Michigan State looks pretty familiar this season.

Their head coach prowls the sideline with a scowl, presumably ready to stare xiphe into defenders who miss assignments and quarterbacks who make careless decisions with the football. The defense still plays mostly 4-3 quarters with a mobile Sam linebacker and big safety in the boundary, both of whom are regular participants in the run fit, and the offense is still very run-centric.

You'll also seem them perform normal Sparty tricks, such as hanging around in a game with cautious tactics designed to avoid losing the contest, before pouncing on a short field or a special teams miscue to pull out a close win.

I suppose I've described many a typical Big 10 team overall, but there's definitely a uniquely Michigan State quality about the way they look to grind out wins with cautious play, defense, and paroxysmal quarterback brilliance.

This makes them an interesting challenge for the now 7-0 Michigan Wolverines. The fact they enjoyed a bye week before the contest, a home game no less, makes the 7-0 Spartans perhaps the clearest test yet of the robustness of Michigans' own perfect season. There are also some schematic and personnel matchups in this game which should prove enlightening.

[WE BREAK DOWN THE MATCHUPS AFTER THE JUMP]

The Sparty offense

I have enduring memories of the better Dantonio Spartan teams as being defined by two things. First, the aggressive 4-3 Over press-quarters defense ran by Pat Narduzzi with its tight safety alignments and double A-gap zone blitzes. Secondly, an offense which generally seemed to consist of ineffective attempts at neanderball on first and second down before asking Connor Cook to bail them out from spread sets on 3rd down.

The main change Mel Tucker and his offensive coordinator Jay Johnson have brought to Lansing isn't a move away from run-centric offense or conservative execution, but the schematic approach to arriving at similar outcomes. This is now an 11 personnel spread team who hand the ball to their running back 21.7 times per game while asking the quarterback to attempt 26.1 passes per game. Because of the spread spacing, they get more big plays and are consequently a bit more efficient than the Dantonio teams although also more "boom or bust." Such are the tradeoffs in the spread.

The offensive infrastructure, which I define as the personnel and skill sets employed at quarterback, offensive line, and tight end, are of a pro-style, spread-I formation system. Starting tight end Connor Heyward is a converted running back who's only 6-foot-0, but weighs 230 pounds and quarterback Payton Thorne does his best work firing the ball down the field from the pocket on play-action.

The offensive line goes, from left to right:

• 6-foot-6, 305 pound redshirt junior.
• 6-foot-4, 305 pound junior.
• 6-foot-3, 315 pound redshirt super senior.
• 6-foot-5, 325 pound redshirt senior.
• 6-foot-7, 320 pound redshirt super senior.

Overall they're a bit tall, not overly hefty, yet they have a lot of experience they maximize with a pretty solid arsenal of run blocking schemes and tend to get good movement in their split zone game. Hayward is a solid blocker, back-up Tyler Hunt is probably a little better and also surprisingly fluid for a former walk-on, but Hayward is downright dangerous and highly enjoyable to watch as a receiver. He runs like you'd expect from a converted back who's 230 pounds and they have a tight end screen game he can make hay in.

Payton Thorne is the best quarterback in the country no one is talking about. He can hit receivers in stride down the field, even to the wide side, and while they don't regularly ask him to make difficult decisions he's careful with the ball.

The overall offense has a clear identity and all the pieces fit quite nicely, particularly the skill weapons who make the system go. Slot receiver Tre Mosley is a bigger chain mover at 6-foot-2 who runs a lot of crossers and seam-reads on play-action. He doesn't have home run speed and Daxton Hill won't require much assistance keeping him locked up.

Outside receivers Jayden Reed and Jalen Nailor are legitimate speedsters who can run by a bad corner on play-action, especially Reed who's their top weapon. Running back Kenneth Walker has good cutback ability and is a mortal lock to pass 1,000 yards on the season (he's at 997 now) in this contest.

The overall composite is a team who's highly competent running the ball from different angles and schemes with a good running back, and then mixing in lots of max protection play-action with a strong-armed quarterback who can hit the long throws and isn't careless with the football.

The Sparty defense

Mel Tucker is proving to have been a fantastic hire for Michigan State. He has deep roots in Ohio, where the best Spartan teams have tended to recruit heavily, and served as a defensive backs coach for Jim Tressel at the turn of the century down in Columbus when they won a ring.

For all of his background in defense, including coordinating the 2017 runner-up Georgia Bulldogs for Kirby Smart, upon his arrival in Lansing Tucker hired Scottie Hazelton from Kansas State to coordinate his defense. Hazelton was fresh from a very strong year with Kansas State under Chris Klieman and before that a few years at Wyoming under Craig Bohl. Hazelton is a very strong coach and the overall quality of the defensive brain trust in Lansing is as formidable as ever.

To their collective credit as a staff, the 2021 Spartans aren't as heavy into the single-high defense Tucker ran heavily at Georgia or Hazelton ran with Kansas State and Wyoming, but instead play a fair bit of quarters which is already well known to Michigan State and their players. They'll mix in both, but their preference is obviously dictated by their personnel at boundary safety, field safety, and the field side linebacker/safety hybrid. We'll call that position the Sam, here's how they man those spots.

• Sam: Michael Dowell, 6-foot-1, 215 pound 3-star from Ohio with heavy snaps also coming to 6-foot-1, 220 pound Darius Snow, a 3-star from the DFW Metroplex. 
• Field safety: Angelo Grose, 5-foot-10, 180 pound 3-star from Ohio who's a converted cornerback.
• Boundary safety: Xavier Henderson, a 6-foot-1, 210 pound 4-star from Ohio.

Henderson leads the team in tackles and Grose is actually second and then you find the true inside linebackers. Whether they're in Cover 3 or quarters, Henderson tends to play as a deep linebacker and either poach from the wide side or drop down as a hook or flat defender for the Spartans. From those shallow depths he can also get involved as a blitzer and has made a few negative plays (seven tackles for loss, two sacks) but mostly you'll find him making tackles and cleaning up for the linebackers before offensive plays get too far out of control.

The pass defense overall is a definite concern for Michigan. There's still a Panasiuk on campus, Jacub plays left end and leads the team with 5.5 sacks. Fellow ends Jeff Pietrowski and Drew Beesley can get after it as well. Their top cornerback is Chester Kimbrough, a Florida transfer who will play some press-man coverage on the left side rather than the off coverage Cade McNamara has exploited for easy gains against some other opponents on the schedule.

It's a less aggressive defense than back in the Dantonio days, certainly than in the Narduzzi era. They'll still challenge some routes and sit on the run game with big, run-stopping safeties but the latter will hang out a little deeper and there's more overall caution about getting beat for big plays.

Clawing through the phalanx

There are two significant issues for Michigan against State which will rightfully get much of the attention. Issue one is whether or not Cade McNamara can make enough plays in the passing game to beat this team if Sparty's ability to bring big, tackling safeties around the box effectively limits the Wolverine run game.

The second issue is how Michigan's cornerbacks will look playing tight on receivers in the Match 3 and quarters schemes Mike Macdonald prefers when they're facing speed at outside receiver, an offense that takes shots from max protection, and a quarterback who can deliver the ball outside the hash marks on a rope.

The first problem is problem the most concerning to Michigan fans. "Is this the game where McNamara's limitations finally get us? Against Michigan State?????"

Here's the sort of spacing and alignment Michigan is likely to have to deal with against the Spartans when they want to run the ball.

Pretty similar to yesteryear, really. The ends are good, particularly Panasiuk, and they create an eight-man front with the Sam linebacker and strong safety (Henderson) which is hard to make serious headway against. They've performed well against spread-option attacks from the likes of Miami, Nebraska, and Rutgers.

The Wolverines are a different animal though. They won't involve the quarterback in the run game if they can help it, unless J.J. McCarthy is in which tends to spoil the plot, and they have a better O-line and running backs than any of those teams who all HAD to rely on their quarterback to have a chance at finding effectiveness on the ground.

Michigan won't really be able to constrain Sparty from bringing numbers around the box, they'll just have to block them anyways and hope an unblocked Henderson isn't able to make the tackle close enough to the line of scrimmage to stop the chains from moving. It's really not a terrible bet for Michigan.

On the bright side, Michigan State's linebackers and middle of the field zone coverages aren't absolute clamps and McNamara's ability to weave quick passes through traffic on 3rd-and-6 or less figures to translate in this game.

All those factors aren't likely to result in the accumulation of a high score but it seems very unlikely that Michigan State can shut this offense completely down.

The more concerning issue is the one regarding the Sparty passing game and their big play potential. Thus far in the year Michigan hasn't really faced outside receivers of this caliber, nor a quarterback who can put the ball on the money throwing over the top like Thorne can. The major concern in this game is less about whether or not McNamara can guide Michigan to some hard-earned points, but whether they end up needing a lot of them because the Sparty offense lands some shots.

Here's the spatial, matchup look against the State offense, which you can almost just boil down to "split zone or max protection play-action" run/pass conflicts. How do you keep players in position to handle a legitimately solid, two-back run game (the tight end is really like a fullback) without leaving yourself vulnerable to vertical shots from play-action?

Here's how:

This is "poach" or "steal" coverage and it's within the Michigan playbook, as are some "1-clue" single high coverages which accomplish something similar. Here's the gist of it, you help Hill on inside crossers from the slot not with the field safety, but with the boundary safety. The field safety stays in position to help over the top on behalf of the corner whom most teams would leave to handle the outside vertical (by "Z" here) all alone. Payton Thorne can hit the Z going vertical and they have fast guys there so you don't really want to give that away.

The boundary safety can also stay somewhat shallow, or at least play flat-footed at 10 yards or so, and still help Hill on the crosser. Consequently, he's not too far away to help clean up runs or tosses to the tight end.

The danger spot is for the boundary corner, who does not get help over the top (although the strong safety here is in position to help on a post). To mitigate the concerns here Michigan can have the boundary cornerback play in a press-bail or just a big cushion, off-man technique and focus on keeping throws in front of him. You might give up some freebies now and then underneath but you'd rather make a team like Michigan State ask their young quarterback to repeatedly hit timing routes underneath coverage then allow them the chance to traverse the whole field in one throw.

To help, they can also mix in Cover 3 looks in which both safeties are within closer proximity to help on the boundary receiver and the field corner is bailing deep and inviting throws underneath which have to deal with Daxton Hill in zone coverage.

Switching which safety rotates where and who doesn't and doesn't have help AFTER the snap with rotations is a good way to help corners who are playing 1-on-1 and preventing a young quarterback from getting an easy read and the chance to quickly uncork a good fade ball. If Thorne can sort it out quickly without Aidan Hutchinson and friends thwarting his timing, tip your cap, you've been beat.

The main key is setting the cornerbacks up with the opportunity to disguise their leverage and when they'll be conceding easy throws and when they won't. It's still on them to not let someone run by them, on a double move or with pure speed, and if they aren't up for the challenge than the last few games of this season could be tough on Michigan fans.

I expect Michigan will hold up well and manage a hard-fought win over the Spartans, keeping hope alive for the final stretch against the main powers in the Big 10 East.