DotComp: It's a shame, isn't it?
Jim Comparoni | Editor
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - After the loss, after the fourth-down sack, after the handshakes, after the radio interview behind a thin curtain outside the locker room, after the 11-minute briefing with media in an antiquated cinder-block echo chamber adjacent to Zuppke Field at Memorial Stadium, Dantonio walked the hallway, past Sally Nogle, who gave him updates on the health of some fallen players, and he re-entered the locker room.
Twenty minutes earlier, he had addressed the team. They heard his words. Were the words still having an impact? He hoped so.
The players had lost again, this time 31-27 to an Illinois team that has been stuck in a multi-year football recession. Michigan State had been enjoying a nine-year bull market, up till this year’s historically stark downward turn.
The room was nearly empty when Dantonio approached RJ Shelton’s locker. Dantonio stopped and put his arm around the senior wide receiver, pulled him tight and said a few things.
Shelton should have been the hero of this game. His fourth-down, tightrope, 13-yard touchdown catch, thrown by nervous reliever Damion Terry, put the Spartans ahead 27-24 with 2:52 to play.
It was the best play of Shelton’s career. It was the first big play of Terry’s career. It was a catch that should have broken the losing streak, and set off an emotional release of happiness in this locker room.
Terry should have been a hero. Gerald Holmes should have been a hero. Michael Geiger should have been a hero.
But they all left the stadium in a silent bus, again.
The Part That Irked Dantonio The Most
When the Spartans won 40 of 45 games prior to this season, they won several by a touchdown or less. Many times, the opponent had the ball with a chance to tie or win on its last possession. Most times, they never came close. Not against the Spartan defenses of the Dantonio era.
This year’s Spartan defense has little in common with those Spartan defenses. And this year’s defense didn’t protect this lead at Memorial Stadium. Didn’t come close. That’s what seemed to irk Dantonio the most.
“I thought we came back and worked extremely hard to get back in front,” Dantonio said. “And then on the last series by the defense, we had a blown coverage, two pass interferences, and (gave up) another (play), structurally, on the coverage that we played for the touchdown.
“And then,” he said with disgust, “we had to go back down the field again.”
Had to go back down the field again? On offense? Had to answer a late touchdown with a second late touchdown?
That’s not the way these scripts are supposed to be written for this program. A quality team might need to win that way once every couple of years in a championship setting, but not in a sparsely-populated stadium at noon on the ESPN News channel against 2-6 Illinois.
Michigan State has been relegated to being a warm-up act, and the Spartans played like it. They tried hard. The effort was good. But once again, they were just good enough to lose. Too many loose screws, not physical enough. And Dantonio was a different kind of bothered by this one.
“I mean there’s two minutes to go in the game, and they score in five plays,” Dantonio said. “Or four? I don’t know. It was quick.”
Yes, four plays for Illinois to travel 75 yards, not counting the penalty plays. The Illini never faced a third down on the drive.
“Had a blown coverage, two pass interferences,” Dantonio said, repeating the issues like an angry fan at Reno’s or Tripper’s. “You have to get off the field.”
Leaky defense has been problem all year. Without a consistent defense, your team will be a consistent loser. This year, Michigan State has the worst defense of the Dantonio era. It’s as bad, statistically, as the defenses that helped get Bobby Williams and John L. Smith fired. Dantonio doesn’t have to worry about job security. Like he said a month ago, he has built tons of equity with the historic winning he brought to the program in his first nine years.
But it’s hard to find a free-fall such as this, at any period in college football history. The Spartans have gone from ending a season ranked No. 6 in the country, to a 2-7 start in the following year.
Michigan State entered this season as the only program in the country that had finished ranked in the top 6 in each of the past three years. Now, Michigan State is most likely the only program in history that has followed three top 6 finishes with a 2-7 start. The ESPN stat geeks were still researching that topic as Dantonio and the Spartans chartered back to East Lansing.
'He's Got To Make The Pick'
The game ended with a fourth-down sack, and another week of second-guess questions about that particular play call, because that’s the freshest failure in our memory. But the game was lost in the other 142 snaps that lead to the fourth-and-four predicament at the Illinois 15-yard line in the final seconds.
And it was the hot-knife-through-butter drive that Illinois staged in the final two minutes that burned Dantonio.
The Spartans had been selectively good on defense on this day. Eight of Illinois’ 12 drives ended in three-and-outs.
How does a team allow 31 freaking points while forcing three-and-outs on eight of 12 drives?
These 2016 Spartans found a way.
All of the other four drives netted touchdowns. There’s 28 points. The other three points came via a field goal, during a three-and-out drive. That field goal was set up by the game’s only turnover.
Just good enough to lose.
Still, the Spartans had a chance to protect a lead, and capture victory for the first time since Sept. 17. But Michigan State’s attempted defensive stand began with a pratfall.
Demetrious Cox, a talented but troubled player, bit on run fake and allowed a 22-yard pass in his quarter of the field.
That was merely the most important snap of the game to that point. It was the first play of Illinois’ final drive, after MSU had taken the lead on arguably the most emotional play of the year. And Cox served up a grave error, a coverage bust, and yielded a spark of momentum to the Illini.
Then came a pair of pass interference penalties by sophomore cornerback Tyson Smith, the seventh player to play cornerback in the last three weeks for the Spartans.
The second pass interference call was preposterous. Smith had the guy played perfectly, and was in front of the receiver, with neither hand nor arm making contact. It was a complete phantom call, befitting a ghostly season.
I offered Dantonio a chance to criticize the call and flirt with a $10,000 fine. Instead, Dantonio resorted to coaching.
“I can’t make those calls,” Dantonio said. “He (Smith) goes up and makes a play on the ball, he’s got to make the pick. He’s got an opportunity. He’s got both hands on the ball. I don’t know if he interfered or not. Those are not my calls. I just have to keep coaching.”
A bad bust. A bad pass interference. And then a bad call.
Michigan State coaches tried to simplify things at the end of the drive, sticking with base quarters coverage in the red zone. But this matched linebacker Chris Frey on an inside receiver when Illinois used a trips formation. The inner-most receiver beat Frey toward open greenery on a corner route for the go-ahead touchdown. That’s what Dantonio would call a structural error, not Frey’s fault, but a weakness of the defense, exploited by a matchup.
Frey has had a good season. But he’s an inside linebacker by trade. He isn’t an ideal fit for the slot-area ‘star’ linebacker. That’s why Illinois attacked him to the open area.
Jon Reschke was supposed to play that position. He’s physical AND fast, kind of a hybrid freak of sorts. But he was lost to injury in the Wisconsin game.
True sophomore Andrew Dowell is fast enough to play the coverage aspect of the position. But he wasn’t physical enough against the run when trying to host interior gaps as Resche’s replacement. Dowell ended up losing that job to Frey, who moved from one of the inside LB spots to ‘star’ linebacker when Ed Davis returned to health last week.
Frey has been stronger in the run gaps than Dowell was. But Illinois attacked his limitations in space. And they had time to do so because MSU’s pass rush hasn’t bothered a soul all year.
Is MSU’s overall scheme flawed? I don’t think so. But quarters coverage in the red zone should be able to adjust better, perhaps automatically, to the trips formation that Illinois used for the go-ahead touchdown.
In the old championship days of 2013 and ’14, MSU had enough experience and confidence in the back seven, and enough communicators on the field, to get things properly adjusted in the face of this type of threat.
This year, there seems to be a lot of covering-of-the-eyes and hoping for the best. There isn’t the experience or familiarity to adjust to formations and motions on the fly. They might get to that point some day, maybe next year, after some of these guys play hundreds of snaps together. But this year, it’s been a revolving door of hopefuls and understudies. MSU has sorted through defensive backs like tuxedo rentals.
Overall, Smith and Hicks weren’t bad against Illinois. Cox struggled.
Cox was paired with strong safety du jour, Matt Morrissey.
Morrissey saw the first extended playing time of his career. And why not? It was his turn. Last week, Grayson Miller saw extended time for the first time all year. The week before, Kenney Lyke took off his redshirt and played the only college football of his life to this point, in a loss at Maryland, along with David Dowell, who likewise played the only extended minutes of his college football life to this point.
Also, Khari Willis got a few swings at safety last week and the week before. He played very little in the previous weeks, yet barely got on the field on this day.
Montae Nicholson? The physical junior who played like an All-Big Ten candidate in September and the first week of October? He’s been in-and-out with an upper body injury. He saw a few snaps in this game, just like last week. He barely played against Maryland. He missed the Northwestern game.
That’s seven safeties who have taken a turn with the main four in the secondary over the last three or four games.
That’s 13 defensive backs, for four positions, over the last four months. It’s a loose-leaf secondary. And we wonder why they can’t get on the same page.
All of them are capable, hence the preseason claims that this was the deepest pool of talent Dantonio has had in the defensive backfield. But the coaches warned us with the August small print that they weren’t sure that the top four of this group were as good as past Spartan secondaries. What we didn’t know is that the Spartans would struggle all season trying to find a top four.
Maybe if Vayante Copeland, Cox, Nicholson and Hicks had stayed healthy all year, and learned to play off of one another, they might have grown tight.
Or maybe they were never going to reach the Spartan standard. Maybe some of them aren’t as committed and dedicated as past players.
Root Of Saturday's Problem
Many Spartans are playing with great heart. They play hurt. They play hard. They don’t always play smart. They don’t always play with proper cohesion. But they’re trying like mad, and they bleed, and they cry.
But we’re left wondering about the dedication of the team as a whole. Dantonio confirmed that tight end Jamal Lyles didn’t make the trip to Illinois due to a violation of team rules. We’re left wondering about others who didn’t make the trip, such as Copeland, and reserve defensive tackle Kyonta Stallworth.
Lyke didn’t make the trip. His exclusion wasn’t due to a rules violation.
“Have to play better,” Dantonio said of Lyke. “Have to make the travel team.”
They removed Lyke’s redshirt two years ago and put him with the first-string nickel defense. But last week, he couldn’t make the travel team. Odd.
Junior offensive tackle Dennis Finley didn’t travel. He started at offensive tackle 13 months ago before going down with a broken leg. Last spring, he seemed to be ahead of schedule in his recovery. He repped with the first and second string in the spring, and played all day in the Green-White Game.
But his progress tailed off, and he has failed to make a push for a role this year. He didn’t make the trip to Illinois.
“Didn’t make the travel team,” Dantonio said. “It’s a shame isn’t it?”
Dantonio said this with a tone of disapproval that we have never heard from him in regards to a player.
Finley plays offensive tackle. That was the only position at which MSU was out-classed on this day. Spartan offensive tackles had trouble all day with Illinois defensive ends.
Illinois defensive end Dawuane Smoot drew two holding penalties and posted a sack on Michigan State’s second possession, personally stalling the drive.
Smoot drew a holding penalty on right tackle Miguel Machado on MSU’s third possession of the day, halting that drive.
Machado’s replacement, Thiyo Lukusa, flinched for a false start on the fourth drive, causing that drive to stall.
MSU’s third drive of the second half stalled when David Beedle false started in fear of left end, Carroll Phillips. That turned a third-and-four into a third-and-nine and an eventual punt.
Another false start with 7:35 left in the game resulted in a fourth-and-eight in the red zone rather than a fourth-and-three. MSU had to settle for a field goal.
“A couple of times we were down there and had holding penalties and ended up third-and-30-plus,” Dantonio said. “Those are critical. You don’t even get a field goal on two of them. You’re down there, and penalties take us out of it. And on the others, you end up kicking field goals.
“You kick field goals, that sounds good. But that means there are missed opportunities in the red zone.”
On MSU’s final offensive play of the day, when Terry was sacked on fourth-and-two, Machado was driven back by Smoot again. Terry felt the rush, tried to step up, but was caught before he could get out.
Even if Terry had gotten free, Machado could have been flagged for holding Smoot.
The Spartans’ dominance in most statistical categories were trumped by 10 penalties for 89 yards (compared to two penalties for 10 yards for the Illini).
Aside from the bad pass interference call, these penalties weren’t random, chance violations. Most of them were a result of Illinois’ defensive end dominance against MSU offensive tackles. Illinois earned those yards.
Smoot is precisely the type of pass rusher MSU is lacking this year. And if truth be told from deep inside the Spartan football pentagon, Smoot should have been a Spartan.
He’s from the same super secret high school that produced Le’Veon Bell and Eric Smith, Groveport (Ohio) Madison. Dantonio is smuggler-in-chief at that school. And the Spartans knew about Smoot. But he had already committed to Illinois when the Spartans went looking for defensive ends in the summer of 2012.
He committed to the Illini five months after Illinois hired Tim Beckman as head coach. Beckman had been head coach at Toledo previously. He knew about Groveport Madison High, and Smoot. And when Beckman became the head man at Illinois, he made Smoot a priority. And he snuck his commitment. Smart man.
Did MSU try to flip Smoot’s commitment? Not as far as we can tell, although we seem to remember him working out as a linebacker at MSU’s camp as an Illinois commitment. Should the Spartans have tried to flip him? Based on Saturday’s performance, yes. But Dantonio hasn’t been big on trying to flip commitments from most Big Ten foes.
By now, the Smoot point is moot. And Beckman has long since been fired. Now, first-year head coach Lovie Smith is benefitting from Smoot’s edge rush talent.
And the Spartans rank dead last in the Big Ten in sacks.
The Spartans need a player like Smoot almost as badly as they needed a guy who could block a player like Smoot. That’s where Finley could have, should have fit in. But he hasn’t become part of this year’s docudrama.
Kodi Kieler played strong football against Maryland and Michigan. But he missed this game due to injury.
This resulted in Beedle, Machado, true freshman Lukusa and redshirt freshman Cole Chewins attempting to play the tackle positions. None of them succeeded, although Chewins and Lukusa had their moments.
“Kodi is a good player,” Dantonio said. “We have other guys and they need to grow up. We have a redshirt freshman playing and a true freshman playing and another redshirt freshman playing, but these are opportunities to grow up.”
Machado, a senior, was yanked from the field a few times. He missed a couple of expensive downfield blocks last week that might have cost MSU a couple of touchdown opportunities. As much as the coaches might have liked to have banished him to the bench, they had to keep putting him out there, because of limited choices.
And he was out there, for the final sack. But at least he made the trip.
As for the others who were home, we’re left wondering about a losing team, a fracturing culture. Cox, listed as a tri-captain, wasn’t at midfield for the coin toss. He didn’t play against Michigan last week, and it wasn’t due to injury.
Stop Grinding?
Shelton was asked how he felt about the players who were left home.
“Next man up,” said Shelton, an advertising major. “Guys have to come in and make a play. It’s Division I football. We’ve got guys to put in places. Regardless of who was here and who wasn’t here, you’ve just got to make the play.”
Comments like this, and plays like the one Shelton made on fourth down with 2:52 remaining, make Dantonio’s appreciation for him grow stronger, as this team tries to avoid growing weaker.
A helmet to the chin knocked Shelton out of the game during Michigan State’s final drive. The Illinois player who committed the infraction wasn’t flagged, wasn’t disqualified. Neither was the player who hit Tyler O’Connor on a QB sneak. Neither was the guy for Michigan who nailed Chris Frey last week.
And when officials looked at a replay which called into question whether Holmes caught a pass cleanly before advancing it to the Illinois 12-yard line with :27 seconds left, Dantonio figured they would rule against his team. And they did, rightly. The ball touched the ground.
“It seems like every play that is getting challenged these days, they seem to be overturned (against us),” Dantonio said.
That’s why he has so much appreciation for the Spartans who keep battling, especially the seniors who might be inclined to let up on their effort, with the physical pain growing more severe with each consecutive week of play, and the motivation for battle growing dim.
“If you take your foot off the accelerator, and you stop grinding, bad things happen,” Dantonio said. “Thus far, we’ve not done that.”
Thus far.
For the first time, he said “thus far” as though he’s not sure if it will continue to be that way.
“It’s like I told our football team, we’re on that road, we’re on a long road,” Dantonio said. “Everybody’s walking on that road. We might not all be right at the same time on that road but there’s a long line of us on that road and we’ve got to keep pushing, and we’ve got to come out the other end. And that’s the only way I know how to do it.”
He’s a very good man, with a great record of quotes, philosophy and direction. But he might be running out of things to tell this team after these losses. He is hoping they trust his lead, and believe in his forecast.
Shelton believes.
And when Dantonio re-entered the locker room after the interviews, he took inventory of his travelers, his soldiers. How many were remaining? How many could be counted on for the remaining trials?
There isn’t much to play for, in terms of 2016 championships and bowl games. But there’s honor to defend, an ethic to repair and a code uphold.
Josiah Price dropped the only pass of his college career in this game, on third down, in the end zone, with less than three minutes to play. At the time, it looked like it might cost MSU the game.
Shelton had Price’s back, covering for that mistake with the great catch in the back of the end zone.
“Guys are playing their hearts out and doing everything they can for this team, for this program and for this coaching staff and for the players,” Price said. “It gets frustrating, but we’ll be back, going to work hard and hopefully have a different outcome next week. That’s all we can do.”
Shelton wanted to do more in the final seconds, and make another mammoth catch. But the shot to the head prevented him from re-entering the game.
“It hurt me that I couldn’t be out there for my team as a senior, as a leader, as someone that the young kids look up to,” Shelton said. “As a competitor, you don’t like coming out of the game in crunch time situations. Obviously, I couldn’t because of the situation. I got hit in the head. As you can see, I’m clear as day now. But I couldn’t go back out.”
Team doctors wouldn’t let him.
Dantonio hadn’t had a chance to check up on Shelton, until he approached him at his locker, long after the game ended.
“Coach D cares about his players,” Shelton said. “He was just checking to make sure I was all right. I told him I was good.”
Then Dantonio leaned in and said, “We just gotta keep fighting, R.J. I’m 100 percent with you. Even if you’re at the highest of highs or the lowest of lows, you still have to keep fighting, regardless of where you’re at in life.”
Shelton nodded and hugged Dantonio back.
“He’s helping molding me into a man,” Shelton said before boarding the team bus. “He’s molding these young kids, letting them know that you just have to keep pushing, and that’s what he’s going to do and that’s what I’m going to do.”
Jim Comparoni | Editor
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - After the loss, after the fourth-down sack, after the handshakes, after the radio interview behind a thin curtain outside the locker room, after the 11-minute briefing with media in an antiquated cinder-block echo chamber adjacent to Zuppke Field at Memorial Stadium, Dantonio walked the hallway, past Sally Nogle, who gave him updates on the health of some fallen players, and he re-entered the locker room.
Twenty minutes earlier, he had addressed the team. They heard his words. Were the words still having an impact? He hoped so.
The players had lost again, this time 31-27 to an Illinois team that has been stuck in a multi-year football recession. Michigan State had been enjoying a nine-year bull market, up till this year’s historically stark downward turn.
The room was nearly empty when Dantonio approached RJ Shelton’s locker. Dantonio stopped and put his arm around the senior wide receiver, pulled him tight and said a few things.
Shelton should have been the hero of this game. His fourth-down, tightrope, 13-yard touchdown catch, thrown by nervous reliever Damion Terry, put the Spartans ahead 27-24 with 2:52 to play.
It was the best play of Shelton’s career. It was the first big play of Terry’s career. It was a catch that should have broken the losing streak, and set off an emotional release of happiness in this locker room.
Terry should have been a hero. Gerald Holmes should have been a hero. Michael Geiger should have been a hero.
But they all left the stadium in a silent bus, again.
The Part That Irked Dantonio The Most
When the Spartans won 40 of 45 games prior to this season, they won several by a touchdown or less. Many times, the opponent had the ball with a chance to tie or win on its last possession. Most times, they never came close. Not against the Spartan defenses of the Dantonio era.
This year’s Spartan defense has little in common with those Spartan defenses. And this year’s defense didn’t protect this lead at Memorial Stadium. Didn’t come close. That’s what seemed to irk Dantonio the most.
“I thought we came back and worked extremely hard to get back in front,” Dantonio said. “And then on the last series by the defense, we had a blown coverage, two pass interferences, and (gave up) another (play), structurally, on the coverage that we played for the touchdown.
“And then,” he said with disgust, “we had to go back down the field again.”
Had to go back down the field again? On offense? Had to answer a late touchdown with a second late touchdown?
That’s not the way these scripts are supposed to be written for this program. A quality team might need to win that way once every couple of years in a championship setting, but not in a sparsely-populated stadium at noon on the ESPN News channel against 2-6 Illinois.
Michigan State has been relegated to being a warm-up act, and the Spartans played like it. They tried hard. The effort was good. But once again, they were just good enough to lose. Too many loose screws, not physical enough. And Dantonio was a different kind of bothered by this one.
“I mean there’s two minutes to go in the game, and they score in five plays,” Dantonio said. “Or four? I don’t know. It was quick.”
Yes, four plays for Illinois to travel 75 yards, not counting the penalty plays. The Illini never faced a third down on the drive.
“Had a blown coverage, two pass interferences,” Dantonio said, repeating the issues like an angry fan at Reno’s or Tripper’s. “You have to get off the field.”
Leaky defense has been problem all year. Without a consistent defense, your team will be a consistent loser. This year, Michigan State has the worst defense of the Dantonio era. It’s as bad, statistically, as the defenses that helped get Bobby Williams and John L. Smith fired. Dantonio doesn’t have to worry about job security. Like he said a month ago, he has built tons of equity with the historic winning he brought to the program in his first nine years.
But it’s hard to find a free-fall such as this, at any period in college football history. The Spartans have gone from ending a season ranked No. 6 in the country, to a 2-7 start in the following year.
Michigan State entered this season as the only program in the country that had finished ranked in the top 6 in each of the past three years. Now, Michigan State is most likely the only program in history that has followed three top 6 finishes with a 2-7 start. The ESPN stat geeks were still researching that topic as Dantonio and the Spartans chartered back to East Lansing.
'He's Got To Make The Pick'
The game ended with a fourth-down sack, and another week of second-guess questions about that particular play call, because that’s the freshest failure in our memory. But the game was lost in the other 142 snaps that lead to the fourth-and-four predicament at the Illinois 15-yard line in the final seconds.
And it was the hot-knife-through-butter drive that Illinois staged in the final two minutes that burned Dantonio.
The Spartans had been selectively good on defense on this day. Eight of Illinois’ 12 drives ended in three-and-outs.
How does a team allow 31 freaking points while forcing three-and-outs on eight of 12 drives?
These 2016 Spartans found a way.
All of the other four drives netted touchdowns. There’s 28 points. The other three points came via a field goal, during a three-and-out drive. That field goal was set up by the game’s only turnover.
Just good enough to lose.
Still, the Spartans had a chance to protect a lead, and capture victory for the first time since Sept. 17. But Michigan State’s attempted defensive stand began with a pratfall.
Demetrious Cox, a talented but troubled player, bit on run fake and allowed a 22-yard pass in his quarter of the field.
That was merely the most important snap of the game to that point. It was the first play of Illinois’ final drive, after MSU had taken the lead on arguably the most emotional play of the year. And Cox served up a grave error, a coverage bust, and yielded a spark of momentum to the Illini.
Then came a pair of pass interference penalties by sophomore cornerback Tyson Smith, the seventh player to play cornerback in the last three weeks for the Spartans.
The second pass interference call was preposterous. Smith had the guy played perfectly, and was in front of the receiver, with neither hand nor arm making contact. It was a complete phantom call, befitting a ghostly season.
I offered Dantonio a chance to criticize the call and flirt with a $10,000 fine. Instead, Dantonio resorted to coaching.
“I can’t make those calls,” Dantonio said. “He (Smith) goes up and makes a play on the ball, he’s got to make the pick. He’s got an opportunity. He’s got both hands on the ball. I don’t know if he interfered or not. Those are not my calls. I just have to keep coaching.”
A bad bust. A bad pass interference. And then a bad call.
Michigan State coaches tried to simplify things at the end of the drive, sticking with base quarters coverage in the red zone. But this matched linebacker Chris Frey on an inside receiver when Illinois used a trips formation. The inner-most receiver beat Frey toward open greenery on a corner route for the go-ahead touchdown. That’s what Dantonio would call a structural error, not Frey’s fault, but a weakness of the defense, exploited by a matchup.
Frey has had a good season. But he’s an inside linebacker by trade. He isn’t an ideal fit for the slot-area ‘star’ linebacker. That’s why Illinois attacked him to the open area.
Jon Reschke was supposed to play that position. He’s physical AND fast, kind of a hybrid freak of sorts. But he was lost to injury in the Wisconsin game.
True sophomore Andrew Dowell is fast enough to play the coverage aspect of the position. But he wasn’t physical enough against the run when trying to host interior gaps as Resche’s replacement. Dowell ended up losing that job to Frey, who moved from one of the inside LB spots to ‘star’ linebacker when Ed Davis returned to health last week.
Frey has been stronger in the run gaps than Dowell was. But Illinois attacked his limitations in space. And they had time to do so because MSU’s pass rush hasn’t bothered a soul all year.
Is MSU’s overall scheme flawed? I don’t think so. But quarters coverage in the red zone should be able to adjust better, perhaps automatically, to the trips formation that Illinois used for the go-ahead touchdown.
In the old championship days of 2013 and ’14, MSU had enough experience and confidence in the back seven, and enough communicators on the field, to get things properly adjusted in the face of this type of threat.
This year, there seems to be a lot of covering-of-the-eyes and hoping for the best. There isn’t the experience or familiarity to adjust to formations and motions on the fly. They might get to that point some day, maybe next year, after some of these guys play hundreds of snaps together. But this year, it’s been a revolving door of hopefuls and understudies. MSU has sorted through defensive backs like tuxedo rentals.
Overall, Smith and Hicks weren’t bad against Illinois. Cox struggled.
Cox was paired with strong safety du jour, Matt Morrissey.
Morrissey saw the first extended playing time of his career. And why not? It was his turn. Last week, Grayson Miller saw extended time for the first time all year. The week before, Kenney Lyke took off his redshirt and played the only college football of his life to this point, in a loss at Maryland, along with David Dowell, who likewise played the only extended minutes of his college football life to this point.
Also, Khari Willis got a few swings at safety last week and the week before. He played very little in the previous weeks, yet barely got on the field on this day.
Montae Nicholson? The physical junior who played like an All-Big Ten candidate in September and the first week of October? He’s been in-and-out with an upper body injury. He saw a few snaps in this game, just like last week. He barely played against Maryland. He missed the Northwestern game.
That’s seven safeties who have taken a turn with the main four in the secondary over the last three or four games.
That’s 13 defensive backs, for four positions, over the last four months. It’s a loose-leaf secondary. And we wonder why they can’t get on the same page.
All of them are capable, hence the preseason claims that this was the deepest pool of talent Dantonio has had in the defensive backfield. But the coaches warned us with the August small print that they weren’t sure that the top four of this group were as good as past Spartan secondaries. What we didn’t know is that the Spartans would struggle all season trying to find a top four.
Maybe if Vayante Copeland, Cox, Nicholson and Hicks had stayed healthy all year, and learned to play off of one another, they might have grown tight.
Or maybe they were never going to reach the Spartan standard. Maybe some of them aren’t as committed and dedicated as past players.
Root Of Saturday's Problem
Many Spartans are playing with great heart. They play hurt. They play hard. They don’t always play smart. They don’t always play with proper cohesion. But they’re trying like mad, and they bleed, and they cry.
But we’re left wondering about the dedication of the team as a whole. Dantonio confirmed that tight end Jamal Lyles didn’t make the trip to Illinois due to a violation of team rules. We’re left wondering about others who didn’t make the trip, such as Copeland, and reserve defensive tackle Kyonta Stallworth.
Lyke didn’t make the trip. His exclusion wasn’t due to a rules violation.
“Have to play better,” Dantonio said of Lyke. “Have to make the travel team.”
They removed Lyke’s redshirt two years ago and put him with the first-string nickel defense. But last week, he couldn’t make the travel team. Odd.
Junior offensive tackle Dennis Finley didn’t travel. He started at offensive tackle 13 months ago before going down with a broken leg. Last spring, he seemed to be ahead of schedule in his recovery. He repped with the first and second string in the spring, and played all day in the Green-White Game.
But his progress tailed off, and he has failed to make a push for a role this year. He didn’t make the trip to Illinois.
“Didn’t make the travel team,” Dantonio said. “It’s a shame isn’t it?”
Dantonio said this with a tone of disapproval that we have never heard from him in regards to a player.
Finley plays offensive tackle. That was the only position at which MSU was out-classed on this day. Spartan offensive tackles had trouble all day with Illinois defensive ends.
Illinois defensive end Dawuane Smoot drew two holding penalties and posted a sack on Michigan State’s second possession, personally stalling the drive.
Smoot drew a holding penalty on right tackle Miguel Machado on MSU’s third possession of the day, halting that drive.
Machado’s replacement, Thiyo Lukusa, flinched for a false start on the fourth drive, causing that drive to stall.
MSU’s third drive of the second half stalled when David Beedle false started in fear of left end, Carroll Phillips. That turned a third-and-four into a third-and-nine and an eventual punt.
Another false start with 7:35 left in the game resulted in a fourth-and-eight in the red zone rather than a fourth-and-three. MSU had to settle for a field goal.
“A couple of times we were down there and had holding penalties and ended up third-and-30-plus,” Dantonio said. “Those are critical. You don’t even get a field goal on two of them. You’re down there, and penalties take us out of it. And on the others, you end up kicking field goals.
“You kick field goals, that sounds good. But that means there are missed opportunities in the red zone.”
On MSU’s final offensive play of the day, when Terry was sacked on fourth-and-two, Machado was driven back by Smoot again. Terry felt the rush, tried to step up, but was caught before he could get out.
Even if Terry had gotten free, Machado could have been flagged for holding Smoot.
The Spartans’ dominance in most statistical categories were trumped by 10 penalties for 89 yards (compared to two penalties for 10 yards for the Illini).
Aside from the bad pass interference call, these penalties weren’t random, chance violations. Most of them were a result of Illinois’ defensive end dominance against MSU offensive tackles. Illinois earned those yards.
Smoot is precisely the type of pass rusher MSU is lacking this year. And if truth be told from deep inside the Spartan football pentagon, Smoot should have been a Spartan.
He’s from the same super secret high school that produced Le’Veon Bell and Eric Smith, Groveport (Ohio) Madison. Dantonio is smuggler-in-chief at that school. And the Spartans knew about Smoot. But he had already committed to Illinois when the Spartans went looking for defensive ends in the summer of 2012.
He committed to the Illini five months after Illinois hired Tim Beckman as head coach. Beckman had been head coach at Toledo previously. He knew about Groveport Madison High, and Smoot. And when Beckman became the head man at Illinois, he made Smoot a priority. And he snuck his commitment. Smart man.
Did MSU try to flip Smoot’s commitment? Not as far as we can tell, although we seem to remember him working out as a linebacker at MSU’s camp as an Illinois commitment. Should the Spartans have tried to flip him? Based on Saturday’s performance, yes. But Dantonio hasn’t been big on trying to flip commitments from most Big Ten foes.
By now, the Smoot point is moot. And Beckman has long since been fired. Now, first-year head coach Lovie Smith is benefitting from Smoot’s edge rush talent.
And the Spartans rank dead last in the Big Ten in sacks.
The Spartans need a player like Smoot almost as badly as they needed a guy who could block a player like Smoot. That’s where Finley could have, should have fit in. But he hasn’t become part of this year’s docudrama.
Kodi Kieler played strong football against Maryland and Michigan. But he missed this game due to injury.
This resulted in Beedle, Machado, true freshman Lukusa and redshirt freshman Cole Chewins attempting to play the tackle positions. None of them succeeded, although Chewins and Lukusa had their moments.
“Kodi is a good player,” Dantonio said. “We have other guys and they need to grow up. We have a redshirt freshman playing and a true freshman playing and another redshirt freshman playing, but these are opportunities to grow up.”
Machado, a senior, was yanked from the field a few times. He missed a couple of expensive downfield blocks last week that might have cost MSU a couple of touchdown opportunities. As much as the coaches might have liked to have banished him to the bench, they had to keep putting him out there, because of limited choices.
And he was out there, for the final sack. But at least he made the trip.
As for the others who were home, we’re left wondering about a losing team, a fracturing culture. Cox, listed as a tri-captain, wasn’t at midfield for the coin toss. He didn’t play against Michigan last week, and it wasn’t due to injury.
Stop Grinding?
Shelton was asked how he felt about the players who were left home.
“Next man up,” said Shelton, an advertising major. “Guys have to come in and make a play. It’s Division I football. We’ve got guys to put in places. Regardless of who was here and who wasn’t here, you’ve just got to make the play.”
Comments like this, and plays like the one Shelton made on fourth down with 2:52 remaining, make Dantonio’s appreciation for him grow stronger, as this team tries to avoid growing weaker.
A helmet to the chin knocked Shelton out of the game during Michigan State’s final drive. The Illinois player who committed the infraction wasn’t flagged, wasn’t disqualified. Neither was the player who hit Tyler O’Connor on a QB sneak. Neither was the guy for Michigan who nailed Chris Frey last week.
And when officials looked at a replay which called into question whether Holmes caught a pass cleanly before advancing it to the Illinois 12-yard line with :27 seconds left, Dantonio figured they would rule against his team. And they did, rightly. The ball touched the ground.
“It seems like every play that is getting challenged these days, they seem to be overturned (against us),” Dantonio said.
That’s why he has so much appreciation for the Spartans who keep battling, especially the seniors who might be inclined to let up on their effort, with the physical pain growing more severe with each consecutive week of play, and the motivation for battle growing dim.
“If you take your foot off the accelerator, and you stop grinding, bad things happen,” Dantonio said. “Thus far, we’ve not done that.”
Thus far.
For the first time, he said “thus far” as though he’s not sure if it will continue to be that way.
“It’s like I told our football team, we’re on that road, we’re on a long road,” Dantonio said. “Everybody’s walking on that road. We might not all be right at the same time on that road but there’s a long line of us on that road and we’ve got to keep pushing, and we’ve got to come out the other end. And that’s the only way I know how to do it.”
He’s a very good man, with a great record of quotes, philosophy and direction. But he might be running out of things to tell this team after these losses. He is hoping they trust his lead, and believe in his forecast.
Shelton believes.
And when Dantonio re-entered the locker room after the interviews, he took inventory of his travelers, his soldiers. How many were remaining? How many could be counted on for the remaining trials?
There isn’t much to play for, in terms of 2016 championships and bowl games. But there’s honor to defend, an ethic to repair and a code uphold.
Josiah Price dropped the only pass of his college career in this game, on third down, in the end zone, with less than three minutes to play. At the time, it looked like it might cost MSU the game.
Shelton had Price’s back, covering for that mistake with the great catch in the back of the end zone.
“Guys are playing their hearts out and doing everything they can for this team, for this program and for this coaching staff and for the players,” Price said. “It gets frustrating, but we’ll be back, going to work hard and hopefully have a different outcome next week. That’s all we can do.”
Shelton wanted to do more in the final seconds, and make another mammoth catch. But the shot to the head prevented him from re-entering the game.
“It hurt me that I couldn’t be out there for my team as a senior, as a leader, as someone that the young kids look up to,” Shelton said. “As a competitor, you don’t like coming out of the game in crunch time situations. Obviously, I couldn’t because of the situation. I got hit in the head. As you can see, I’m clear as day now. But I couldn’t go back out.”
Team doctors wouldn’t let him.
Dantonio hadn’t had a chance to check up on Shelton, until he approached him at his locker, long after the game ended.
“Coach D cares about his players,” Shelton said. “He was just checking to make sure I was all right. I told him I was good.”
Then Dantonio leaned in and said, “We just gotta keep fighting, R.J. I’m 100 percent with you. Even if you’re at the highest of highs or the lowest of lows, you still have to keep fighting, regardless of where you’re at in life.”
Shelton nodded and hugged Dantonio back.
“He’s helping molding me into a man,” Shelton said before boarding the team bus. “He’s molding these young kids, letting them know that you just have to keep pushing, and that’s what he’s going to do and that’s what I’m going to do.”
