First of all, that was a great football game. It went back and forth. I’m very proud of our football team coming back, continuing to play extremely hard. We came down here focused and played with a lot of energy. I don’t want any of our players to hang their heads. – Mark Dantonio
A good friend of mine is a Central Michigan grad and a classic subway alum of Notre Dame, having inherited his allegiance to the Irish from his dad, who grew up in Chicago in an era when damn near everybody in Chicago was Notre Dame fan.
On Wednesday he asked me what I thought the Spartans’ chances were given their disappointing performance last week against the Chips, and I told him that I thought that this might be the year that the Irish finally end Michigan State’s recent domination of the series at Notre Dame Stadium. “But you never know,” I added. “Worse Michigan State teams have beaten better Notre Dame teams.”
With recent MSU v. ND history in mind, picking either team to win in a blowout never makes much sense. Yesterday was just another in a series of nailbiters: eight of the last ten games between these two programs has been decided by seven points or less. Home field advantage has been negligible, with the home team winning the last two games and the road team winning the previous seven. And there have been tremendous moments for both schools, from Smoker-to-Haygood for MSU in 2000 to Kyle McCarthy’s game-saving interception for ND with less than a minute to play yesterday; from Jason Teague’s game-winning touchdown for MSU in 2005 to the unbelievable fourth quarter Irish comeback led by Brady Quinn in a downpour in East Lansing in 2006.
The Notre Dame game is the game that I look forward to most each season, and while the result yesterday was disappointing, the continued quality of the series was not. I can’t wait for the rematch at Spartan Stadium next season.
A quarterback is judged by wins and losses and how he plays at crunch time. And right now I’m 1-2 as a starter and I made a critical error at crunch time. — Kirk Cousins, via Joe Rexrode
That’s pretty good self awareness from a kid who played his butt off yesterday, but fell short with an opportunity to be a hero. The good news is that he seems like the kind of player who will learn from mistakes like these. He’s only a sophomore; he’s got time to grow, and he’s still in possession of a career completion percentage above 70. And, for what it’s worth, as Rexrode points out in the piece linked above, Cousins manned up and handled himself well with the media after the game. Only time will tell if he has the talent to lead the MSU program to glory, but it certainly seems as if he has the backbone.
That said, the thing that has driven me nuts through the years as a Spartan fan are the squandered opportunities. Sometimes the opportunity is a single game, such as the 2004 loss to Michigan, and sometimes the opportunity is something much bigger, such as the back-to-back losses to Purdue and Wisconsin in 1999 which prevented a very good season from being truly great.
Sometimes a missed opportunity is just one play. One game-changing play. And sometimes, like yesterday, there are a bunch: a missed extra point; a missed tackle; a dropped interception; an overthrown receiver, wide open in end zone. Individual plays, any of which could have swung the final outcome in the opposite direction, adding up over the course of sixty minutes of football, finally too much to overcome.
“There were positives to take out of this. We moved the ball better than last week. We showed we can play with a lot of teams.” — Mark Dell, via the LSJ
Dell is right — there were definitely positives in this game, not the least of which was the way that the team answered the bell following last week’s stunning loss to CMU. Not only did they answer the bell, they kept coming after Notre Dame, fighting, right up until McCarthy’s back-breaking interception.
The MSU offense is clearly more productive through the air than on the ground this season, and the receiving corps took a big step forward yesterday. Blair White continued to be a dependable target, grabbing six passes for 75 yards and two touchdowns. Dell was a welcome addition in his first game action of the season, catching six passes for 121 yards after sitting out the Montana State and CMU games with an injured shoulder. And B.J. Cunningham nabbed seven balls for 74 yards, including a beautiful grab on a tipped pass to keep the final MSU drive alive.
Tight ends Brian Linthicum and Charlie Gantt were solid once again. Linthicum had three catches for 34 yards on the day, including two catches for first-downs on the Spartans’ final drive. Gantt caught two balls for 34 yards. I still think that the TE group is going to be a huge asset for this team, and I hope to see them become an even bigger part of the offensive game plan going forward.
As I said last week, I’m of the opinion that we, irrefutably and unquestionably, have found a quarterback in Kirk Cousins. And not just a “starting” quarterback who shares snaps with Keith Nichol in a two-QB system. A quarterback. Period, end of story. Let’s hope that the coaching staff sees it the same way next weekend in Madison, because the two-quarterback system is not working. Is. Not. Working.
Larry Caper continued to emerge at tailback against the Irish, gaining 51 yards on 12 carries and showing a nose for the end zone with two touchdown runs. Regardless of what the depth chart might say, he’s Michigan State’s best running back at the moment. Edwin Baker sat out once again, and you have to assume that questions regarding the possibility of a redshirt will be raised this week.
Defensively, plenty of questions remain. Yesterday was not Chris L. Rucker’s best day, from the dropped interception to the dubious block in the back on a punt return to at least one missed tackle on which Golden Tate simply made him look silly. But keep in mind, all throughout camp we kept hearing Pat Narduzzi talk about how talented and deep this secondary is. Well, for the second week in a row, the secondary got torched. And for the second week in a row, Narduzzi stubbornly stayed in his base 4-3 in obvious passing situations.
A coach’s job is to put his players in the best position possible to be effective. Narduzzi claims he has good players. You do the math. I’m certainly not calling for Narduzzi’s job, and it wouldn’t matter one iota if I did; I’m just sayin’, I’d like to see some adjustments beyond moving Greg Jones all over the field and hoping that he can carry the defense.
Nickel package, Pat. Give it some thought. Please.
“I continue to say this over and over. This is a game of inches here. We made some plays, but we also left plays on the field. We can’t do that against a good football team.” — Mark Dantonio
Michigan State played a pretty good football game yesterday. Unfortunately, when you’re thin at key positions and youthful at others, and when your talent level is more blue collar than blue blood, the margin of error is such that pretty good football isn’t always enough to win. The Irish have four or five guys amongst their starting offense and defense who will eventually be first or second round NFL draft picks. The Spartans don’t have the luxury of that kind of talent. So when the opposing quarterback hits you right between the numbers, you’ve got to catch the football. When you’ve got the opposing defense on the ropes and your tailback slips into the corner of the end zone uncovered, you’ve got to make that throw. When you line up for an extra point, you can’t give that point away, because these games can be won and lost by the narrowest of margins.
Inches make plays, plays make drives, drives make games and games make seasons.
This season isn’t lost — at least not yet. Here’s hoping the Spartans are able to get back on track, one inch at a time, against Wisconsin next weekend.
The Badgers are going to be looking for revenge after losing a heartbreaker on a Brett Swenson field goal in the closing moments of the game last season in Spartan Stadium; the Spartans are going to be feeling the weight of a slow start on the heels of lofty preseason expectations.
2008 was great, but it’s over. It’s time for the ‘09 Spartans to define themselves, for better or worse. The next two weeks will tell the tale of the season.
Must win? Damn right.