Michigan State Spartans Football Five Factors: Rolled

Sigh (big box score):

[As always, data is sack-adjusted. I removed Alabama's drives to end the first and second halves, since they were one running play each. More information on the Five Factors and football analytics here.]

I'm not going to spend as much time discussing these stats, because there's not much to see here. My biggest takeaway is actually that the elements I thought would be reasonably promising for MSU, such as rushing defense and turnover luck, were worse than I expected. The sacks and meaningless end-of-half rushes made Alabama's rushing offense look worse on first glance than they actually were.

Similarly, I thought Alabama got more breaks in terms of turnover luck than they ended up getting. Alabama was fortunate to not lose two fumbles; so was MSU. Alabama ended up with a little turnover luck but that's basically as close to dead-even as you can get.

Also it would be nearly impossible for MSU to have been any worse in the finishing drives department. That was an area I thought MSU could win and needed to have an advantage in order to win the game. Welp.

Though Heck was talking about a different game, I believe this is still appropriate:

#DestroyTheTape

— Heck Dorland (@thecoverfour) December 30, 2015

But also destroy the stats, too. Destroy everything, and wait for the sweet, sweet release of playing Furman on September 3rd.

Or the Spring game on April 23rd, if you count that as football.