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Brian Lewerke may have learned the most about what it takes to be a quarterback during the time when he couldn’t play quarterback.

That’s when people who once cheered him turned against him. Not all of them. Not the majority of them. Just some of them, and they were vocal. He heard them.

He learned an important lesson last year on how to process that aspect of the job - a lesson that should help him this year.

Soon after the biggest of his 30 career touchdown passes, Lewerke felt the severity of a shoulder injury he sustained just prior to that TD - the one that beat Penn State on Oct. 13.

He celebrated that 25-yard, game-winning TD shot to Felton Davis with :19 seconds left, giving Michigan State a 21-17 victory over the Nittany Lions. Everyone celebrated it. MSU football has had some great moments over the years, but upsetting the No. 8-ranked team in the nation, on the road, with a looping touchdown pass in the final seconds? That was a moment.

Lewerke suffered a shoulder injury earlier in that TD drive. The injury caused him to miss most of the following week of practice. Then he played hurt against Michigan in the worst statistical day of his life.

A week later, Lewerke was too injured to play against Purdue. He watched freshman Rocky Lombardi throw for 318 yards in a victory over the Boilermakers.

Purdue played a soft zone defense. Lombardi had easy reads and easy throws most of the day. His numbers, and MSU’s surprising success on that day, dazzled Spartan fans.

Lewerke struggled in an attempted comeback at Maryland, then again at home against Ohio State, where he heard boos for the first time in his career. His home crowd chanted for a return of his replacement, “Rocky! Rocky! Rocky!”

Looking back, he says he probably would have been wise to shut down his arm for the rest of the season after injuring his throwing shoulder at Penn State. And what would we, and the college football nation, think of Lewerke today if his junior season had ended with that TD strike in Happy Valley, with the Spartans rebounding from early-season struggles to notch a 4-2 record in the first half of the season?

We would have had the second half of the season and all winter and spring to stew on that Lewerke-to-Davis TD pass as his last throw of the season, and what might have come in the second half of the season. We would anticipate this fall’s return of one of the best quarterbacks in the country for his senior year. Instead, we are fogged by Lewerke’s ineffectiveness in his brave, selfless attempt to play four of the last seven games. MSU’s quarterback position is regarded as a question, rather than a strength.

Last fall, Lewerke felt he could will himself through the injury. He figured whatever adrenalin and pixie dust helped him deliver that final pass at Penn State would return and carry him in the second half of the season.

Doctors told him that throwing wouldn’t do additional damage to the arm. But he had no velocity or accuracy against Michigan. His form was altered.

“I went back and watched the Michigan game from last year, and that was the first game after I got hurt,” Lewerke said. “And I could tell my arm angle was a lot lower, and I didn’t even notice it back then. Looking back on the film, I could tell that my arm just didn’t look the same at all.”

He had a few decent throws against Maryland and Ohio State, but the coaches basically had him on a pitch count. After 10 or 12 pass attempts, whatever effectiveness he had would soon wear out. And with it, his confidence eventually waned, too.

He completed 60 percent of his passes through the first six games, and only 43 percent after the injury.

Details of the injury were never released to the public. Lewerke hasn’t said much about the injury, other than it didn’t require surgery during the winter.

He rested the arm for several weeks after a spirited but flawed effort against Oregon in the Redbox Bowl.

“Going into spring, it was still feeling a little iffy,” said Lewerke, who graduated with a degree in economics in December. “In the last week or two weeks of the spring is when I started feeling like I could throw again, back to the way I could.”

Then came a splendid performance in the Green-White Game. The coverages were tight but simple. The defense was allowed to occasionally send five pass rushers. Hitting the QB was not allowed. So the spring game wasn’t completely an apples-to-apples rehearsal of the real thing in the fall. But Lewerke’s throws looked like the Lewerke of old.

Among them:

+ Lewerke ripped a back-side skinny post to Jailen Nailor vs. Josh Butler for 15 yards.

+ On third-and-nine vs a five-man rush, he again went to the back side to Cody White on a double-move in route vs Josiah Scott’s press coverage. That was Lewerke’s third read, and he got to it quickly, with accuracy, a quick release and zip.

- He threw behind Darrell Stewart on a shallow crossing route, but better throws were to come.

++ The first TD of the game, Lewerke delivered a perfect throw to Stewart for a 10-yard strike vs. Tre Person in the back corner of the end zone. Playing quarters zone as a safety, Person picked up Stewart as the No. 3 receiver, but Stewart had a half-step on him and Lewerke put the ball in a perfect place.

++ On a 10-yard pass to Nailor on a comeback to the wide side of the field, Lewerke again fired a pass to a place where only his receiver could get it - and he delivered it quickly and with enough pace that it offset the tight press coverage of cornerback Kalon Gervin.

+ On an 11-yard pass to Stewart, again to the wide side of the field, Lewerke delivered on-time and accurately vs. quarters coverage. Stewart got Emmanuel Flowers to bite on a post fake and was open on his double-move to an out route. The route was good, Stewart was open - but he didn’t need to be open, because the ball was on-time and perfectly thrown.

These were intermediate gains, but sometimes an intermediate read to the wide side is the only thing a defense leaves somewhat open - because those are also the most difficult throws to make. Lewerke can make them - again. These are the type of throws that separate good quarterbacks from functional quarterbacks.

“There was maybe a little pain, just trying to get back into it at the beginning of spring,” Lewerke said. “And as I got through it, the pain kind of went away. By the end of the spring, I didn’t feel anything when I threw. My form, I worked on getting that better. I think my form kind of got messed up last fall.”

Boos didn’t help the process.

“It made me learn a lot about who I am and what I actually want to do and how to get through stuff like this,” Lewerke said. “I’ve obviously never experienced anything like that. It made me tougher, it made me have thicker skin, and not really care what people say about me and just play and do what I know I can do and trust God the entire time.”

The fans who booed him, and chanted “Rocky!” soon learned that Rocky wasn’t the perfect answer. Those fans are of the same mindset of fans who chanted “Bobby! Bobby! Bobby!” at halftime of an Michigan State basketball game in December of 1999 when they wanted Bobby Williams hired full-time, and the same ilk who chanted “We want Terry! We want Terry!”, as in Damion Terry, when Connor Cook struggled early in 2013.

The stock analysis skills and intelligence of the vocal minority has proved faulty. Lewerke is wiser for it.

“In ’17, I heard people say, ‘Hey, you’re a great quarterback. We can’t wait to see you next year,’” Lewerke said. “Obviously that stuff is good for your confidence and all that, but you have to take it with a grain of salt, when people praise you up when you’re doing good, and when they beat you down when you’re doing bad. I try not to listen to any of it now.”

How did he cope with it?

“It took a lot of praying, a lot of figuring out how to get my arm back to what it was,” Lewerke said. “Most of it was form, just getting my form back, raising my arm angle a little bit. My arm was a little too low; that’s what I noticed from film.”

Coaches and teammates knew he would get his arm back. They are more concerned with his confidence. Mark Dantonio and Joe Bachie were among those rooting for Lewerke to regain his swagger. They were looking for it in the spring. They saw it return. At mid-summer, the old Lewerke appears to be back to full-force.

“Quarterback is such an inspiring position,” Dantonio said. “It’s not just having confidence in yourself, you need to inspire other people. I don’t care if you are No. 1, 2, 3 or 4, you need to inspire other people and your body language needs to say so, and I think he will be ready to go.”

Those around him will need to be able to do their job, too.

“Your receivers have to separate and you have to block,” Dantonio Said. “Brian’s arm strength is good. He looks healthy and I hope his confidence is there. That’s what I plan on.”