Previously: Offense

Resources: My charting, MSU game notes, MSU roster, CFBstats, Last year

Look bold, I know we normally do this thing on MSU week but,

I have questions.

And we'll get to them. But things have changed. New coach. New defense. Nine new starters.

They lost to Rutgers.

Can it wait till the overview? There's a lot to go over.

I will wait.

Good, because there's some context. Rutgers got 21 points on drives that began at the MSU 26 or closer. Take away those and MSU wins 27-17.

Take away three touchdown drives and a lot of teams lose.

Shhh, you're waiting. Things aren't good. Two plays into watching this game live I said "Oh my God, I don't think Michigan State is as talented as Rutgers." Having broken down all the plays, that take might have been saved for the Fuegobox segment.

Personnel: My diagram:

PDF Version, full-size version (or click on the image)

Reminder that I've changed some things on the graphic: colored in means a solidified depth chart with this guy #1, and a name in bold means he's played enough that I consider him a veteran.

[After THE JUMP: New starters, same front, different era, lost 38-27 to Rutgers]

State still plays mostly even fronts, which put more on the DTs and ILBs so that both ends can be mostly pass rush/edge setter types. I was pleasantly surprised to see SDE #96 Jacub Panasiuk (+6/-8 in my run charting) is still as easy to push around as he is quick to start a pushing fight after the whistle, especially after I stopped getting him confused with the other end every time WDE #86 Drew Beesley (+11/-4) made a good play. I wasn't pleased to see their defensive tackle situation is still looking good (caveat: Rutgers has a terrible OL). NT #93 Naquan Jones (+10/-5) has hulked up, DT #64 Jacob Slade (+5.5/-3) is legit up to 310 and hard to budge, and they have two solid backups in planetary NT #94 Dashaun Mallory (+4/-0) and long/strong DT #89 Jalen Hunt (+4/-2), the onetime Iowa commit who got emphatically denied by Iowa admissions then turned his grades around in record time to attend his dream school. The DE backups don't get in as often; WDE #91 Jack Camper and SDE #5 Michael Fletcher are functional, though Fletcher is still really skinny.

I was also surprised which MLB I would like best. WILL LB #34 Antjuan Simmons (+12/-9, +1/-3 in coverage) had a very Mouton day against Rutgers star RB Isaih "Spellcheco" Pacheco, but where Mouton was huge, talented and confused, Simmons is smallish, fairly quick, makes great plays because he makes the right read and gets past blockers, and gives up big plays because he doesn't have the athleticism to do the things Mel Tucker used to do with Roquan Smith. The new MIKE #45 Noah Harvey (+7/-5, +1/-2 cov) does the occasional Bullough thing, and got all the hype of a next-Bullough, but Harvey doesn't have instincts that made Bachie and the Bulloughs so effective. Tucker will bring in SAM #21 Chase Kline (+0/-1) for goal line situations only.

The most rotation was at the nickel position, which traded off between the cornerback convert Nk #29 Shakur Brown (+3/-1, +4/-3 cov) and the safety convert Nk #10 Michael Dowell (+1/-2, +1/-1 cov). As you might imagine Brown is better in coverage and Dowell is better at Viper-like jobs, but they rotated by drive not personnel. Both may have been bailed out in coverage a few times by the DL:

Yes, Millen, he had the slot fade. I didn't chart things like this because who knows maybe Brown has another gear and was baiting this a la Jourdan Lewis.

I did finally see a good game out of SS #3 Xavier Henderson (+6/-1, +1/-3 cov), at least in shutting down the Rutgers run game. He's a guy who over his career's gotten a lot of program hype while they ignore his routine coverage busts like…well we don't need a simile here do we?. The move to Cover 1 allows him to play in the box and emphasize his skills. He's technically the boundary safety while the nickel plays the field, but he's more of a viper than either nickel. Back deep for them is longtime rotational DB, the FS #24 Tre Person (+5/-6, +3/-3 cov). And I mean deep. Nope, keep going. Further back Tre. Like you're collecting a punt, Tre. I gave him pluses for some good edge plays when things got strung out, but Person spends most of the game in the spot my Little League coach put me.

That left the corners alone underneath. CB #18 Kalon Gervin (+1/-1.5, +3/-4 cov) is annoyingly good at press coverage for a smallish 4* from Cass Tech, though he gets lost sometimes when they go to their unpracticed Cover 3 zone. CB #12 Chris Jackson (+2/-3, +0/-4 cov) is the same age but looked dodgy and new starter-ish. He rotated with CB #14 Davion Williams (+0.5/-0, +0/-2 cov), a third redshirt sophomore who didn't seem quite ready. Oddly we saw none of top-50 sophomore CB #2 Julian Barnett, who played only a few snaps on special teams after his conversion from a year at wide receiver. I guess that conversion's taking longer than they realized? I wonder how he feels about it (transfer dammit!).

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What Shall We Call the Hybrid Today? Nickelback. You suck MSU.

Base Set: 4-2-5 one-high almost all day.

Why yes it is weird. I don't even have to put personnel on the personnel chart this week because they were literally in a Nickel 100% of the time unless it was goal line situation.

2020 MSU-Rutgers	Line Shift					Safeties			Rushers
Situation	Even	Over	Under	Eagle		1-high	2-high		3	4	5	6+
Normal Downs (40)	58%	30%	8%	5%		98%	2%		-	65%	28%	8%
Passing Downs (27)	44%	11%	22%	22%		85%	15%		-	48%	44%	7%
Total (67)	35	15	9	8		62	5		-	39	23	5

The even front is a carryover from Dantonio. Both DTs align in 3-tech (guard's outside shoulder) positions, then one or both will usually dive into an A gap. State does not like to spill; the defense is very much trained to set an edge and force everything back into the meat grinder inside.

This presents opportunities to run into the safety's gap, opportunities that Rutgers largely missed by misidentifying whom to block. If #54 gets anything on Xavier Henderson here it's a touchdown.

There was a cat and mouse game going on in this one as Schiano used tight ends on both sides and widened their splits, since the DEs align outside of that, in order to get those ends further from the box. It worked in that it gave his quarterback a little more time to throw, but didn't create much more running room because both DEs can close the space faster than Rutgers TEs can settle. This got to the point where the tight end was flexing out almost to the slot receiver, drawing down the free safety to set an edge, a thing Tre Person did very well:

#24, third guy up from the 45 yard

The wide splits in the line also become blitzing lanes. They baited those some. This one had the MIKE blitz between the tackles while Antjuan Simmons play the guard.

Rutgers ran right at that with a pin & pull and might have had something if they weren't so Rutgers.

Man or zone coverage: Mostly man coverage. When they went zone it was mostly Cover 3, which is kind of what you have to do if you're starting each play with your safety 20 yards deep. They're not yet very good at Cover 3 even though it was a regular piece of Dantonio's defenses, mostly because the linebackers activate so hard on run action and get caught peeking inside.

Pressure: GERG or DR BLITZ: Um, average. The cornerback blitzes are off the table because of the 4-4-1 setup, but they like to bring six out of an Eagle-like wide formation on passing downs, or at least threaten it then back out the LBs. They still blitz, and double-A gap blitz, quite often on standard downs, just not at the crazy rate they used to. They're not far off from Don Brown.

Dangerman: Don Brown has enough good linebackers that he doesn't have to lament losing an Ann Arbor native to the school up the way, but WLB Antjuan Simmons looked like a Player even on a bad day. He's got that rabid squirrel quality...

And seems hyper-aware of Pin & Pulls for some reason.

#34 the LB running down the 1st and 10

I said it was a bad day but his negatives might have been a little fluky, like he forgot to check a running back wheel during clock kill hour (Rutgers didn't throw it anyway), or the time he got juked out of his jockstrap by Noah Vedral.

Who among us hasn't been pantsed by a Rutgers quarterback, honestly?

The other terror is the other annoying four-star they got at a Michigan position of need, nose tackle Naquan Jones, who is 340 pounds and comes at you like a rhinoceros. Rutgers caveats apply here more than usual because their offensive line was pretty bad last year, but that has nothing to do with Jones's get-off:

What finally did it for me was when I was so excited to minus him for the first time since a couple of hilarious mistimed snap counts early in the game and then he tossed the guy aside and made a play in space.

OVERVIEW:

I will now take your questions.

So they lost to Rutgers.

Man, I just want to say I can't believe we're already having our MSU defense talk; the season's just flying by.

Rutgers hadn't won a Big Ten game since 2017.

You saw the offense FFFF.

They gave up 38 points to Rutgers.

There were 7 turnovers. They only gave up 276 yards.

Because of short fields. Which Rutgers covered.

Should we go over the drives?

Oh do let's.

• Three scoring drives of 50+ yards, including the scripted 75-yard opening TD drive, another drive when Pacheco (Pacheko?) got loose in the secondary, and a field goal drive that was mostly a chunk on play-action.
• Three short TD drives set up by turnovers, one that got -1 yards before the the 24-yard TD where Simmons slipped, a drive that started on the MSU 1 and need four plays to get into the endzone, and a late 26-yard drive when MSU was expecting run and Rutgers passed.
• Four three-and-outs, a five-and-out, a six-and-out, a pick-six, and a fumble.

This wasn't a Michigan versus Minnesota romp. Rutgers gained less than a third of the yards available, and averaged < 20 yards on drives that didn't start in the MSU red zone. Nothing was sustainable. Rutgers remained very much Rutgers.

So they did get burned but it wasn't like, "We're not as talented as Rutgers" burned?

Well I didn't say that.

Actually what you said, like two plays into this game, is "Oh my God, I don't think Michigan State is as talented as Rutgers."

Uh, yeah. But we know Isiah Paccecksho (Paschekkoh?) is legit--like he might be the best back in a conference filled with great backs.

Michigan State isn't as talented as Isiah Palchekcsho (yes I know it's Pachelshbo).

There's no shame in that.

They're not even press quarters anymore.

Mel Tucker was coordinating top-ten defenses at Georgia and they retained most of Dantonio's staff, and nobody can be press quarters anymore because you'll get your safeties ripped to shreds with RPOs. They're still MSU up front.

So Michigan should worry about a Kafkaesque nightmare where they can never be rid of MSU's hulked up walk-ons and bugbears up front because the old ones pass the muscle milk on to the new ones?

I don't know if you can count the defensive line's good day considering the competition, but it's plausible that their DT rotation is just very good. There were a lot of snaps when they looked like the MSU of old:

It's still very weird to see State in a 4-2-5 with a safety in the parking lot every down.

Can they at least still rip your heart out with some bulging middle linebacker who, for one reason or the same reason, mysteriously winds up missing in action whenever there's a PED test?

Hey now. Noah Harvey isn't a Bullough, and even if he was, that kind of player is less functional if you need him to do more than stand around interior gaps waiting for a lineman to release on him. Cover 1 linebackers are becoming Devin Bush these days.

So he's not a thicc run blugger?

Actually he is; he isn't a Bullough because he isn't good at it. Harvey plays very heavy against the run, making them susceptible to play-action. And he had some huge gaffes at the worst time.

So the middle linebacker is the reason

The secondary isn't quite up to par. There were big plays to be had against the secondary for a quarterback with any kind of protection.,

Do they still commit a lot of PI?

Does the Big Ten lead in the weight room and the community?

Do they still Double-A Gap Blitz?

Yeah, that's part of their even front scheme. You've got this big gap between the DTs just begging for a center to get left alone with two middle linebackers taking the shortest path to the quarterback.

I should also note that Rutgers was prepared for it, mostly picked it up, and that this exposed the secondary to quick underneath throws.

Can I see Panasiuk blown up? I hate that guy.

Well it's Rutgers, so he had some good plays. Many times while watching this game however I would see a DE do a very good thing, ask "Oh now is Panasiuk good?" and then be relieved to discover it was #86 Drew Beesley, not #96. I may have gotten the scoring wrong in other places. Beesley is the DE up top on this one and I think I gave the points to Panasiuk originally.

When I caught a DE getting wrecked by a tight end, it was Panasiuk.

Jalen Mayfield should have another fun day.