Previously: Michigan State Offense 

Yesterday we covered the MSU offense and its ongoing QB fiascos. Today we pivot to the defensive side of the ball and take a look at a unit that was eviscerated by Washington but has since leveled out to a description of possibly being "okay"? Let's take a look: 

 

The Film: Though I imagine many would want me to do the Washington game, given that they are the most comparable opponent to Michigan in terms of opponent quality, I felt that it was not a proper evaluation for MSU considering the scope of the season. The Spartans have not had any other defensive performances in that ballpark and considering the chaos leading up to that game (it was the week Mel Tucker was removed from his post), it is probably best to put that aside and look at the rest of the body of work to get a better feel. The second-best offense MSU has played is Maryland, clearly better than either Rutgers or Iowa, so that is the game that I opted to go with. A team with a functional QB and okay passing game, even if they're not world beaters. 

Personnel: Click for big. 

Michigan State's defensive line was a relative strength of their team last season, particularly at the defensive tackle position. Simeon Barrow is the headliner at this position in my view, a player with a good bit of get-off and the most dangerous organic pass-rusher on the entire line (not saying much but). He's the Dangerman for this piece but I do think he's still a weaker star, relatively speaking, and probably a cut below what Jacob Slade was when healthy in 2021. The other DTs are okay, with Derrick Harmon getting the start next to Barrow. I think he ought to be move-able by Michigan's vaunted IOL, but has made enough plays in what I've seen of him to avoid the cyan. The same could be said for the third DT, Maverick Hansen. 

While the DT spot is a three-man rotation, EDGE is a much more wide open equation. Zion Young is close to an every-down starter at one EDGE spot, a true sophomore who was pressed into duty far too soon last season and was a major sore spot. This season I'm starting to see some flashes, but Young is not yet an impact piece. Opposite him there are a number of players who have rotated in, starting with Brandon Wright, a 5th year EDGE who was the nominal starter last season. I didn't think much of Wright then and I didn't think much of him in his 19 snaps in the game I charted either. He's been rotating with hyped Texas A&M Tunmise Adeleye who has been injured and underwhelmed when healthy, committing several costly penalties against Maryland to earn the cyan. Avery Dunn and one-time Florida transfer Khris Bogle are still around too as "meh" players, though Dunn did not play against Rutgers last week. 

At linebacker, Michigan State still has ole Cal Haladay, still not wearing gloves and as Brian loves to say, still not covering anyone. Haladay is their most used LB and he is what he is, reduced from that promising 2021 campaign but not a total bum. Next to him is either true freshman Jordan Hall or one-time Miss State transfer Aaron Brule. Hall was a prized recruit, inside the top 250, and his talent level got him on the field right away, especially after the injury to Jacoby Windmon. Hall has had the lumps that come with being a true freshman LB but didn't stand out to me as particularly egregious and PFF is a fan. Brule is a bit of a versatile piece, capable of being more of a HSP in a 4-3 alignment next to Hall and Haladay, or he can play ILB when they take Hall off the field. On a very blitzy defense, all three of these players play significant roles in rushing the passer. 

Problems in coverage defined each of the past two seasons for the Michigan State defense and so far it's been hard to tell, due to few opponents having a functional passing attack. That said, I wasn't aghast at the showing of the secondary against Maryland. There's quite a bit of stability at corner, Chance Rucker and Dillon Tatum forming a very young outside corner tandem, Rucker being a true freshman and Tatum a true sophomore. Tatum's move to corner is a bit surprising for a player who was considered more of a safety coming out of West Bloomfield, but he's hanging in there. I thought Tatum was better than Rucker against Maryland, for what it's worth.

The nickel when they go 4-2-5 and take Brule off the field is ex-safety Angelo Grose, who was woeful last season. At a new position, Grose has surprisingly been okay. The true safeties are both different from last season with Grose at a new position and Xavier Henderson having moved on. A pair of true sophomores, Jaden Mangham and Malik Spencer, have joined the starting lineup. Spencer has seemed iffy in coverage but looked very good in the game I charted at coming down to help stuff the run, with sure-tackling. As for Mangham, he's the deep safety and didn't have many chartable plays against the Terps so I don't have a ton to say. PFF thinks he's not great. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Meh]

Base set: MSU mostly flashed two looks in this game. Given how much Michigan plays out of 12 and 13 personnel, I assume we'll see mostly base 4-3 with Brule out there: 

But the 4-2-5 with Grose at the nickel is present too: 

Every so often they go 3-3-5 but it wasn't often enough against Maryland to delve into, especially when Michigan's personnel packages probably won't lead to MSU dialing that up. 

Pressure: If you liked Tom Allen's blitziness last week, then you'll enjoy Michigan State ramping it up this week. The Spartans clock in having rushed more than four players on 34% of snaps against Maryland, which compares to 26% last week. I think that Tom Allen is a better disguiser of blitzes than Scotty Hazelton and more creative in what he dials up, but MSU certainly doesn't like to sit back. They only rushed three players on 2% of snaps, completely negligible. Expect them to bring the heat on JJ McCarthy tomorrow night. 

Man or zone coverage: MSU is mostly a base zone team, although you do get opportunities to target man coverage depending on the blitz they throw at you. Hazelton has typically ran pattern matching Cover 3 during his time at MSU, but this game alternated between one and two high looks in zone coverage, still more towards Cov3 but somewhat varied. As I mentioned, man/Cov1 does appear from time to time as well but zone is the best description for the Spartan defense. 

Dangerman: For this year's Dangerman we're tabbing DT Simeon Barrow, the third consecutive season that a DT has gotten the title for MSU. The previous two years it was the fearsome Jacob Slade, now it is Barrow's turn to shine. He's not the game-wrecking player that Slade was, but had a bit more flash than any other player on this largely unmemorable defense. There wasn't a ton of organic pass rush against Maryland from MSU but when they got it, it was typically from Barrow involved: 

NT #8 lined up over the center

Watch him throw the guard down on this one: 

DT #8 second from the top of the DL 

My favorite part of Barrow's game is his get-off, even when it doesn't necessarily affect the play, you can see him penetrating into the backfield: 

The final tendency I liked from Barrow was his ability to detach from the interior of the line and track a play down to the perimeter: 

Overall, I would not describe Barrow as a game-changer, but he's a player I liked last season and personally feel was the best player on this defense, earning him this designation.  

 

Overview 

Through six games, it's rather difficult to get a feel for Michigan State's defense. They played a low level FBS team, an FCS team, a superpower during the week their coach got fired, and then three B1G opponents, only one of which has anything remotely resembling a good offense. SP+ rates this defense as the 26th best in the FBS, which feels decently lofty at this point in time and perhaps the result of a hole in the model that is overrating all B1G defenses, especially those who haven't yet faced Michigan or Ohio State. Still, in charting the Spartans against Maryland, which I do think has an at least okay offense, I didn't get the sense that they should be blown off the field regularly. 

To this point, MSU's defense is perhaps the most "meh" I've felt about a unit I've charted all season and Pro Football Focus feels the same. Of the top nine most-used defensive players by snaps (nine of the eleven starters, you may frame it as), none have a grade below 59.6 and none have a grade higher than 69.3. For those unfamiliar, that is the range on PFF's grading scale corresponding to "okay" or "meh" or "blah". Mediocrity, averageness, use any descriptor you like. As you may have noticed on our diagram, only one star and one cyan was handed out. Pretty much everyone on this MSU defense had some moments where I thought "hey, that's a nice play" and moments where I noted "Michigan can abuse that". 

In that way, it may be a defense suited to get gobbled up by the few good offenses on MSU's schedule and do alright against all the bad offenses. Alright they have done, on track to beat Rutgers before special teams and offensive ineptitude threw the game away and broke the spirit of the defense. A similar story was true against Iowa's decrepit offense, with special teams and MSU's turnover brigade offense again sinking the defense with progressively worse and worse field position. Those performances have built up MSU's SP+ ranking but as I looked over the defense, I found very little that MICHIGAN should be afraid of, or anything that should slow down Michigan's mighty offense. These players are all mostly decent, but who here is playing in the NFL one day? No one? Maybe one of the young DBs or LBs many years later in their development? 

With all that said, let's graze through the individual pieces making up this defense and general things I saw at each level. On the defensive line, I already mentioned Simeon Barrow. The other DTs, Derrick Harmon and Maverick Hansen seemed okay. Maryland did alright on the ground, rushing for just over 4 YPC, not really paving the Spartans but not getting stopped a ton either. Harmon and Hansen had their moments getting stops but they got moved too: 

Harmon was a player I liked a lot last year but he came in a bit below expectations for me. Compared to past impenetrable MSU defensive fronts, this one is on the lower end. The defensive ends made generally no imprint in my mind, with organic pass rush being close to nonexistent unless the defensive interior was generating it. Zion Young showed me some flashes as a run defender but I saw very little from him as a passrusher. His one moment was being completely unblocked and yet he whiffed on the sack. Oh well. While we're on the topic of the run game, I do think giving JJ a few run reads should have success: 

Young and the other EDGEs bit hard when Taulia Tagovailoa pulled the ball and Maryland was able to get some steady gains on the ground through that. I did cyan EDGE Tunmise Adeleye, but penalties played a substantial role in that, jumping offsides and committing a personal foul as well. Avery Dunn was notable for lining up inside in pass rush packages but again, not much of anything organic got home. While Young's best snap was being unblocked, Dunn's was while matched up on an RB. Says a lot. 

To get pressure, MSU has to blitz and that may be why they do it so much. Here's one such blitz, the one where Dunn was on an RB: 

That's LB Cal Haladay blitzing there. The LBs are (as you'd expect) the most frequent blitzers, but corner blitzes did appear as well: 

It's CB Dillon Tatum on that play, but Chance Rucker blitzed some too. Going into the 3-3-5 packages and then dropping some while rushing others, with corner blitzes mixed in play a role as well: 

There is some degree of deception and MSU is perfectly willing to ramp it up to six rushers on some plays if they so choose. I still think it's less tricky than Indiana's concepts, but the Spartans are certainly aggressive in trying to force pressure. At the linebacker level, Haladay still has his moments as a blitzer and a nose for run defense, but is limited in other areas. Jordan Hall is in a solid spot for being a true freshman LB, but has the vulnerabilities that come with that reality. A vulnerability that does come with being blitzy is if you are playing 4-2-5 and one LB run blitzes, it puts a lot on the plate of the other LB if the first wave of defense doesn't make the stop: 

That's Nk Angelo Grose with the terrible tackle attempt on that play. 

In pass defense, the corners continue to cede quite a bit of ground in their zones, allowing chunk completions that remind me of the days when MSU stapled all their corners 10 yards downfield: 

Dillon Tatum is the one in coverage there, but I do have one coverage highlight of his: 

For a guy undergoing a positional change, I think MSU has to be encouraged with where he's at. The same could be said for Chance Rucker, who I think is behind Tatum right now but is showing some signs: 

Of course, there are also plays like this: 

Both outside corners are not good enough yet to shut down Michigan's passing offense and the Wolverines should be perfectly capable of picking on them through the still-soft zones and general inexperience, but as underclassmen corners in their first years as starters, I think it isn't too bad. After years of cycling at corner through SEC washouts who uniformly suck, the Spartans seem to have a couple young corners who they could grow into being good players down the line... if the new coach can keep them around in the age of the portal. 

I don't have too many notes at safety or nickel, but I do want to shout out SS Malik Spencer's ability to roll down and play the run: 

S #43 making the stop

Jaden Mangham plays deep so much that he won't pop up on many plays and Maryland didn't take a ton of deep shots to speak of. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan?

The overall tenor of this MSU defense is that it is not so bad that it gets mowed down by the largely garbage B1G offenses on the schedule, but it is also not so good that I expect it to put up much resistance to the Michigan offense. At nearly every level of this defense, there are players who make plays sometimes and get whipped other times. Not bad enough to be cyan'd and not good enough to be starred. For example, the DTs are mostly solid... but I think Michigan should be able to shove them around enough to have a good run game. The corners have shown some mettle in coverage, but they're a long way off from being ready to stop this Michigan passing attack. It's just that way with this group, one ready to compete against a Rutgers or Minnesota offense, but almost certainly not against Michigan's.