College football: Michigan State vs. Northwestern - October 15, 2016

Michigan State quarterback Brian Lewerke (14) looks to pass in the second quarter of their Big Ten football game against Northwestern at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, on Saturday, October 15, 2016.

(Mike Mulholland | MLive.com)

EAST LANSING -- Brian Lewerke has spent most of the last seven weeks with a boot on his broken leg, and is just now beginning to walk uninhibited.

Yet what Mark Dantonio saw on the field during the 2016 season is still enough to call his quarterback-on-the-mend his team's frontrunner to starting 2017.

Dantonio called the rising sophomore "the guy to beat out" as Michigan State enters another offseason starting quarterback competition.

"I think he's done enough to warrant him to be the guy to beat out," Dantonio said on Thursday at a season-ending press conference. "He's the guy."

The announcement sets the stage for the team's 2017 quarterback competition, as Michigan State moves on from a season in which it started three quarterbacks and had uncertainty at the position throughout a 3-9 campaign.

Lewerke made two of those starts, completing 54.4 percent of his passes for 381 yards, with two touchdowns and an interception.

Dantonio said Lewerke "did some great things this season," and noted he likely would have started the last four games of the season had he not broken his left leg against Michigan.

With the boot off of his broken leg now, Dantonio said Lewerke is expected to be able to begin rehabbing when the team begins winter conditioning in January. He is expected to participate in spring practices when they begin in March.

The only other quarterback with returning experience is rising senior Damion Terry, who started the final game of the year against Penn State.

Dantonio revealed for the first time on Thursday that Terry had minor knee surgery before the 2016 season and wasn't healthy through the team's preseason camp, when the starting quarterback decision was made.

"Damion's been in and out with injuries and he played well in the Penn State game," Dantonio said. "But he's gotta maintain his health."

The team also expects to have two other scholarship quarterbacks on its roster for the 2017 season: redshirt freshman Messiah deWeaver and true freshman Rocky Lombardi, an unsigned 2017 recruit.

Dantonio said deWeaver got extra practice reps toward the end of the season, when Lewerke was hurt, and that he showed growth during that time period.

"He showed some promising things, but he also showed some things that lend to him being a freshman and being not in the mix for six, seven weeks," Dantonio said. "But I think there was growth there."

Lewerke, Terry and Tyler O'Connor all started last year as Michigan State had a bumpy transition on from former starter Connor Cook.

It marks the third time in Dantonio's 10-year tenure that Michigan State has undergone a regression of at least three wins following the departure of a multi-year starter.

As the staff undergoes what Dantonio calls a complete review of the program, Dantonio said that quarterback transitions will be part of that.

"You've got to be productive at that position," Dantonio said. "You have to lead to production, and productivity is points scored when you're a quarterback. It's points scored. And there are a lot of good things that happened and occurred, but we didn't score as many points as we needed to be scoring to win a football game. It all goes hand in hand."