We only had 49. Our tempo-free numbers must be out of this world. Ha.

…are you telling me that MSU’s talent level on defense is as low or as depleted as Michigan’s? Over at mgoblog there’s been a lot of charts and discussion of how bare the defensive cupboard was left for RichRod. I believe that lack of talent to work with is more responsible for the awfulness of Michigan’s defense than the Shafer/GERG switch.

Narduzzi’s vanilla base-D relies on out-executing the other team, which is a lot easier to do when you have talent. The logical conclusion of Narduzzi’s (publicly espoused) philosophy is that the goal is better talent, since he won’t make scheme improvements. Why not both? Why not recruit some talent, add some wrinkles, get more talent, add more wrinkles, and so on. Nardo’s stubborn refusal to make tweaks to his scheme, whether to cover for shortcomings in talent or to make improvements allowed by available talent, is why I call for his replacement.

But I don’t want to continue this charade of a scheme if he’s unable or unwilling to recognize his base defense and playcalls are simply ineffective.

With that said, if Narduzzi at least tries to re-invent himself, even a little bit, against Penn State and in the bowl game, I’m more than willing to give him the offseason to finish the overhaul. I just don’t want to see any more of this EZ-D horsecrap.

We spotted you seven with the opening fumble, missed a figgie, had one blocked, and set up two scores with two big kickoff returns. That can make up a statistical difference in a hurry.

The big thing we fail to consider this year is just how bad our defense is. It is not a schematic thing like you could argue with UofM and Schafer (didn’t he run a 3-3-5 or something?) but rather a LACK of schematic. We play defense like a dominant pee-wee team, the one with the genetic freak of a middle LB; we simply line up in our base formation and what happens, happens. Given this, I don’t think getting ANYONE else is going to create too much of a learning curve. Sure, we lose a bit of recruiting in the process, but I think that would be worth it in the end.

It’s funny to say, but MSU fans love to use the rationale that UofM fans are currently using with GERG; it’s the same thing many fans used during the last painful years of the JLS era: “It’s a talent thing, wait until HIS players get here!”, “He sure looked great in !”, “who else would we possibly get?”. These are hollow excuses.

The Gerg does have a talent problem. They have one LB and he isn’t Greg Jones. The other two LBs wouldn’t start for MSU. The walk on safety can’t cover anyone. They are playing a good safety out of position at CB because they don’t have any other CBs. Michigan has a significant talent problem on defense.

That being said, why does Michigan normally do something we don’t? The normally make some sort of either magicical halftime adjustment or speach where as we say, keep doing it and end up with the stats below. Our best improvement in defense from half to half was against NW for a difference of 35 yards. Michigan had a slew of games where something changed at half time. ND -120, EMU -90, Indiana -63, Iowa -37. Those are just the games where the difference between halfs was bigger than our best. Michigan won three of those games and almost came back to beat Iowa.

And think about how many of those games Michigan came back to either win or make it close. Because of Michigan’s defense they beat ND and Indiana. The got them back into the game against Iowa. And Purdue had 1 first down on their last 3 drives to keep Michigan in that game. So, Michigan’s defense does suck. Yet somehow their defense has slowed teams down in the second half consistently and our defense keeps getting trucked all game.

Michigan 1st 2nd
WMU 69 244
ND 295 178
EMU 188 99
Indiana 265 202
MSU 173 175
Iowa 198 161
Del St. Uh no
PSU 207 180
Illinois 84 414
Purdue 245 237
Wisconsin 203 276

MSU 1st 2nd
M. State Uh no
CMU 201 237
ND 209 206
Wisconsin 210 213
UM 67 212
Illinois 55 199
NW 205 170
Iowa 87 210
MN 195 233
WMU 36 170
Purdue 275 264

I emailed Brian at MGoblog earlier this year and offered him a straight up trade, Pat Narduzzi for Greg Robinson. So far, he has not taken me up on that offer.

Oh yeah, and Michigan’s bad defense managed to give up less than 500 yards to Purdue.

My theory is that our opponents are attacking the LBs in pass coverage. Something Pat is not adjusting to. When I get the MSUFRs up, they will show if I am right or not.

…that always brings me up short on the ‘OMG, why is he so open? What are the coaches doing? Why are people trying to rope goats?’ thing, is that it seemed to work in 2008.

I guess this can be explained by teams just realizing that, yeah, MSU is playing that every play.

The question as far as evaluating the coaches’ decisions is, why are they doing it? If it’s because they don’t think their players can execute anything more complex, that’s more understandable, assuming they’re right. I understand sticking with your philosophy, but MSU changes on offense all the time. Different formations, different plays and different emphasis.

And, anecedotally, I remember MSU mixing things up with defensive formations more in 2007 and 2008. I remember them running sort of a 0-6-5 in 2007 and there was some 3-4 stuff in 2008.

Which brings us to this old rumor.
http://spartannation.com/?p=6968

Now, it’s a fairly bizarre story, especially viewed from November. That MSU coaches have 1.) decided to change to a 3-4 in 2010 pre-the 2009 season 2.) that they didn’t run a single 3-4 down this year (that I recall) and 3. they told Hondo about it, seems excedingly strange, but the guy seems to have good sources and he doesn’t issue things like very often.

I kinda like the 3-4 idea, at least using more of it, because it’s the best D if you want to blitz people from different places. If they’re doing it to try to run it like Dick LeBeau, sounds great.

I definately agree that if the complaint is the basic scheme, then the head coach needs to be included. A coordinator, IMO, can be blamed if they players aren’t playing the scheme, but if we’re sure the scheme is the problem, (I’m still on the fence, but the parade of opposing coaches is getting persuasive) I agree that has to be on Dantonio as much as on Narduzzi.

MSU has actually run a lot of 3-4 this year, it is just that it is the Nickel package so it is a 3-3. Based upon what I have seen of the defense, with DE dropping into pass coverage and LBs blitzing, I don’t think it is much of a stretch to see MSU going to a 3-4 next year and would explain why I have been seeing 10 Chris Norman lining up as a DE.

That being said, I think its a really bad idea. The NT in a 3-4 needs to just be a huge monster of a man and no one on MSU’s roster fits that description. Oren Wilson and Jerel Worthy would need to put on about 20 lbs each as a minimum to be a NT. The DEs would need to be in the 265-270 range. Which means all of them would need another 20 or more pounds as well. Then you would either play Wilson or Worthy out of position at DE or only have one of them on the field.

If the players don’t bulk up, you’ll have a light NT getting double teamed and pushed out of the way on every running play in conjunction with both Gs (after assisting the C) being able to release into the second level to block LBs.

The blitz package wouldn’t work either because the 3 DL would not get enough of a pass rush and most teams would know that the blitz is coming and to watch for it.

It works in the NFL because the talent is so much better in addition to one of necessity. In the NFL 290+ lb stud DE are rare. 260 lb tweeners are common. So you have a player who can play OLB and DE some of the time. They are too small to be a full time DE, but can hack it for 20 plays a game. They are offsetting the huge power DE in favor of a lighter speeder one who can drop into coverage and is more common and easier to replace. In fact, you can have several on your roster at once and pay them a lot less than a stud DE.

For MSU, common college players are 290+ lb DTs and 250+ lb DEs. Finding the bulkier players is rare and highly recruited. They end up playing at the top schools in a 4-3 system normally. I just think in college it is too hard to run a 3-4 while running a 4-3 is a lot easier to get quality talent to play in.

…I’ve seen of Worthy this year, he could absolutely fill a NT role in college. The kid has been a beast and he’s already seeing double teams. (I was glad to see he was the one MSU lineman that didn’t jump on that late offsides call)

Given Dantonio’s tendencies, he’d probably rotate Worthy with somebody else at nose.

“The blitz package wouldn’t work either because the 3 DL would not get enough of a pass rush and most teams would know that the blitz is coming and to watch for it.”

Sure, they know a linebacker is coming along with the three DL on most every play, but the strength of the 3-4 is that the fourth rusher could come from one of four LB spots. Conventionally, it’s usually going to be one of the two OLBs, but even then you’re giving an offense more to think about than the 4-3.

The other advantage of the 3-4 would be that it isn’t used much in college, making it harder for teams to be comfortable playing against it.

I hadn’t noticed Chris Norman lined up at DE and I see your point that the 3-3-5 is using some of the same principles.

“The blitz wouldn’t work either. The key to blitzing is to surprise the offense. If MSU went to a 3-4 teams would expect a blitz on every play. You would literally treat the blitzer as the 4th pass rusher. The game plan would be the same as it is now, except you would keep a HB in the backfield to pick up a blitzer from the edge and the G’s would handle anything up the middle.”

The way Pittsburgh uses their 3-4, you know to expect a blitz on every play, but they try to disguise which of the combination of three linemen and four linebackers is coming. You can expect a blitz, but if you don’t know which guy is coming it can be effective. That’s what I’m envisioning. Disguising where it’s coming from is the key and I don’t think MSU does a good job of that.

It’s just not accurate to say it has never worked this year, though. Greg Jones got 7-1/2 sacks somewhere and he didn’t get them all by lining up at DE, which they do sometimes.