Essentials

WHAT	#2 Michigan (7-0) vs Michigan State (2-4)
WHERE	Spartan Stadium East Lansing, MI
WHEN	7:30 Eastern
THE LINE	M –24 (Vegas) M –19 (Bill C)
TELEVISION	NBC PBP: Noah Eagle Color: Todd Blackledge
TICKETS	From $119.
WEATHER	sprinkles early light wind mid-40ss

Overview

It's the Great Revenge Game for Michigan State after… uh… a bunch of their players ganged up on a couple of Michigan cornerbacks and got suspended for long periods of time. Somehow the MSU fanbase has turned this into a black mark against Michigan, because Spartans Will.

Unfortunately for green and white visions of a raucous, unhinged night game snakepit at Spartan Stadium, Mel Tucker executed the stupidest bag fumble in the history of bag fumbles and in the aftermath the program has traipsed from one rake to the next in a season of underlying competence overshadowed by giant pratfalls. Ticket prices have plummeted, enthusiasm is restricted to the fanciful idea that Urban Meyer is going to ride in on a white horse and fix everything, and half the stadium is likely to hit the bricks as soon as Michigan looks like Michigan and Michigan State looks like Michigan State.

It would be advisable not to let MSU get any ideas, though.

[AFTER THE JUMP: meh!]

Run Offense vs MSU

[Barron]

It's difficult to know what to expect because MSU hasn't played anyone remotely like Michigan. They've played three P5 passing spreads; Washington ground them for 5.4 YPC, Maryland had 4.5, and Rutgers a deceiving 3.1. The one Michigan-ish team on the schedule, Iowa, is literally the worst offense in college football. Also they run no gap stuff.

A deeper look into that Rutgers game indicates that MSU might be somewhat bad in this department: that Rutgers YPC is mostly Wimsatt getting sacked three times and being unproductive on his other four carries. Kyle Monangai racked up 148 yards at 6.2 per attempt. Rutgers hammered out the last six minutes of the game with a grinding twelve-play, 32 yard boa constrictor job.

PFF grading for the MSU front seven is universally meh. Amongst guys with at least 50 run defense snaps, DT Simeon Barrow is the top-graded player at 73; pretty much everyone else is in a tight range from 66 to 71 except LB Aaron Brule, who gets a 55, and rotational DE Tunmise Adeleye, who PFF hates with the fury of a thousand suns. Alex was in agreement with this, offering Barrow a somewhat grudging star and putting no cyan on the FFFF chart.

The DTs are decent but not at the level where duo won't move them, so we're going to get another dose of cat-and-mouse where Michigan will try to pick its spots to rip off sweeps and windback and the like. MSU will have to fling LBs into the LOS and hope they can get some late movement that puts an unblocked guy in the right spot. I assume that MSU will bring a suite of new stuff to the game but there's only so much you can do when most one on one matchups seem to favor Michigan, particularly when Michigan's vast array of tight ends can bring the MSU secondary into the equation in ways they're not used to.

Old school LB Cal Haladay is back but has missed five tackle this year against 17 made ones and is the kind of guy Michigan's backs can escape from in tight spaces.

On Michigan's end the blocking has been quality for most of the year but there's been a certain spark missing as the running backs struggle to create explosives out of thin air like they did a year ago. It seems likely that Michigan's ability to avoid TFLs and grind down the field will continue, especially if McCarthy is given some early carries and MSU has to account for him. Per Game On Paper, MSU managed a 9% stuff rate against Rutgers, which is 0th percentile, 12% against Iowa (0th), 13% against Maryland (1st), and 18% against Washington (5th). This is not a defense that puts you in a lot of passing downs after a first down run.

On the other hand this does not seem like a defense that is particularly likely to disintegrate and give up a long touchdown. The most alarming thing for MSU has to be that game-ending Rutgers drive, when the Spartans were very much in the game and just could not even come close to a stop. If Rutgers is able to lean on you like that, and Michigan's next…

KEY MATCHUP: ONE GUY vs MSU WEIRD STUFF. Avoiding One Guy plays means Michigan gets 4-5-6-7 yards on most run snaps, if not more. This D is not a havoc D.

Pass Offense vs MSU

[Fuller]

MSU has finally dumped the parade of SEC washouts here and found some stability with home-grown players. Alex:

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. … A pair of true sophomores, Jaden Mangham and Malik Spencer, have joined the starting lineup [at safety]. 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.

They're young—not one has gotten to their third year in college—and they are not great yet. But what they are also not is utterly abject. You could be forgiven for thinking that they were when Michael Penix put them under siege earlier this year, but they've recovered reasonably well. P5 performances:

• WASHINGTON: 29/39, 13.7 YPA, 4 TD, 1 INT
• MARYLAND: 21/36, 6.2 YPA, 3 TD, 1 INT
• IOWA: 14/32, 5.0 YPA, 1 TD, 1 INT
• RUTGERS: 13/28, 6.5 YPA, 1 TD, 2 INT

Even if you ignore the Iowa performance that's two respectable games against mid-tier Big Ten opposition, which is approximately two more respectable games than this secondary has had in two years and change.

PFF grading is still pretty rough. Rucker and Tatum are also in the Just Guys bin; Spencer and Mangham are in the mid-50s, which means they're grading out as below average players. Nickel Angelo Grose is the only guy actually grading out as pretty decent. Also worth noting that the linebackers remain very bad at doing coverage things.

Organic pass rush is pretty close to nil. Alex:

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.

Ten of their 16 sacks came against CMU and Richmond; the other three were against Rutgers. MSU also has very little help from blitzes; Aaron Brule is doing pretty well but Haladay is bad and Grose only has nine blitzes on the year. Alex charted them for 5+ man rushes 34% of the time against Maryland, well on the blitz-ier side of the equation. These are not resulting in sacks, however.

MSU has managed to bleed opponents down the field and get a reasonable number of stops when not playing Washington… but now they have to play Pretty Much Washington, at least in terms of effectiveness.

KEY MATCHUP: MAN vs SELF. This is not a defense that's going to be in the hip pockets of receivers—just 6 PBUs in four games against P5 opponents—and not a defense that is going to overwhelm McCarthy in the pocket; he'll have to sit and pick apart a zone. Which he can do.

Run Defense vs MSU

[Fuller]

This, too, is a spot where MSU has finally found some stability and competency. For the first time this year an opponent got through an FFFF without picking up an OL cyan. This is also the first time this year an opponent enters without a transfer starting on their OL. Four of them are fifth-year players; new starting guard Kevin Wigenton is a redshirt sophomore. This line is homegrown and… definitely there. Neither PFF nor Alex thinks any of these guys are stars. They're solidly mid-level.

UConn transfer Nathan Carter will be vaguely familiar since he played against Michigan last year, racking up 21 yards on six carries as the overmatched Huskies got cratered 59-0. He yoinked the starting job away from Jalen Berger upon arriving in East Lansing and has been completely fine. He's averaging 4.7 yards per attempt on 113 carries; he's gotten between 17 and 20 carries in every game this year, with good outings against Maryland (19 for 97) and Iowa (20 for 108) and bad outings against Washington (17 for 48) and Rutgers (20 for 52); he gets about 80% of the running back carries. Alex thinks he is more than Just A Guy, but not a dude:

Nathan Carter isn't a game-breaker or freakishly athletic, but a rock solid player who makes your team better when he carries the football, compared to a replacement-level back. I never saw that ability from Berger.

MSU will also run their QBs a bit, though neither guy is much good at it. Houser had four QB draws against Rutgers and a yakety-sax fourth down conversion on a pull.

I find it difficult to say a lot more; like Alex I look at this team and it's just a whole heap of average-ish players. The exception, for purposes of this section, is at tight end, where all three options are horrible blockers. That limits Michigan State's ability to get weird, especially because Michigan likes to put in an extra  DT in those situations; multiple TE sets are putting in a very bad player so Michigan can put in a very good one. I would regard any such snaps as potential trick plays.

On Michigan's end they have stuffed everyone they've played in a locker until the backups get in and things get somewhat dicey. Even the brief period of success Minnesota had with outside zone fizzled out into just over three yards a carry. MSU doesn't have the RPO game to hold Michigan linebackers out of gaps on stretch—they may try to install it for this week but that seems like it's asking for an INT—and that's not likely to be something that Michigan gets hammered on again. MSU will tweak some gaps and have some early success but the likely outcome is the same one it's been all year: as soon as Michigan downloads your adaptations the noose tightens.

KEY MATCHUP:  MICHIGAN vs TRICK PLAYS. A reverse, a double reverse, a super-special triple reverse, whatever: you know it's coming.

Pass Defense vs MSU

not present [Barron]

If there was one moment when the wheels started coming off the Spartan program, it was probably when MSU lost starting quarterback Peyton Thorne and star WR Keon Coleman to the portal after spring practice. Whether that was advance knowledge of Mel Tucker events that happened this fall or merely a desire to play elsewhere is unknown, but suffice it to say that when a mid-level program loses a returning starter and first-round WR talent what ensues is likely to be carnage.

This is how "carnage" manifests against MSU's P5 opponents to date:

• WASHINGTON: 14/35, 5.9 YPA, 0 TD, 1 INT
• MARYLAND: 26/44, 6.2 YPA, 1 TD, 3 INT
• IOWA: 25/44, 4.4 YPA, 0 TD, 3 INT
• RUTGERS: 18/29, 4.6 YPA, 2 TD, 0 INT

That last game was Katin Houser's first start after taking over for Noah Kim. You may think that the sudden drop in interceptions after back-to-back games with three is an improvement; it's not unless Houser has some sort of weird eye juju that causes opponent DBs to drop passes. Houser has managed 3 turnover-worthy plays in his 49 dropbacks, a 5.6% rate that's identical to Kim's. PFF doesn't like Kim (57 passing grade) but is currently grading Houser out as the #185 QB with at least 40 attempts this year. There are 187 D-1 QBs who qualify. He is a hair behind Jeff Sims and 12 points behind Deacon Hill. To channel Alex: bad!

Meanwhile in Coleman's absence the main receivers are Trey Mosley and Montorie Foster, who are just guys. Mosley is the default target around the line of scrimmage, where he's meh. His average depth of target is 6.9 yards, and in the last two games that has dipped to 3.5. He does not have a contested catch opportunity this season; he just sits underneath the coverage and hopes to YAC it out. Foster is more of a deep threat, I guess, but his ADOT in the last two games is eight yards. TE Maliq Carr is also a factor; he's a chonky boi who's decent in the intermediate range but doesn't threaten downfield.

Pass blocking has been surprisingly good. MSU has only given up eight sacks on the year and none of the starters sticks out as a sore spot in PFF grading.

Alex's scouting lines up with the dink-and-dunk depth of target stats:

My description of Houser's performance against Rutgers is "limited". The DSR looks okay, but the degree of difficulty in his throws was extremely low. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Brandon Peters vs. Rutgers in 2017, mostly making short, easy throws to build up the confidence of the young QB and not expose his flaws- except more concerning. I'd have to go back and watch that Peters performance, but I don't recall many howlers, whereas Houser had a few balls that clearly demonstrated why the game plan was for him to not throw down the field.

MSU is likely to have some decent success here as Michigan runs their Ohio State gameplan against guys they could man to death, as per usual. Michigan's been susceptible to holes in their zone on short routes and the MSU OL appears to be good enough to let Hauser sit and survey for a couple reads. Dropping DEs and DTs against whoever MSU puts out there is likely to create at least one interception opportunity and possibly multiple; MSU not precise enough or consistent enough to put together long drives without getting in passing down situations that should be death.

KEY MATCHUP:  MSU QUARTERBACKS vs WHOOPSIE. It seems unlikely they can get out of this one without multiple interceptions, but if they manage it things will get tighter.

SPECIAL TEAMS

MSU special teams reached a nadir not seen since the John L Smith days in their meltdown against Rutgers. First their punter had trouble with a snap at his facemask, leading to a Rutgers touchdown; then MSU's unwarranted onside-kick formation led to a turnover when Tyrell Henry did not field a short kickoff and Rutgers pounced on it. Combine that with a far-too-easy Cooper DeJean punt return touchdown against Iowa and these disasters see MSU sit at 133rd in kick return efficiency—ie, dead last—and 106th in punt efficiency.

That doesn't necessarily mean Michigan will benefit from the chaos, which is hard to predict. When not going full JLS MSU special teams have been solid. Transfer kicker Jonathan Kim is 7/9 and has a 58-yarder to his name; punters Ryan Eckley and Michael O'Shaughnessy combine for a 43 yard average and have yielded one return yard outside of the DeJean touchdown. Return units aren't great; Henry did some work against CMU and has otherwise been a nonfactor as a kick/punt returner.

This won't be a factor unless it's a FACTOR, if you get my drift.

KEY MATCHUP: AHHH YOU PUT IT BETWEEN THE UPRIGHTS

INTANGIBLES

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if...

• MSU plays way way over their heads. Note the two "ways" in that sentence.
• Michigan's ground game continues to lack explosives.
• JJ McCarthy is running the ball up 35-7 why did we do that.

Cackle with glee if...

• McCarthy gets to sit in the pocket unmolested.
• Katin Houser passing downs happen. 
• Connor Stalions peers down at his 11x17 and finds the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 4 (Baseline 5; +1 for Weird MSU Rivalry Juju, +1 for Weird Zombie Dantonio Juju, –1 for Third String QB Averaging Under Five Yards An Attempt, –1 for Rutgers Transitive Property, –1 for They Don't Have Any Dudes, +1 for Generally Competent, –1 for Except For Their Total Incompetence)

Desperate Need To Win Level: 10 (Baseline 5;  +1 for FU NCAA, +1 for FU Corey Tropp, +1 for Man We Can't Throw This Collection Of Pat McAfeesvA Lifeline, +1 for This Is The Most Reprehensible Athletic Department In America, +1 for Bounce The Rubble.)

Loss will cause me to... not swing my helmet at someone else, I tellya what.

Win will cause me to... buy 17 GoPros and a ticket to OSU's next game.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

MSU is a weird team: generally more competent down-to-down than any opponents to date and also completely incapable of not self destructing several times a game. The problem for MSU is that their general competency was good enough to hang with Rutgers, Iowa, and Maryland, yardage-wise, and bad enough to get them completely nuked by a playoff contender. Michigan is also a playoff contender and is likely better in every single positional matchup in this game. Zero MSU players would start for Michigan.

That will tell the tale, especially since MSU looks like they're devoid of explosives that Michigan doesn't inflict on themselves. Even if they do get the ~1 per game Michigan is currently ceding, their best case scenario looks a lot like last year's outing, minus the redzone struggles for Michigan.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid tomorrow: 

• McCarthy cracks 25 attempts and throws for 10 YPA.
• Katin Houser gets replaced at some point.
• Michigan, 34-11.