Essentials

WHAT	Michigan State at Michigan	Mel Tucker is a QAnon guy. Fact.
WHERE	Michigan Stadium Ann Arbor, MI
WHEN	12:05 PM ET Saturday, Oct. 31
THE LINE	Michigan –24.5 (Vegas) Michigan -19 (Bill C.)
TELEVISION	FOX PBP: Gus Johnson(!) Analyst: Joel Klatt Reporter: Jenny Taft
TICKETS	not this year
WEATHER	sunny, mid-40s, 0% chance of precip 10 mph wind

Overview

Jim Harbaugh did not question Mark Dantonio's manhood at midfield. He did not run over Dantonio's dog with a tricked-out ATV. He did not rip the beating heart from a beloved family member and eat it in front of a horrified 11,109 at Fort Wayne's Allen County War Memorial Coliseum. In these various ways Jim Harbaugh failed to guarantee that the smarmy, corrupt architect of Michigan State's recent success would reap the whirlwind.

But since he called that What's Your Deal touchdown play while up 37-10 last year, eh, we'll call it even. Also that guy is stalking around an empty stadium fuming at the very things he wrought.

Mark Dantonio taking a stroll around to the Rutgers side of the stadium as the 4th quarter begins and his former team is currently trailing Rutgers 28-20 pic.twitter.com/EZZS7W6CXH

— Justin Rose (@JRoseWXYZ) October 24, 2020

Dantonio hung on just long enough to collect a giant retention bonus, then fled a lawsuit, leaving Michigan State in the lurch. They eventually sweetened the pot enough for Mel Tucker to abandon Colorado after one 5-7 season featuring Laviska Shenault. Then they turned the ball over seven times in a loss to Rutgers.

Now: blood.

[Hit THE JUMP for the remnants]

Run Offense vs Michigan State

End of an era:

That is a Michigan State safety lined up 15 yards deep on first and ten. This is was universal and is more DJ Durkin than Mark Dantonio. As a college football person let me be the first to state that this is Wrong. This is Bill Callahan arriving at Nebraska and discarding the QB run game. If you take over for a program that is renowned for doing a thing and immediately change it you are doomed.

Anyway: this could be more of a slog than you might anticipate. Despite scoring 38 points, Rutgers didn't actually do that much other than wait for MSU to shoot itself in the foot and then take advantage of short fields. They managed 128 yards on 38 carries, just 3.3 yards a pop. MSU held Isiah Pacheco to 3.2; QB Noah Vedral was Rutgers's most effective option.

There's still a fair bit of talent on the MSU defensive line. Naquan Jones is a giant former four-star who's at least vaguely on NFL radars.  Drew Beesley had a good game against Rutgers and looks like he might be a find. PFF graded Jacub Panasuik (yes, the one who keeps trying to injure Michigan players) as the second-best returning pass rush DE in the Power 5. They even have some depth. Seth thought Panasuik was a negative on the ground, on the other hand.

Their linebacker corps features former four-star Antjuan Simmons, who is a  quality player, and they play an eight-man front (or close enough) most of the time by sticking the box safety down low. It would not be a shock for Michigan's ground game to have some initial issues.

Joe Milton's ability to move the ball with his legs could break a deadlock. As we all experienced during the mercifully brief DJ Durkin era, having a safety at 15 yards means a team that can option off a defender, or just go QB run, will be able to eat up a significant amount of ground before the unblocked guy becomes relevant. Also Seth noted the continued, frequent deployment of double-A gap blitzing that Michigan has a good handle on now. Questions about a new OL backsliding in this department were mostly answered when Minnesota's repeated double-A blitzing was picked up. Get one of those right and a chunk beckons.

This will be a real test. It's a test that's not likely to be a game-deciding one, but if Michigan can come close to replicating their output from the Minnesota game that would point to a truly top-end ground game.

KEY MATCHUP:  INTERIOR OL vs NAQUAN JONES AND FRIENDS. Or MAYBE NOT DOING THAT. Michigan's approach in the first game was to hammer the DTs and run right up the gut. Two possible routes this goes: one is that Michigan asks quien es mas macho and we find out. The other is Josh Gattis avoiding the strength of the MSU defense like he did last year and dumping everything to the perimeter.

Pass Offense vs Michigan State

Tre Person (#24, prone) has been a little rough [Bryan Fuller]

Anyway. Rutgers provides very little in the way of data here, particularly about MSU's corners. Rutgers deploys two slot receivers and dumped the ball to Pachecho a bunch. They're barely less limited than MSU when it comes to dropping back and exploring the deeper reaches of the field. Seth had relatively little grading for them:

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.

Neither of those guys is sophomore Julian Barnett, who played WR last year and was limited to special teams snaps. Barnett is probably the best athlete on the team, soooo… yeah. Can't get on the field.

Meanwhile, Tre Person, who you may remember…

…is now the starting deep safety. They put him way back so getting over the top of him is going to be a job, but the flipside of that is the prospect of raining balls in between levels, especially after play action. Double especially after QB play action. Milton was quite good at finding that quick post in the Minnesota game, and that area of the field is going to be even more open with a single high safety.

Michigan is also likely to reprise last year's gameplan, which featured Ronnie Bell obliterating guys en route to a +11.5 UFR blocking score. MSU is playing press so the bubbles are likely to be off the table, but there are other ways to sneak guys into the flat and take advantage of an overall lack of athleticism on the MSU defense.

KEY MATCHUP:  JOE MILTON vs GUYS UNDERNEATH ROUTES ACROSS THE MIDDLE. MSU will be dropping guys into unexpected areas as they try to bait a new QB into turnovers

Run Defense vs Michigan State

Collins has been reduced to a platoon option [Patrick Barron]

This section could probably be "lol" and cover it. Michigan State's 2019 ground game was abominable. MSU failed to crack 100 yards against OSU, Wisconsin, Michigan, Penn State, or (for some reason) Maryland. They barely got over that number against Tulsa, Arizona State, and Northwestern.

Now they're worse. MSU was 12 yards away from suffering a rushing Rutger against Rutgers. Remove sacks and MSU rushed for 74 yards on 35 carries. Barely two yards an attempt. Against Rutgers. This team:

2019 Rutgers rush D, sacks not excised

(A that-was-then note: Michigan is the 141 there. IE, the second-worst rushing output against the Cable Subscribers in 2019.) Without even bothering to remove sacks, MSU's rushing output against Rutgers dropped by more than a third. It does not matter if Michigan's defensive tackles are slightly butt. This is going to be a slaughter.

FWIW, Seth graded MSU's OL. The following blockquote is for sadists only:

Still filling in for the promise of a Dobbs one day is LT #75 AJ Arcuri (+1/-3 –2 pass pro in this game), who never quite hit 300—when you're 300 on the roster you're never 300—and gets pushed around by guys in the 240s. The LG filler is currently #59 Blake Bueter (+1/-10, –1 pass pro) whose 247 composite ranking was "I didn't know they go that high." … RG #56 Matt Carrick (+4.5/-9.5, –3.5 pass pro) and RT #75 Kevin Jarvis (+4/-5.5, –9.5 pass pro) were the guys they tried to run behind most. As the scores suggest, Carrick's pass protection is so bad they sometimes just have him chip; Jarvis is so stiff and slow it often looks like he's not even trying. C #64 Matt Allen (+4/-14, –4 pass pro) probably isn't trying to get his coaches fired, but if he was there wouldn't be much different about his game.

The problems are everywhere. One problem is that Elijah Collins, the lone bright spot on last year's offense, was relegated to a bit player. Connor Heyward, a leaky molasses truck of a back, got the start. Freshman Jordon Simmons led MSU with 14 carries and 43 yards. Collins got 9 carries, on which he got 3(three) yards.

Another problem is that MSU's traditionally effective QB ground game isn't picking up slack it needs to. Rocky Lombardi got four carries and gained 20 yards. This used to be a program that got a 500-yard rushing season out of Brian Lewerke; even Connor Cook was utilized as a critical third down option. Lombardi himself averaged 3.4 yards a carry two years ago, a number that would shoot up significantly if I could accurately remove sacks. (I cannot because Lombardi played in pieces of a bunch of games.) MSU is the sort of team that needs to put a ton on its QB ground game for all the reasons Michigan's offense feels night and day from last year; didn't seem like that was happening in the opener.

This should be a blowout, with the prospect of a Michigan bust the best chance for MSU to do anything.

KEY MATCHUP: MICHIGAN vs ITSELF. Gap integrity is the only thing separating Michigan from a two YPC outing.

Pass Defense vs Michigan State

Lombardi has been recalibrated [Bryan Fuller]

This was not horrible against Rutgers, but as Ace pointed out on the podcast Rocky Lombardi's 7.4 yards per attempt was actually worse than the 8.0 MSU put up last year. On the season the Cable Subscribers allowed opponents to gain 8.1 yards an attempt.

This is still massive improvement from Lombardi, who entered the season with career numbers approximately on par with what you'd get from a manatee in a helmet. He had 175 attempts in 2018 and 2019. He completed 43%(!) of them for 4.6(!!!) yards an attempt with 3 touchdowns and 5 interceptions. Speaking as someone who was all birdman.gif about Michigan State's season, Lombardi having a decent outing where he looked like a P5 quarterback was massively disappointing even in the midst of a loss to Rutgers.

No, he's not good. Yeah, he did this.

But he no longer looked like a sea mammal abandoned inland. I wanted Hunter Johnson 2019.

Lombardi's main target was Jayden Reed, a sit-out transfer from WMU who left after a productive freshman season. He is a downfield slot with good size (6'0"), plus athleticism, and good hands. He also fumbled twice against Rutgers. Jalen Nailor was the only WR with more than one catch. He's a lot like Reed minus some open-field ability. He is legitimately fast and may be able to pop open deep; if MSU catches Michigan in man while they're running mesh he could be a problem. Tre Mosley had 21 catches last year and is definitely a football wide receiver.

Pass protection projects to be a disaster for MSU. Rutgers was one of the least threatening teams in America last year (110th, 18 sacks). They had three sacks and another hurry; one of the sacks was a blindside sack/strip that set Rutgers up on the one yard line. That wasn't an OL issue, it was a running back with no idea what he was supposed to do. That projects to continue for a new staff with a skeleton roster that was forced to halt activities for COVID this fall.

Put the Michigan State OL up against Hutchinson and Paye and anything more than rhythm three-step drop passing is likely to end up with Lombardi reassembling himself on the sideline.

KEY MATCHUP: DAX HILL (hopefully) vs JAYDEN REED. Michigan just played against a team that put their best receiver in the slot. The performance delta between Hill and freshman Makari Paige was large. If Michigan can put the clamps on Reed it's going to be tough to make those yards up elsewhere.

SPECIAL TEAMS

REED is returning kicks; NAILOR returns punts. Neither did much against Rutgers. Nailor did have an explosive kick return last year on just four opportunities.

Kickoff specialist COLE HAHN returns after a season where he had a touchback rate of just 17% and put the ball out of bounds four times. He may have lost the job to MATT COGHLIN, the placekicker. He had two kickoffs; Hahn had two, one of which was onside.

Coghlin, meanwhile, is in his fourth year as State's kicker. Here's some #collegekickers for you: MSU's Field Goal efficiency* in the Coghlin era was average to good (43rd in 2017, 31st in 2018) before dropping off a cliff last year(89th). Coghlin did make his two attempts against Rutgers.

Punter BRYCE BARINGER averaged 51 yards a pop on his two punts against Rutgers. His only track record prior to last Saturday was a brief role during the Great MSU Punt Disaster Of 2018. His 15 attempts then averaged a mere 32 yards. 

*[a metric that gives you more credit for a 50 yarder than a 30 yarder, etc.]

KEY MATCHUP:  AHHHH YOU PUT IT THROUGH THE UPRIGHTS [ed: !!!!!!!]

INTANGIBLES

​

 

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if…

• MSU still has a July drive despite the massive turnover and incompetence.
• Michigan fumbles seven times.
• Mel Tucker's "That Team Over There" rhetoric turns MSU into OSU.

Cackle with knowing glee if…

• It's a passing down for MSU.
• It's a running down for MSU.
• Joe Milton continues being the Fonz.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 2 (Baseline: 5; +1 for Michigan State Psych-Out Juju Stuff, –1 for They Are Terrible, –1 for They Lost To Rutgers By Two Scores, –1 for The Only Two Good Recruits They Have Aren't Even Playing, –1 for They're Deep In OL Hell, +1 for Overconfidence Plagues The Fanbase, –1 for Harbaugh Petty Comin')

Desperate need to win level: 10 (Baseline: 5; +1 for Faint Possibility This Is The Last Game Of The Season, +1 for Paul Bunyan, +1 for M Losing To MSU As A Four-Score Favorite In The Immediate Aftermath Of The Dantonio Era Is Not To Be Thought About, +1 for NOT TO BE THOUGHT ABOUT, +1 for They Lost To Rutgers)

Loss will cause me to… wrap myself in a high-quality tobacco leaf and insert myself into Mel Tucker's maw, so I can be set on fire and die

Win will cause me to… eagerly await the Now We Read The RCMB portion of the Ace Pod.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

MSU can piece together drives with outside frippery against corners that aren't great in run support (probably) but at some point the lizard brain is going to take over and they're going to run the ball up the middle for zero yards. Then they'll be in a passing down, whereupon Michigan's defensive ends will feast.

When Michigan's on offense they'll try to keep it simple for Milton, which may lead to a slow start. One dollar says Gattis avoids grinding it up the middle much, at least early. Michigan will ask them to tackle in space, and they'll mostly not be able to do so in time.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid tomorrow:

• M hands MSU a rushing Rutger.
• Joe Milton throws a touchdown to an impossibly wide open guy.
• Michigan, 32-11