Hope someone on the staff reads this. Gantt was very effective last year in goal line situations. We’ve got the TEs… bring those plays back, please.

I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know it was that bad. Going into the season the O line was considered a question mark. They’ve actually held up pretty well in pass protection but are obviously not capable of moving the pile in short yardage running situations.

I still can’t believe we haven’t tried a play action pass on first down on one of these goal line situations. EVERYONE knows we’re going to run. Fake the run and throw it once – next time they won’t know what is coming, which may actually loosen things up for the run game in those situations.

The coaches have to accept reality – we do not have an offensive line that is skilled at short yardage run blocking. They may wish we had such an offensive line so fervently that they call plays based on that wish, in the hopes that at some point our O line will morph into the O line of their dreams, but it is not working. Maybe next year when we have more experience and another year of strength training for the young guys on the O line, but not now.

Play to the team’s strengths, which are a good QB, decent pass protection, and a slew of talented receiving options both at wideout and TE.

…why is he suddenly so bad at playcalling with the ball at the one yard line?

I think we are overlooking the short field / stack the box effect. I am considering doing abbreviated MSUFRs for the last several games focusing on those goal line offense situations.

I do seem to recall a play action pass attempt to Hawken on 1st down. I can’t remember which game it was, it all seems to be blurring together right now.

Gantt and Sims are 6’5", Linthicum is 6’4" and White, Cunningham and Dell are all 6’2". Cousins has good touch. How about a fade route now and again?

… (I was an All League OT way back in my prep days, so maybe it more than bothers me) but State still put up a respectable 34 points.

What irks me even more, what really chaps my rearend, is the pass defense. I don’t know if there’s anything to be said about this secondary that hasn’t already been said. That unit is just plain godawful, downright terrible. Perhaps even more embarassing because that’s Dantonio’s area of expertise.

(Being able to cover on kick-offs would be nice, too. But that’s a seperate issue – and it’s not like it would matter, as it only would prolong the pain of watching the Spartans horrendous secondary give up yardage play after maddening play.)

We have reason to complain abou the short yardage play calling, but giving up as many points as we did to that Minnesota offense is far worse than any transgressions the offense committed.

Offense:

Simply put, our grim determination to make the run off tackle work is costing us games. We are not a power running team, so lining up with 2 TE sets in the “I” against 9 in the box is simply not going to work. This is even less effective in running situations, like third and sort or goal line situations (see OP).

Why are we so determined to give Nichol a series, when we should be using his situationally? Why is it when he does come in, we don’t take advantage of his “scrambler” label and get him running around back there? Why put him in to do a 5 step drop when we have a guy who does it better on the sidelines?

Sometimes I feel like we have a playbook that has about 10 plays in it. Sure, we pull out a hook and ladder once, but the other 99% of the time we are running 10 yard outs, or off tackle runs. We run a fake dive end around and go for a TD. Then immediately stop any thought of running another misdirection play. I constantly have a vision of a smug Treadwell thinking “they’ll never expect us to run off tackle again! Perfect!”, and he rarely fails to live up to these visions. At this point in the season, we seem to have more success with 3rd and 15+ than we do with 3rd and 4 or less, which is deeply troubling; we do better when we simply have to run some sort of creative play.

Defense:

While I think that we have some talent problems on defense, I think that often our players are simply not put in a position to win. How many times have we seen a guy WIDE open deep this year? Not “I just faked the CB out of his jock in man coverage” open, but “the offensive coordinator figured out how to beat this coverage scheme earlier this week” open. Its one thing when our LBs and DBs get beat by a step or two or a great throw, its quite another when there is simply nobody there.

Halftime adjustments anyone? Have we made a defensive adjustment all year? We simply keep “doing what we were doing” until the end of the game, giving opposing offenses a blank canvas to come roaring back in the second half of games. Remember the CMU “lets just throw this 5 yard pass until they stop us once” play? We didn’t figure out how to stop it during halftime, did we?

Sending more guys is not the end-all of putting pressure on the other QB. Do we ever do anything more interesting with our blitz/rush package than simply “blitz the LBs” or “blitz the CB”? Often teams can simply make an adjustment and burn you on this. See: the last play of the Iowa game