{"id":21709,"date":"2025-09-03T16:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T20:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=21709"},"modified":"2025-09-03T16:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T20:51:07","slug":"michigan-state-football-players-discuss-caleb-gashs-explosive-start-to-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/?p=21709","title":{"rendered":"Michigan State football players discuss Caleb Gash&#8217;s explosive start to 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Michigan State football players discussed the breakout of special teams star Caleb Gash to start the 2025 season.<\/h2>\n<p>On Friday, Michigan State football got its season off to an explosive start. The opening kickoff of the season got returned by the Western Michigan Broncos, and redshirt sophomore defensive back Caleb Gash made sure that the return man regretted the decision.<\/p>\n<p>Gash ran straight through the returner, delivering a punishing blow that got both his teammates and the crowd at Spartan Stadium fired up.<\/p>\n<p>After a Spartan stop and then a touchdown on the opening drive of the season for the Michigan State offense, Gash delivered an encore on his second kickoff coverage of the game. That caused Michigan State alumni Matt Seybert to take to X (formerly Twitter), asking who wore the 15.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Alright who is 15, this dude is a psycho !!!<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Matt Seybert (@mattseybert82) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mattseybert82\/status\/1961570324274974830?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 29, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Immediately after finding out, Seybert had seen enough. He was drafting Gash in the first round sheerly for kickoff coverage.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Caleb Gash, future first round draft pick strictly for kickoff coverage <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/QxmvwyqUrG\">https:\/\/t.co\/QxmvwyqUrG<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Matt Seybert (@mattseybert82) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mattseybert82\/status\/1961571520595247564?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 29, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The responsibilities did not stop there for Gash, with him having a great block to help give Omari Kelly extra yards on a punt return. In a fitting manner, Gash\u2019s block took the player he was blocking, himself, and Omari Kelly to the ground. After that play, it became apparent that Western\u2019s special teams had put a target on No. 15, with the defensive back being hit by multiple guys each special teams rep.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, the Broncos did not return another kickoff the rest of the night.<\/p>\n<p>Later in the week, Jonathan Smith named Gash a co-special teams player of the week. He shouted out his tone-setting abilities and other contributions on special teams.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Setting the tone on kickoff, is actually on multiple phases, (this award is for) Caleb Gash,&#8221; Smith awarded, to a round of applause by his teammates.<\/p>\n<h3>Teammates discuss the \u201ctone-setting\u201d hit by the sophomore<\/h3>\n<p>Junior defensive end Jalen Thompson was asked about Gash\u2019s play, and called it a \u201ctone-setter\u201d for the defense. The Spartan defense pitched a shutout on Friday night.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh yeah, that motivated us. When we see stuff like that, you hear it, you see it, in film, in front of your face, it\u2019s like \u2018boom. Let\u2019s go on defense,\u2019 we are hyped up, got the whole defense jumping,\u201d Thompson said. &#8220;It set the tone.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ryan Eckley talked about Gash\u2019s big hit, and revealed his own history with the South Lyon product.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYeah, that\u2019s my guy,\u201d Eckley said. \u201cI love Caleb. He\u2019s a really fiery dude. He and I actually lived together about two years ago, him and Jay Coyne were two of my roommates. I was in there (the huddle) talking to them, getting them fired up, you know, it\u2019s fun. I thought about putting some smelling salts in the helmet or something, getting them out there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, the follow-up became what Eckley told the defensive back before he landed those monster blows, and evidently, it was not very PG-friendly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI probably shouldn\u2019t repeat it here,\u201d Eckley said, inciting a round of laughter in the media room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Caleb Gash: special teams demon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":21718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[823,59,191,189,504],"class_list":["post-21709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-caleb-gash","tag-featured","tag-michigan-state-football","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}