Taking over the duties of defensive line coach is Vavae “Vae” Tata, who is starting his second season after spending the summer of 2018 working as an intern with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tata has an extensive coaching career that includes two seasons at Stanford University (2012-13), where they won consecutive PAC-12 championships, as well as a Rose Bowl championship. He also served as an assistant coach at Vanderbilt University in 2014 before taking the head coaching position at Kahuku High in Hawaii from 2015-16. In that time, he led his teams to a 24-2 record, including a Division I state championship in 2015 and a perfect 13-0 record. He was the assistant head coach at Carson High in 2017.

Tata began his coaching career in 2006 as the defensive line coach for McKinley High School in Honolulu. Tata also spent two seasons as a graduate assistant coach at San Jose State, and prior to joining the Spartans staff in 2010, Tata spent two campaigns as a student assistant coach at UCLA, where he worked with the defensive linemen and special teams.

In the summer of 2011, Tata participated in the Bill Walsh Minority Coaching Fellowship with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

A 2008 graduate of UCLA, Tata was a four-year letterwinner for the Bruins from 1994-98. As defensive end, he played in the 1995 Aloha Bowl and 1999 Rose Bowl. Following his playing career, Tata worked in the mortgage and banking industries in California and Hawaii.

Tata earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from UCLA in 1999. Tata, 43, is single and lives in Los Angeles.