EAST LANSING – Nick Marsh took off like a lightning bolt.
He slipped between two Maryland defenders almost immediately after the snap, then took one jab step toward the sideline. The deke was enough to get the Terrapins’ Kevyn Humes into a flat-footed hesitation.
Big mistake.
Michigan State football’s freshman wide receiver cut back toward the middle of the field and turned on his afterburners. He blew past the Maryland cornerback and his would-be help, then turned his head and looked skyward for the ball. Aidan Chiles’ perfect spiral spun back down from its high arc and into the hands of Marsh, who caught it in stride and ran away from the Terrapins giving chase.
Straight into the national spotlight.
Marsh had already announced himself to Maryland in the Big Ten opener with a 57-yard catch earlier in Saturday’s fourth quarter. But that 77-yard, game-tying touchdown with a little more than 4 minutes to play in the Spartans’ eventual 27-24 comeback win launched him to Big Ten and national freshman of the week honors.
And left his mentor, Courtney Hawkins, beaming with pride – yet not the least bit surprised.
SEIDEL: Quietly, succinctly, Jonathan Smith is ironing out how to build a winner at Michigan State
“Nick being Nick,” wide receivers coach Hawkins, the former MSU and NFL standout, said Tuesday. “Me recruiting him, I expect it. Maybe not the numbers that he put up, but he’s a talented kid, man. That won’t be just a flash-in-the-bucket type of deal.”
Marsh caught eight passes for 194 yards, second-most ever by a freshman and 10th-best for a single game in school history. He earned Big Ten freshman of the week honors Monday and was named the national Shaun Alexander Freshman Player of the Week on Tuesday.
“I’ve been busting my butt at practice every day, just giving our defense a look, just practicing my tail off,” Marsh said Saturday in College Park, Maryland. “Hitting the weights and doing everything right and doing what I was supposed to do. So coming out here and executing today, it felt pretty good.”
The 6-foot-3, 209-pound product of River Rouge High has nine catches for 205 yards through two games as the Spartans (2-0, 1-0 Big Ten) prepare to host Prairie View A&M in a return to non-conference action. Kickoff is 3:30 p.m. Saturday at Spartan Stadium (BTN).
“I think (it’s) his preparation, his overall approach to the game, his overall approach to life,” Hawkins said of Marsh. “He’s a well-centered kid, well-grounded. He studies. He knows multiple positions on our team. He’s got some leadership qualities about him.
“He’s that kind of kid you want in your room. He’s a program-changer type of athlete.”
Marsh’s quickly developing rapport with quarterback Aidan Chiles, who threw for 363 yards with three touchdowns against the Terrapins, is stoking the excitement levels for MSU coaches and fans for the future. And elevating the possibilities for the Spartans’ offense this season.
A year ago, Chiles was in a similar situation to Marsh as a 17-year-old being thrust into immediate playing time as a rotationally used backup true freshman at Oregon State. That baptism was followed by the realities of modern college football, with Beavers head coach Jonathan Smith leaving for MSU in November and Chiles eventually following him to East Lansing.
Chiles said during the spring that he saw a lot of himself from a year ago in what Marsh did after enrolling in January. By August, Chiles was calling Marsh “my little man. He’s not little, though, he’s a big dog,” and raving about the wideout’s ability to attack catches and pull away 50-50 throws from defensive backs.
Then Saturday, the two showed the fruits of their offseason bonding – which included their mothers becoming close – by executing on intermediate throws both to the outside and in the middle of the field before their two long fourth-quarter connections.
“We hold each other accountable,” said Chiles, who turns 19 on Thursday. “If I make a mistake and don’t throw him the ball, he knows if he was wide open. But if he makes a mistake, I’m gonna get on him, too. Like, it is what it is. We just have a relationship where we can talk to each other, communicate and go back out there and do what we did today.”
NOT GOOD INJURY NEWS: Michigan State football injuries: Chance Rucker on growing list of Spartans out long-term
Marsh said it came down to executing everything he and Chiles worked on all summer and throughout camp and in practice each week for them to put together two of the best single-game receiving and passing performances in school history in their second game together.
“We practice this a lot,” Marsh said. “The corners, they were biting on the vertical stem, and that’s something we practice at practice. Aidan knows where to put the ball at”
That route-running ability and maturity are two traits Hawkins – the lone remaining MSU coach from a year ago – quickly points to when talking about Marsh, a four-star high school recruit who at different points committed and decommited to Mel Tucker’s staff before eventually sticking with the Spartans.
“The one thing is that he played fast on every route,” said Hawkins, who played nine years in the NFL. “And then also, we get into talking about stems on routes, and he was just so precise on a couple of the long balls, the stems, that he ran and resetting guys at the top. Some things that veteran guys would do, guys that are in their second and third year in college. …
“A couple of them will be on my training reel – this is how we run this particular route. So just to see the route discipline from him in Week 2 already, from a 17-year-old young man, was great to see.”
Smith said what freed up Marsh for the two long passes in the fourth quarter came from things he established early in the game, both in running shorter routes and what he showed with some ferocious blocking during run plays.
“We don’t have any training wheels on the guy,” Smith said. “I mean, he’s out there with route adjustments. If it’s Cover 2, you do this; if it’s man-to-man, you do that. He’s playing all of those. He has a nice game.”
Hawkins began wooing Marsh as a ninth-grader and secured a commitment from him to Tucker’s program in late July 2022, but the receiver reopened his recruiting process in March 2023. By that July, Marsh once again was fully invested in becoming a Spartan.
That held true after Tucker’s firing during last season. The bond Hawkins had built with Marsh and his mother, Yolanda Wilson, was strong enough for the family to give Smith and his new staff a chance, especially with Hawkins being retained as an assistant.
“The way he handled things, he handled it professionally,” Hawkins recalled of the long recruiting process. “He called me, let me know. And his reasoning was that he wanted to be honest. He didn’t want me to hear something through the media. So the way it was handled is Nick Marsh.
“There was no panic here by me, I knew where I stood at. They wanted to see some other stuff. I wasn’t really tripping, I just kept quiet. We were on the phone, making sure he (wasn’t) going too far. ‘Go ahead and go take a look. But you know where home is.’”
After Saturday, Marsh might be establishing a second residency in end zones around the Big Ten.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
Subscribe to the “Spartan Speak” podcast for new episodes weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts. And catch all of our podcasts and daily voice briefing at freep.com/podcasts.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football: Freshman Nick Marsh ‘a program-changer’ at WR
