You are now free to go ahead and totally freak out
by KJ@theonlycolors on Sep 26, 2009 2:56 PM CDT
in Michigan State Spartans Football
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You know...
…I think I’m already past freak out. Something about losing to ND and thinking “we can still right the ship” and losing to Wisconsin and thinking “we’re 1-3, shouldn’t I have freaked out a while ago?” Doesn’t matter, all hands on deck to beat Michigan.
by Spartan-Football on Sep 26, 2009 3:02 PM CDT reply actions
You can quibble about all kinds of things, QB rotation, pass rush, run blocking, but the glaring no. 1 thing wrong with this team is the play in the secondary. It is remarkable how bad it is.
Co-sign
Cheer for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Sep 26, 2009 3:17 PM CDT up reply actions
It's almost breathtaking
There’s literally not one aspect of the game that the MSU secondary competently executes. They don’t have a single guy who can cover one-on-one and are repeatedly burned by the big play. Yet they can’t play zone either, as the last three games all showed. This may be because nobody can close on the ball. They give a seven yard cushion and can’t even make that up to hit anyone as the ball arrives. The safeties are consistently too late, seeming mired in indecision before opting much too late to try and pick up the guy breaking wide open on the post route. None of them tackles particularly well, either. They don’t force turnovers. They are ineffective on the blitz. This could get real ugly. BTW, I don’t remember seeing Johnny Adams. I thought he was supposed to be active today, not that it would have made any appreciable difference. He certainly couldn’t have made it any worse.
Even when we were playing converted former WRs and RBs back there during the BW / JLS eras they weren’t this bad. Not even close to this bad.
This is going to be a long year
"It's a trap!"
by AdmiralAkbar on Sep 26, 2009 4:01 PM CDT up reply actions
The hilariously sad part is
wasn’t the secondary supposed to be this team’s strength?
I’m confused. And saddened. Mostly confused, though.
The MSUFR...
…or so it is if and until it gets a better name. Really need to see this one. I’m not sure how Wisconsin’s TE and on several times the WR got behind the secondary on so many occasions. Especially in the red zone.
What’s so different from the scheme of the last 2 years? Narduzzi looks horrible now, but that wasn’t the sentiment after bowl games against Matt Ryan and Matt Stafford. What’s so different? Secondary is pretty much the same minus Wiley, so is it really the lack of pass rush?
DEAR FELLOW MICHIGAN STATE FANS:
"Do not cheat your team or your teammates. Know your plays. Block. Protect. Add to what we are trying to do."
The Only Colors
Once again, Nichol makes an appearance immediately after Cousins leads the team on a TD drive. The results: 44 yards on the next three drives and a 21-7 deficit (cut to 21-10 on the fourth drive by a Wisconsin fumble which we couldn’t cash in from inside the 30 yard line).
Memo to Dantonio: Do you recall Einstein’s definition of insanity? For the past three weeks, every time Nichol has entered the game (aside from garbage time), the offense has sputtered and taken several series to recover (and in case you haven’t noticed, with our secondary needing asbestos jerseys we can’t exactly afford to throw any possessions away on offense if we’re going to keep up). It didn’t work against CMU. It didn’t work against Notre Dame. WHY THE @#$% DID YOU EXPECT IT TO WORK AGAINST WISCONSIN?!?!?!?!
I know it apparently looked in practice like we have two legitimate starting QBs. But the game evidence is overwhelming at this point. The rotation is not working. There is no reason to believe that it will not continue to fail miserably. If Nichol sees the field next weekend for reasons other than “it’s garbage time” or “Cousins got taken off on a stretcher”, then our coaching staff is insane.
I've got faith in Dantonio to figure this out.
It’s a shame that he hasn’t done so sooner, but I’ve more or less accepted the fact that a lot of things that are obvious to me aren’t so obvious to coaches in college and the professional level (I coach high school football). It’s easier to analyze from the outside, but at the same time, a lot of what has happened with the Eagles and Spartans in the past are stupid mistakes.
Nevertheless, Dantonio has earned my trust. I still think 8-4 or 7-5 is plausible, but this defense is just atrocious.
At what point will you abandon your hope of an 8 win season? I suppose soon it will be mathematically impossible anyway, but that isn’t really the primary point I’m trying to make.
"It's a trap!"
by AdmiralAkbar on Sep 27, 2009 4:33 PM CDT up reply actions
I wish I could share your faith.
But it was clear that Cousins was outplaying Nichol during the CMU game, and switching it up wasn’t having the desired effect of making life difficult for the D, it was just taking us out of a rhythm. I can understand writing it off once as “he had a bad day, stuff happens; maybe it’ll work next time”. But the same exact thing occurred against Notre Dame. With that kind of evidence, and two games that could have been swung either way by simply getting a FG out of one of those useless drives, why on earth would you do it a third time, throw away four more possessions, and dig your team a three-score hole?
I don’t blame the coaches (much) for the secondary. But by this point they know they’re working with a less-than-competent secondary. They know that it’s going to take a lot of points for our offense to keep up. They should know that they have to squeeze every last point out of the offense in order to win games. And yet they continue to throw away possessions by switching QBs. Don’t get me wrong, Nichol is not a terrible QB. But Cousins is doing better, and putting Nichol in has disrupted our offense far more than it has opposing defenses. I don’t care how it looks in practices, we have three games of evidence against real teams (sorry, Montana State) how it works on Saturdays, and the answer is “not well at all”. (Come to think of it, it probably looks fine in practice because they’re playing against our secondary, which appears to be easily disrupted by offenses doing clever things like go routes.)
Its not the Secondary
I still do not believe the problem is the secondary. After I get the Defensive MSUFR up this week I am going to break down the problems we are having.
It is still apparant to me that this is a scheme issue, not a personnel issue.
Congratulations
Your This Week in Schadenfreude winnarrr: SpartanDan!
(Not that I don’t totally agree with everything he said.)
"Do not cheat your team or your teammates. Know your plays. Block. Protect. Add to what we are trying to do."
The Only Colors
Had a feeling that might happen
I was seriously ticked off after the game. The CMU game sucked, but it’s not like CMU’s an awful team nor like I haven’t had to deal with worse losses. And at least the QB controversy appeared to have been settled. And I hated seeing the streak in South Bend end, but it was bound to happen sometime and I expected us to lose at least one game due to a mental error by a QB who hadn’t seen non-garbage playing time prior to this year. But going down three TDs against a team that needed OT to escape Fresno State and had to survive a furious rally by Northern Illinois, partly because of a stubborn insistence on continuing to do what hasn’t worked in the two previous games …
(Also: Can anyone explain why we went for two on the first of the garbage-time TDs? Just on the off chance you manage to miraculously get two more, why wouldn’t you kick the PAT? Unless your plan is “forget OT, if we get a chance we’re going for the win in regulation”, that seems silly. (And in that case you should go for two on the second to make up for missing the first; you need one anyway and you might as well find out whether you need one or two more scores right now.) Yes, success makes it still a potential three-score game even if Wisconsin adds a FG … but if Wisconsin has the ball even for a three-and-out you’re not going to have time to get three scores anyway.)
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