Michigan State football: Are we being forced to believe there’s a 2-man QB competition?

Michigan State football fans have seemingly been led to believe the quarterback race is down to two guys. Mel Tucker’s quotes say otherwise.

If you’ve been paying attention to the quarterback battle in East Lansing, you’d know that it’s been a three-man race all spring. That was, until quotes came rolling in following the Michigan State football spring “game” on April 15.

Payton Thorne and Noah Kim were arguably the best-looking quarterbacks on the day and both got to lead two-minute drills near the end of practice. Katin Houser did not.

Following the spring game, we saw quotes all over social media regarding the battle. Many were led to believe it was down to just two players: Thorne and Kim. If you didn’t watch the practice and just read quotes, you would have thought that Houser was the worst player on the field. Fans who still wanted Houser to start were dubbed “unserious.”

And then we got a chance to listen to the actual quotes from Mel Tucker regarding the quarterback battle.

Perspectives definitely changed.

this sounds a lot different than how it was phrased in tweets pic.twitter.com/Pfprc1AKpw

— maxwell (@maxwellklitzke) April 18, 2023

That doesn’t sound like anything we saw from the media on Twitter on Saturday evening. If we never found this video of the actual quote, we would have thought Tucker was saying that Houser is clearly third behind Thorne and Kim.

That’s not the case at all.

To me, it sounds like Tucker was asked a leading question about Kim and Thorne and then some people ran with it. He wasn’t asked about “all three” quarterbacks in the race, but rather just two who looked the best in the open practice.

Are we being forced to believe that Houser is out of the race? Not necessarily, but the quotes definitely made it seem like he wasn’t even part of the race.

Does Houser have some ground to make up? Probably, but he’s a hard-working kid and probably the most naturally-talented passer on the roster so I wouldn’t be shocked if he trotted out there as QB1 against Central Michigan.

For those worried about Houser being out of the race completely after spring ball, just watch the actual quote from Mel. It’ll change your mind.

Houser is still very much in this race that will surely stretch deep into fall camp.