted a practice with full pads for the first time in nine months on Wednesday.

Media weren’t allowed access, for obvious health reasons. Coaches didn’t issue statements, although coordinators are expected to be available for Zoom interviews before the week is done.

With steady rain falling in East Lansing, at least a portion of the practice, and maybe all of it, was conducted indoors at the Michigan State football building, if we may draw conclusions from the short interview with sophomore wide receiver Jalen Nailor released by the university on Wednesday night.

“First day of pads today, it was great to get back on the field, back in pads, getting the guys running around, energy super high,” Nailor said in the video. “I love the coaches’ enthusiasm, the players’ enthusiasm. Just trying to get better every day.”

1. Any Jalen Nailor sighting is a good sighting for Michigan State football purposes. “Speedy” is expected to be a valuable cog in the offense for first-year head coach Mel Tucker in the delayed 2020 season.

Nailor is a high-performance sports car of a player. He has very good acceleration and top speed, but high-performance parts sometimes break down. He missed nine games last year with a lower body injury. He sustained the injury during practice between the first and second games of the season and Michigan State's passing attack lost some RPMs.

Nailor returned for the final three games of the season and helped spark the Spartans to a three-game win streak to close out the season.

Michigan State needs to keep this sports car on the track in 2020.

Nailor (6-0, 185, Palmdale, Calif./Las Vegas Bishop Gorman) is down six pounds since last year. In 2019, he was visibly bulkier than his true freshman year. I wondered whether the extra mass would hinder the breakaway speed he showed as a rookie, including his game-changing 75-yard TD run late in MSU’s victory at Indiana in 2018. I never quite got the answer on that, as we barely got to see him play at the beginning of the season, and then saw a somewhat rusty version of him in November.

Nailor was pretty good last year, when available. He had 15 catches in four games, including five receptions for 60 yards in the New Era Pinstripe Bowl victory over Wake Forest.

He also had a 26-yard kickoff return against Wake Forest, which sadly was one of the longest of the year by a Spartan. Michigan State didn’t have a kickoff return of more than 31 yards last season. Nailor’s 26-yarder breathed some belief into the possibility that Michigan State could have more kickoff return explosiveness in 2020.

Last season, Michigan State’s kickoff return team spent most of the season calling for fair catches rather than attempting runbacks. That’s likely to change in 2020 under new special teams coordinator Ross Els.

“We will be aggressive in return game,” Els said in April. “We want to be aggressive as we possibly can. We are not a passive special teams unit. There aren’t many like that, but there are some. We want to keep attacking. What you decide to do, to me, is dictated by the opponent.

“One of the great things about working for a guy like Mel Tucker is he understands the importance of special teams and working with him for the year I did at Colorado, he never said, ‘Don’t use this guy.’ Now we’re going to use common sense on offense, defense and special teams to make sure they’re not over-played but that doesn’t mean that special teams will take the back seat. Everybody’s going to be available. We get the best that are available.”

Nailor is certainly one of MSU’s best athletes. And it was good to see him in pads on Wednesday, albeit via video.

Keep an eye out for sophomore Jayden Reed as a return man on special teams too. The transfer from Western Michigan averaged 17.9 yards on 12 punt returns in 2018 for Western Michigan, and averaged 12.9 yards on 12 kickoff returns. He had a 93-yard punt return for a touchdown against Delaware State.

When asked on Monday if he is likely to return kicks for the Spartans, Reed said:

“Possibly. I’m back there in practice. We’re working on it a lot. I believe I will be involved in special teams, no doubt.”

2. Nailor reiterated what I keep hearing from players and sources. The energy level is high among coaches, the tempo level is more demanding than in the last couple of seasons, and the players love it.

“Everybody is walking around with smiles on their faces,” sophomore running back Elijah Collins said on Monday, when asked what’s the biggest change this year compared to last year’s staff. “There’s a lot of energy going around the room. Coach Tucker brought in a lot of energy. You definitely see that with the new team. Everybody is bringing it every day. The energy is just totally different.”

Back in the George Perles days, a difficult loss on a Saturday often meant a more physical session on the first day of practice the following week. Players dreaded it.

After nine months without wearing full pads, the current Spartans were eager to get back to hitting.

“After such a long time, I really look forward to getting back into the physical side of football,” Collins said earlier this week.

Collins also thought the five weeks of conditioning since Aug. 11 and the week-and-a-half of full roster practices since Sept. 21 set up the Spartans nicely for October.

“(The short postponement) actually was a benefit to a lot of people,” Collins said. “A lot of people were able to get fully healthy and get bigger, stronger, faster so it should be fun to get back out there and play football again.”

MSU’s players are better-prepared for the restart of the practice season than they were for the outset of fall camp on Aug. 7, which came shortly after a two-week, self-imposed team quarantine due to a minor outbreak in positive COVID-19 test results.

Michigan State’s football program has had no shutdowns or pauses due to COVID-19 since late July. In the meantime, the Spartans have made gains in the strength and conditioning department.

“Our players are actually in better shape now than when we started camp the first time, before the postponement,” Tucker said last week. “When the season was postponed, we put our players right back in the weight room to run and lift and they got five weeks of intense training with our strength and conditioning coaches. When we got the green light to start back up again, we were ready to go.”

Big Ten teams were allowed to conduct workouts in smaller “spider” pads in late August and throughout September, in accordance with the initial guidelines set up by the Big Ten following the Aug. 11 postponement.

Rather than conduct practices in spider pads, the Spartans focused their hours and effort on the weight room for five weeks.

Once the postponement was lifted, Michigan State began practicing in spider pads, in preparation for this week’s return to full pads.

“We practiced in spider pads, which is a lesser form of shoulder pads, and helmets and we conducted our normal practices just like we would in camp,” Tucker said. “The only difference is that our guys are in school. So we’re able to work around that; it’s not been an issue.”

Tucker said the Spartans are easing into the padded portion of preseason practice.

“We are not going to go from spiders and helmets to full scrimmage,” Tucker said. “We are going to ramp our guys up on our own. We like to stay off the ground when we practice, kind of like the NFL. But we will have some scrimmage time when we go full-go. But we are going to make sure that we do it in a way that is in a contact progression.”

Spartan fans gained a taste of Tucker's assertive, demanding side when he and the Michigan State football program released a short “mic’d up” video of a recent practice on Wednesday.

In the video, Tucker barked at tight end Parks Gissinger (No. 81 in white): "You've got to have a flat back and some hat speed!"

He dead-panned to Theo Day (No. 6 in red), "Got a little lost there, big guy?"

To sophomore cornerback Julian Barnett (No. 2 in white) : "If your'e down, you're up!"

Presumably, Barnett stayed on the ground an instant too long during a drill.

These firm interactions remind me of Nick Saban yelling at Scott Ernsberger during a standing form-tackling drill, "Man, we're here to play BALL! You can't crack an egg hitting like that!"

**

These were short segments, but I haven't seen an MSU head coach get after guys in practice like this about simple techniques and fundamentals like this since Nick Saban.

Mark Dantonio was all about techniques and fundamentals, and he would raise his decibel level on occasion. But Dantonio’s approach was generally different from the early views we’ve seen of Tucker. Dantonio's approach worked. I'm not saying there's a right way or wrong way to do it. I'm saying Tucker brings a lot of Saban to the field.

If you've ever seen Saban coach first-hand, you know what I'm talking about. Tucker has done his time with Saban, that's for sure.

Tucker’s interactions with players in this week’s video remind me of Saban yelling at Scott Ernsberger during a standing form-tackling drill in the spring of 1995, "Man, we're here to play BALL! You can't crack an egg hitting like that!"

Not surprisingly, Tucker hashtagged the video “#ProcessDriven”.

Taking words straight from Saban’s “process” doctrine.

John L. Smith was more hands-on and technique-oriented than Bobby Williams. But neither displayed what Tucker has already showed in the ... relentlessness department.

I describe Tucker as being an interesting mixture of modern progress and old school process. The Cleveland comes out in Tucker when a new phase of the football calendar kicks in, as has been the case in the past few days.

“This is going on 24 years of this for me, and the beginning of the off-season conditioning program, the beginning of spring ball, and the beginning of fall camp, I usually lose my voice for that first week and a half or so,” Tucker said.

He expects to be hoarse around the time that pads go on for the first time, and that’s certainly the case this week.

“I only raise my voice in enthusiasm,” he said with a laugh. “We have an enthusiastic bunch out there.”