CFN says MSU should be heading to Rose Bowl
Well i don't know what Pete Fiutak is smoking but WOW
How is "head over skis" a problem? I ski a little bit, and every time I have gone skiing, I have done so with my head over my skis. In fact, when my skis were over my head, that was typically when I noticed the biggest problems.
But I would think that it would be much worse to have your skis over your head. Unless you're this guy-
Nevermind him, he's a ra-tard. As for Sparty going to the Rose Bowl: Good luck with that.
everyone's yearly "sleeper" pick
Ain't that the truth.
And every year it's for the same two reasons:
1) "Their defense is on the verge of something big..."
2) "They have returning starters on offense..."
Every year MSU is the "sleeper" pick and it's always those two reasons, regardless of what happened the previous season.
Now why would they want to go to the Rose Bowl to watch two other teams play?
Does anyone else think all of these preseason predictions and discussions from websites like CFN etc. are becoming increasingly moronic and insipid? This article reads like something from a high school paper.
CFN has been moronic and insipid since it's inception.
[LOL WUT pear goes here]
HEAD OVER SKIS!!!!!!
Even my sparty friends don't think they can win more than 8 games.
Pete is *really* in love with Keith Nichol's potential, isn't he? Anyone have an opinion on Nichol? (All I can see are last year's less-than-dazzling stats.)
Also, I find it interesting that he mentioned Nick Hill, a 3-star recruit who has yet to play a down for them. MGoBlog readers might recall that he was a long-time UMich fan who (IIRC) didn't get offered by RichRod. His development will be interesting to watch.
CFN has sunk beneath the level of Bleacher Report.
Even if State gets past ND and the out-of-conference cupcakes, if they lose to Wisconsin at home...they're done. After that game, they'll travel to Ann Arbor where a glorious beating shall occur. Then, as always, State will crumble. Dantonio will pick a fight with a Michigan player and then call him classless for responding. 9-16 players will get arrested for beating up the chess team. Tom Izzo will weep green tears as he takes a call from the Lakers.
Seriously though...Given the extreme weakness of their schedule (c'mon Dantonio, I thought you were a tough guy yet you sprint from competition?), I still see them going 7-5 (8-4 tops). Rose Bowl? Only if that's a nickname for a prison toilet.
I wonder if the bowl of the toilet is a rose color because of transgression that go on in prison...Any MSU football players care to clarify?
I'm sure whoever makes the Rose Bowl will need someone to carry their bags, the MSU players can probably handle that so long as they can keep from donning a ski mask and running off with the stuff.
Obviously not. The Sparty I know is coached by a man who is so obsessed with Michigan that he would prefer Michigan lose to OSU rather than MSU go to the Rose Bowl. His obsession leads him to focus on us to the detriment of his preparation for other teams on Sparty's schedule.
Here's what will happen:
(10/2) Lose at home to a superior Wisconsin which has an easy victory since MSU isn't properly prepared and is looking ahead to Michigan.
(10/9) Lose to a superior Michigan in Ann Arbor.
(10/16) Because the team was totally invested in a single game, they are psychologically devastated and lose to a sad Illinois team at homecoming. The typical Sparty collapse we all love is well underway.
(10/23) Lose at Northwestern.
(10/30) They would have lost at Iowa anyway.
Add in the expected loss at Penn State on 11/27 and Sparty has 6 losses.
The interesting question then is whether ND beats them in East Lansing on 9/17 or if their slide can extend to 6 against Minnesota in East Lansing on 11/6 (probably not). If neither team beats them, here's hoping for a bowl loss.
(10/10) Holds press conference in which he slaps himself.
"Look down at your feet," Dantonio said to a member (Charles Burrell) of the 2008 recruiting class. Now you just imagine those feet playing in the Rose Bowl, because that's where they'll be within four or five years from now."
that Sparty had picked up UCLA as a non-conference opponent.
Dan Mullen was a great hire, but I just don't see him guiding Mississippi State to an SEC championship for another few years. And even if he did, wouldn't they be playing in the Sugar Bowl? Fiutak's stupidity really never ceases to amaze me.
they are always off. Polls mean zip unitl Nov. Too much can happen or go wrong ... Talk to me in Nov. I'd have to admit, this one is funny. Go Blue!!!
Who better to set Sparty up for another disappointing season than Pete? His predictions are like gold plated dung.
I seem to remember multiple media outlets claiming that MSU was poised for a 10-2 Rose Bowl run, and Michigan would struggle to get to 8-4. This was before the 2006 season.
How does that shit sandwich taste?
I literally spat out the milk in my mouth, from my cereal onto my keyboard, with laughter when I saw the OPs headline.
Let the expectations build in East Lansing. The better they are supposed to be the funnier the Dantonio show's imminent collapse will be. When the LSJ is calling for their messiah's head by November this article will seem even more entertaining than it already is.
I'm going on my questionable memory here, but I think MSU's offense will be quite good this year, with both QB's returning and most of the o-line back as well. They did lose some defenders to graduation and ski-mask-gate, so I think the sparty defense will be suspect.
They do have a relatively soft schedule (no OSU), though, so they'll probably wind up being bowl eligible, but no way are they going to contend for the B10 crown. I hate to say it but that will probably be Wisconsin and OSU.
Also yes, CFN blows. :)
MSU only returns two of five starters on the O-line, from a group that wasn't very good to begin with.
They return Young, Foreman, Stipek, and Dean, all of whom started at points last year. And while their push on the ground wasn't great, they gave up the fewest sacks in the league last year.
G
They only return two regular starters. And sacks allowed is a terrible measure of an OL. Cousins had a bad habit of giving up on plays and throwing it away at the first hint of pressure.
How do you define "regular starters"? Foreman and Young started more or less the entire year, Stipek started approximately half the regular season, and Deane was a starter when the season began before getting injured the first game. They also have several highly regarded RS Frosh and Sophs from Dantonio's first recruiting classes pushing from the two-deeps.
Also, "Cousins had a bad habit of giving up on plays and throwing it away at the first hint of pressure" sounds awfully subjective. At least you can quantify the number of sacks allowed - in fact, it'd be hard to argue that an OL was good if they gave up a large number of sacks, so it makes sense that the opposite is at least somewhat true.
Hey, I'm hardly claiming MSU's line is outstanding, just that they have a good chance to be all right.
G
You're trying too hard to quantify things that can't always be quantified. Foreman and Young are legit returning starters. The other two were Ferrara-esque desperation replacements. MSU does not want those two seeing the field this year if it can avoid it. Likewise, it's not hard to observe that Cousins had problems giving up on plays at the first sign of pressure. I can't give you a statsheet to prove it but it was pretty readily apparent. Tate had some of the same problems, although his issue was more about scrambling around wildly while Cousins would just chuck it away.
Sacks allowed is a terrible measure of an OL's ability to pass protect. Sacks are fluky. Even the most porous lines only give up sacks like one out of ten times. That doesn't mean that they're doing a bang-up job the other nine times. If a QB is forced to give up on his primary target because of defensive pressure, the OL isn't doing its job.
Fiutak: Gotta write sparty preview content. What to do?
Fiutak: I know! I'll take that one from last year and update it! No one will be none the wiser! I love my job!
Omniscient Narrator: Unbeknownst to Fiutak, this has been going on ever since the waning days of St. Perles the Mediocre........
MSU is a classic overrated team. They have major holes to fill on the offensive and defensive lines (not to mention a secondary that is even worse than ours), but because they have some good offensive skilled players, idiot prognosticators will predict big things for them. In '02 they were supposed to be a Big Ten contender and national-title darkhorse. Oops. And like that year, they've already had major off-field turmoil. Hopefully Cousins will at least steer clear of the white stuff this time.
Just to play Devil's advocate, MSU was 9-3 in 2008, and was three plays (Colin Neely's itchy trigger finger going offsides against CMU, Larry Caper not reaching for a game-winning TD vs. ND, and a botched fumble call vs. Minn.) from being 9-3 last year.
On offense, they return all their skill positions from one of league's most productive units and will have 4 players who started on the OL last year. On defense, they have one of the league's best DT's (Worthy) and the league's best LB (Jones), and return their best CB (Adams, who sat out last year due injury plus his grandmother's illness and eventual death).
In addition, in 09 they lost to 2 of the league's expected top teams by a total of 11 points (Iowa 12-15, UW 38-30).
From a Spartan fan's perspective, their schedule breaks down like this...
Expected wins: WMU, FAU, UNC (Colorado, that is), UI, @NU, Minn, PU
Expected losses: UW, @ IA, @PSU
Toss ups: @UM, ND
If they manage to win both toss-ups and get lucky with the Wisconsin, Iowa, Penn State games, they sure look like they could be a possible (though unlikely) Rose Bowl team.
G
If you want to believe that 2008 was a true measure of that program's ability and 2009 was the fluke, you can, but given that MSU was outscored and outgained in conference play in '08 (while going 6-2), that's pretty tough to swallow. Yes, they lost some close games last year, but they won a few, too (UM and PU come to mind). I don't remember the particulars of the Minn game, but I know that somehow they gave up like 40 points to a crappy offense without Eric Decker, so unless the officiating was really, really bad, their D just didn't show up.
You keep making the "4 guys with starting experience on the OL" claim. Two were career backups briefly pressed into service. That's like calling Ferrara an experienced OL starter for us. They have two legit returners on the OL. They had problems running the ball last year and I don't see that changing.
Just a few points before I retire from this thread (being on a UM board and all)...
*I never said anything about 2008 and 2009 representing anything, just that MSU was very close to having back to back 9 win seasons. Now, Dantonio is fond of saying football is a game of inches, and obviously in 2008 those inches were in MSU's favor while in 2009 they weren't, but still - it's reasonable to think that MSU is on the cusp of emerging as a better team than they've recently been (a la the Iowa Hawkeyes, circa 2003).
*The Minnesota play in question came on their late 4th quarter game-winning drive - receiver catches the ball, takes three steps, gets drilled and fumbles, with MSU returning it deep into Minnesota territory to ostensibly seal the win... only for the call to get overturned in the replay booth. Hardly a stellar MSU defensive performance, but they did make a big enough play to win it.
*While MSU struggled to get a push on the ground in short yardage situations, they still averaged almost 4.5 yards per carry for the season as a team. That said, ask virtually any MSU fan and they will say that the OL is the key to the season - no argument about that. If it performs just barely better than badly, 7-8 wins is likely; if it performs well, 9+ wins is attainable.
G
I responded to this post even though I stopped reading 2 posts ago when you included Wisconsin last year in your "close games" count. MSU was down 3 touchdowns with 2 minutes to go and needed a 91 yard TD with 15 seconds left to pull within 8 pts. If you think that game was at all close, I don't know what to tell you.
I was kinda agreeing with you on the O-line thing. But the "if these 3 games had just gone different they would have won 9 game back to back" is an argument that just doesn't work. Because in 2008 they should have lost to Iowa and Wisconsin, and had back to back 6-7 win teams. But they didn't, because they didn't. It's no different than saying "if Michigan had just beat MSU, Iowa, Illinois, Purdue they would have won...etc." It doesn't work for us either. What you win is who you are.
And as to your last point, I don't think the majority is of a mind that 7-9 wins is out of the question with that schedule. But 9 wins almost assuredly doesn't get you in the Rose Bowl (unless you really biffed a pathetically easy OOC schedule, and most of the wins come in conference).