I rewrote this part of my 3-2-1 from late, late Friday night early Saturday morning:
Michigan State's pass defense was beaten on a deep go route by 6-foot sophomore Bryce Kirtz on third-and-14 during Northwestern’s opening drive.
On that play, Kalon Gervin was assigned to play outside technique, from off coverage, dropping into zone, expecting safety help.
Michigan State rotated to cover-three with Gervin and free safety Angelo Grose as two of the three deep.
Grose rotated from the far hash to the middle. Gervin was expecting help from Grose on the deep ball. That's why Gervin was in outside technique, leveraging the WR to the safety help.
But the safety help wasn't there. Grose didn't identify the Kirtz early enough as a deep threat on the left side of the field.
We can probably chalk that up to a learning experience for Grose, and the need to have his eyes in the proper place, more so than an error by Gervin.
Rather than identify Kirtz as a deep threat and staying as deep as the deepest, Grose undercut his path to the middle for an instant, and that's all it took in failing to arrive at the ball in time.
Michigan State's pass defense was beaten on a deep go route by 6-foot sophomore Bryce Kirtz on third-and-14 during Northwestern’s opening drive.
On that play, Kalon Gervin was assigned to play outside technique, from off coverage, dropping into zone, expecting safety help.
Michigan State rotated to cover-three with Gervin and free safety Angelo Grose as two of the three deep.
Grose rotated from the far hash to the middle. Gervin was expecting help from Grose on the deep ball. That's why Gervin was in outside technique, leveraging the WR to the safety help.
But the safety help wasn't there. Grose didn't identify the Kirtz early enough as a deep threat on the left side of the field.
We can probably chalk that up to a learning experience for Grose, and the need to have his eyes in the proper place, more so than an error by Gervin.
Rather than identify Kirtz as a deep threat and staying as deep as the deepest, Grose undercut his path to the middle for an instant, and that's all it took in failing to arrive at the ball in time.
