On Monday, Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith announced on X, formerly Twitter, that quarterback Aidan Chiles, running back Nate Carter, offensive lineman Tanner Miller, linebacker Jordan Turner, and defensive lineman Maverick Hansen would serve as the team’s captains for the 2024 season.
It is just another sign of the changing times in East Lansing as the Spartans used to choose different captains for each game under Mel Tucker. It appears that these five will remain the captains for the entirety of the 2024 campaign.
A big takeaway from the announcement is the inclusion of Chiles, who will still only be 18 years old when he takes the field against Florida Atlantic and Maryland. All four of the other captains have played at least three years of college football before the upcoming season, whereas Chiles has only served as a backup during his true freshman campaign at Oregon State.
The announcement highly implies that the former four-star prospect has shown leadership qualities and cultivated a lot of respect in the Spartan locker room since arriving in the spring.
Miller, another Oregon State transfer, now officially gets recognized as a leader of the only MSU team he will be a part of. The former walk-on is coming off a year where he received first-team All-Pac-12 and second-team All-American honors. Having played for Smith for five seasons, Miller is very aware of how to install the culture Smith’s staff desires, especially as a guy who has worked his way up from the bottom of the depth chart.
Jordan Turner was also selected by his Spartan teammates, despite this being his first season in East Lansing as well. The fifth-year senior had been playing at Wisconsin for the previous four years.
Turner, who was a captain on the Farmington (Mich.) High School football team for three years, was third on the Badgers in 2023 with 61 tackles with 6.5 tackles for loss and three sacks attached in 11 games. He was an All-Big Ten honorable mention in 2022 after a 68-tackle year and was named Defensive MVP of the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.
Three transfers being named captains is proof that Smith’s system that worked at Oregon State is working so far in East Lansing. Obviously, Chiles is expected to lead no matter what as a quarterback, but DJ Uiagalelei was not a captain at Oregon State last season, despite having starting experience at Clemson. It shows that Miller is passing down wisdom on how Smith does things, and that Turner is a new face that is assimilating to the change very well.
The returning Carter was, by far, the biggest workhorse for the MSU offense last season. He was one of three players to start all 12 games on the offensive side of the ball, also getting at least 10 touches each time. Carter ended up receiving the ball 207 times, which also led the team by a wide margin. His 798 rushing yards was 705 more than the next-closest rusher (Jalen Berger). The former UConn transfer, who initially went to East Lansing to play for Tucker, gets rewarded for staying put.
Hansen is the only captain that has not played for another school. The sixth-year senior appeared in 11 games last year, starting four. Hansen is a similar story to Miller, in that they both started their collegiate careers buried on the depth chart and have slowly moved up. The job for the former two-star prospect was to be on the scout team and redshirt during his true freshman season. The next year, Hansen played in six games. In the three years since, he has played in every game but one.
Overall, very fitting
All five captains seem like very fitting choices.
Each player is standing in a position that might appear a little unexpected. Chiles is the only former blue-chip recruit, but is already in a true leadership position despite never playing a single down as a starter. Turner was a former three-star recruit. Carter and Hansen were two-stars. Miller, the only All-American, had zero stars.
The way that Smith is putting several undervalued guys out of high school in the forefront of his first season speaks to the culture Smith is building at Michigan State.
For a behind the scenes look at how Smith is rebuilding the Michigan State football program, read David Harns' exclusive article here.
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