EAST LANSING --- Jaziun Patterson's time at Michigan State started on a Fort Lauderdale beach with a cup of coffee from Starbucks in his hand.
That was when MSU's special teams coordinator and assistant head coach, LeVar Woods, gave him a call. Patterson had just entered the transfer portal after four total seasons at Iowa. Woods was the logical choice to start the recruitment, as he had also just traded in Hawkeye gold for Spartan green.
Then came the call from Devon Spalding, Michigan State's new running backs coach. The two of them quickly set up a trip for Patterson to come check out East Lansing. Patterson and Pat Fitzgerald's program were an instant match.
"The moment I came up here, like, I loved it," Patterson said Tuesday. "It was just a different atmosphere, and I just wanted to get a fresh start somewhere new, so I loved it. I loved all the people when I first came, and I think that's what my decision came down to."
'I Don't Care Who You Bring In'
Fitzgerald has likened recruiting in the transfer portal to speed-dating a few times. It's tough to get to know the player as well as one might with a high school recruit. One advantage he had, though, was that his son, Ryan, is a quarterback for Iowa and got to be teammates with him last season.
"I called my son, and I was like, 'Hey, tell me about Jazz Patterson.' He's like, 'The Jazmanian Devil? He's unbelievable. He's incredible. This guy just goes at it. Like Dad, it's unbelievable how hard he works.' So that got me excited."
MSU picking up Patterson last winter was a little bit of a surprise from the outside. This is just because it felt like the Spartans had already filled their need for running backs in the portal by landing UConn transfer Cam Edwards and Western Kentucky transfer Marvis Parrish. Patterson was immediately signing up for an uphill climb for carries during his final year of eligibility, which is something not everyone is willing to do. Patterson didn't care about the competition.
"I remember sitting in my office, and I said, 'Listen, man, we got a guy [in Edwards] that we told was going to be our starter, and we're looking for a guy to be a 1B,'" Fitzgerald recalled about recruiting Patterson. "He looked me straight in the eye, stone-cold, and said, 'I don't care who you bring in. I'll be ready to go.'"
Patterson's Shot
That 1B role turned into one of the 1A variety pretty quickly. Edwards looked like the star player Michigan State hoped he would be for the first three games, but that all suddenly stopped when Edwards suffered a season-ending knee injury during MSU's Week 4 game against Nebraska.
One week after not getting a single carry against Notre Dame, Patterson got 16 of them against the Cornhuskers while filling in for Edwards. That was the second-most carries in any game of Patterson's career up to that point, and he's since gotten 18 carries against Wisconsin and 17 against Illinois.
Saturday's homecoming game against the Fighting Illini was the best individual performance of Patterson's career. He rushed for a career-high 93 yards, had a career-high 26 receiving yards, and reached the end zone four times. Patterson hadn't had a single multi-touchdown game prior to that. That "L" by the game on the schedule minimized it all, though.
"Honestly, I didn't feel the four touchdowns," Patterson said. "I felt like, honestly, that I didn't complete my job, because the job is to get the win. Obviously, we all practice hard --- like, we all work hard. We wanted to get this win. I didn't feel accomplished just scoring four touchdowns."
Love for Football
Patterson's mentality and simple love for the game of football are being explicitly held up by Michigan State's coaching staff as something they are looking for culture-wise and during games.
"I challenged the team this [Monday] morning --- I said, 'Can you imagine if everybody in a chair right now operated mentally, [had the] mindset, and attacked the day like Jazz attacks it?'" Fitzgerald said. "Why not? We got six left. Let's go. It starts with today. And so hopefully we'll take on that Jazz mindset."
This year was never going to be the year Fitzgerald completely turned things around at MSU, and that's even clearer through six official games that have exposed an overall talent problem on the roster. The scoreboards haven't been pretty, but between the numbers, there still seems to be a vision of something Michigan State is building towards.
Patterson won't be around for it in East Lansing, but he's an early example of the type of player the Spartans will need more of moving forward.
"I want to win," Patterson said. "I want to be a contributor to the team, and I want to help rebuild the program. That's basically what our talk was about [in the portal] the whole time: me helping build a standard at the program."
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