The 3-2-1: On Winter Football
Jim Comparoni | Editor
EAST LANSING - Three things we learned during Mark Dantonio’s press conference on Thursday, two questions and one prediction:
THREE THINGS WE LEARNED:
1. No staff changes.
Dantonio indicated near the end of the season that there would be no shake-ups on his coaching staff. He reiterated it on Thursday.
“In terms of our staff, there will be no changes made on my behalf on our staff,” he said. “It's the same staff we won the Big Ten championship with that everybody was celebrating last year. It's the same staff that won the Rose Bowl basically, same staff that went to the Cotton Bowl that had record-setting numbers in '14, and et cetera, et cetera.
“It's all inclusive. Everything is all inclusive. Doesn't mean we fire players or anything like that if they miss a tackle. So there will be no changes in that area. There will be no changes in terms of who's coaching what.”
My Take: This news didn’t surprise anyone, but it set off a storm of arguments on sports talk radio, and internet message boards, including SpartanMag’s Underground Bunker.
My opinion? Michigan State spent 40 years failing to establish a consistent, championship-level program. Dantonio finally got it done, with some high peaks between 2009 and 2015.
This season was horrible. Horrible players, horrible playing, horrible coaching, horrible results.
Do I believe MSU needs to sweep out some coaches, despite the fact that they are the only coaches who have ever won consistently at a championship level at Michigan State in my lifetime? Or am I more inclined to look at Dantonio’s list of 15 reasons why 2016 went down the drain and give them time to map out some solutions?
I’ll opt for the latter.
Forty years of football purgatory in East Lansing should help us realize we’re not talking about the Brazilian national soccer team here. Winning at Michigan State is not easy. And when a group of coaches has bucked a 40-year trend, I would be hesitant to dismiss the lead elements that ushered in the legendary successes of 2013, ’14 and ’15.
I think the wise choice is to stay the course and if you have another bad year in 2017, then you take a closer look at major alterations. But if you make major alterations now and have a bad year in 2017, then you might as well be Rich Rodriguez.
When Dantonio won 40 out of 45 games, he credited chemistry, continuity and senior leadership as the main building blocks of success. Let him try to rebuild with those three elements again, with continuity being the applicable piece in this argument.
Some people think the program is dying and/or dead. Those people might be proven right. But changing jockeys right now isn’t the right move toward repairing things. The right move is to first try to repair with the people who built it in the first place, if in fact the lead architect (Dantonio) believes that’s the right path.
He knows more about this building stuff than we do. It would be ridiculous for me to pretend I knew of a better way.
Most people that I talk to that want sweeping changes have no names in mind for successors. They just want change, almost for the sake of change, even if its a change to the nameless and faceless. These are emotional reactions, not practical ones.
Do I think coaches have been told within the walls of the Skandalaris Center that they had better damn well pick it up a few notches? Yes I do. Do I think there are coaches on staff that need to do a better job? Absolutely.
Does Dantonio think they’ll come through? Yes he does. I can’t argue with that, right now.
2. Montae Nicholson has not yet made a decision about next year.
Sources have told SpartanMag.com that Nicholson, a junior safety, is considering forgoing his senior year in order to enter the NFL Draft.
I asked Dantonio about Nicholson's status following Thursday's press conference.
Dantonio told me: “Like all of our juniors, they're getting evaluated. They're going through that pre-evaluation process with the NFL. They put their name in there to see what comes back. Everybody's done that. Shilique (Calhoun) did that, Connor (Cook) did that. They get evaluated and and wait and see what comes back."
Nicholson has not made a final decision?
"No final decision," Dantonio said.
Would Dantonio welcome him back in 2017?
"Absolutely," Dantonio said.
Nicholson started as a sophomore and junior at Michigan State in 2015 and '16, losing his starting status briefly in 2015 due to performance issues before regaining the job in the final month of the season. He started 10 games this fall, missing two games with an arm injury.
Nicholson ranked second on the team in tackles with 86.
3. Dantonio say sophomore Brian Lewerke is man to beat for the quarterback job with the completion begins (or resumes) in the spring (story by Paul Konyndyk).
3a. Dantonio penned a list of 15 main reasons for the failures of 2016.
“There are tangible things and there are intangible things,” he said.
Most of them are areas that were discussed and covered during the season. He listed only 10 of them on Thursday:
1. Turnover margin.
“Turnover margin usually allows you to win or make up deficiencies that you have,” he said. “We've led the Big Ten in turnover margin the last three years. Not this year. We ended up minus five.
2. Shortage of sacks.
Michigan State ranked dead last in the Big Ten in sacks with only 11. The 13th-place team in the Big Ten (Rutgers) had 21, dwarfing the last-place Spartans in this category.
“I think one out of every six sacks in the NFL results in a caused fumble,” Dantonio said. “Certainly makes it more difficult to move down the field. Sacks create pressure. It's not that we weren't there. We're there sometimes but guys get out of sacks or whatever the situation.”
3. Allowing big plays.
“That (lack of pressure on the QB) lead, I believe, to the big plays down the field defensively,” Dantonio said. “If you get (the quarterback) off the dime, off their intended area that they want to pass from, their percentages go down, way down. But if you allow the quarterback too much time or if you let him get out of trouble, if the quarterback creates or makes big plays down the field or whatever the case, you suffer.”
4. Red zone scoring.
“Missed opportunities, kicking too many field goals,” Dantonio said. “We’re leading in every football game, and inevitably when you look at them, too many missed opportunities in the red zone. You look at Michigan, at the Penn State game, too many opportunities missed in the red zone, and kicking field goals or not getting anything out of them.
“You look at the red zone at the two-point conversion against Ohio State, opportunity to at least go ahead in the game with 4:41 to go. But missed opportunities.”
5. Lack of senior productivity.
“You've got to ask yourself the intangible things: Did our seniors have their very, very best years? And that's up and down,” Dantonio said. “You have to have your best year as a senior if you're going to have a group of people moving forward to create great moments.
“Every football team is usually a senior-led team. I point down the road (at Michigan) and their seniors are having the best years of their careers. And you see the results of that. And that's a positive for them.”
6. Failing to win the fourth quarter.
“I don't think we ever stopped competing, but we didn't win the fourth quarter,” Dantonio said. “That's a tangible aspect of it. We were leading every game, either at halftime or at some point in the game, sometimes at the end of three quarters, but we didn't win the fourth quarter.”
Dantonio didn’t want to drag on and tell us all 15.
But he briefly mentioned:
7. Technique.
8. Leadership.
“You've got to have productivity to be a leader,” Dantonio said. “So as you go through this, your quarterback is knocked out of the game, with a foot, missed two games. We had some changes in there, giving other people some opportunities and he (Lewerke) did an outstanding job, an outstanding job in terms of leadership.
“You got our linebacker, Riley Bullough, who is out for three weeks with a fractured scapula, and then he comes back and he plays his first game and in the first quarter gets a helmet to helmet shot (and is ejected). So he's out basically four games. Those are tough situations. Both those guys raised up and led.
“Our senior group, guys are hurt, and they've got to have their best year but they’re in and out throughout the entire time.
“When you lose a football game, it's tough on everybody. It's tough on our captains. It's tough on your senior leadership. They did a tremendous job. If you're at practice every practice, they did a tremendous job. Practices are very competitive, they were very energetic. Had some fights. It's all good.
“So we got ourselves ready to play and our guys continued to work.”
Dantonio tried to end on a positive when talking about leadership, but clearly felt the team as a whole was running short on that intangible.
9. Leadership at the coaching level.
“It starts with me, but it trickles all the way down through our football program,” he said. “When you talk about leadership, you're talking about the head football coach, too. I have to walk in there every day, too, and make sure that I'm doing the best job that I can as well as our coaches.
“So we did what we could do. At the end of the day you’ve got to win. We had opportunities to win in a lot of games.”
10. Injuries.
The Spartans had 44 different starters in 2016. There weren’t a lot of season-ending injuries, but there was a rash of short-term injuries which upset the continuity of position groups.
“Quarterbacks obviously are a big part of everything and that's not to lay everything on our quarterback position, but all you’ve got to say is we played three quarterbacks this year. What would you expect? And all three of them were injury-related. Somebody got knocked out here, knocked out there. So that's not occurred since we've been here.
“We were hit with defensive linemen last year with four guys leaving due to graduation. And then we lost four other guys. You lose eight defensive linemen, what do you expect?
“Malik (McDowell) struggled with injuries all season long. (Demetrius) Cooper had injuries as well, so you’ve got guys that were not playing at their fullest. Eight of them weren't there.
“Ed Davis had a knee surgery in May. He was rehabbing back from that. He never really could get back to what his former self was. And he was a phenomenal football player.”
He didn’t mention losing defensive starters Vayante Copeland and Jon Reschke to season-ending injuries.
“You’ve got to be able to maintain that excellence that we've had there,” Dantonio said. “There's a lot of positions that are like that.”
TWO QUESTIONS:
1. What is being done RIGHT NOW to begin to fix the problems of 2016?
“The basic thought process is that we'll restart this,” he said. “We're using this time right now to basically identify our leaders on our football team, establish who they are, look at our personnel, make sure our personnel is set in terms of what we need to continue to recruit, what we have coming back, things of that nature. Develop our chemistry, our attitude, our discipline, refocus on that aspect of it.”
Attitude and chemistry are things that are developed behind the scenes. Coaches swear that if attitude and chemistry aren’t good, and - worse yet - if they are poor, then they will manifest themselves in poor play at the line of scrimmage, in the backfield, in the secondary, on special teams, basically everywhere on the field.
Dantonio didn’t acknowledge problems with chemistry or attitude DURING the season. And Dantonio didn’t directly acknowledge it as a problem during Thursday’s press conference. But now that the season is over, his stating that there is a need to refocus on the development of chemistry, attitude and discipline speaks volumes.
Dantonio used to say MSU won with people, won largely with team-oriented intangibles. In 2016, the Spartans didn’t merely lack in those areas, sources say that Michigan State was flat-out bankrupt in those areas - and Dantonio’s listing this category high on the winter season to-do list is further indication that much work is indeed needed in this area.
2. What about changes in x’s and o’s, and on-field schematic philosophy?
Dantonio said those things are under review.
“That's always the big question: Do you change something that's been very successful for the sake of change or do you change something that needs to be changed because it wasn't successful this year or do you change something because it just needs to be changed?” Dantonio said. “And so there's a combination probably of all that as we move forward.
“I think the most important thing is that we identify problems, we focus on the solution, we solve the problem. And that's what we've always done.
“When you look at techniques, when you look at certain schemes, are you benefitting from the scheme that you're currently running whether it's defensively, offensively or special teams? Do you have to change things?
“All these things go into play when you're sitting here as we're sitting here. And that's why we need to take a very pragmatic approach to what's happened and recalculate where we're going and get there. And that's what we'll do.
“We look at our scheme, what we're doing, self-scout ourselves, self-scout our opponents, look at some of the things that we have dealt with this past season, what we can benefit from looking at, learn from, those type of things, and then move forward.”
This type of self-scout usually takes place after the bowl game. And it usually takes place with fewer crises to solve.
“So we are starting earlier than we normally start,” Dantonio said. “Usually we start doing these type of things in February with a little bit more smiley faces around us, but here we are in December dealing with this. So it's part of the situation moving forward.
“We have young players. We have good football players on this football team. We got people we can identify as play-makers on this team. We just have got to grow. Growth took place last year and it'll continue to take place.
“We've taken a step back. Now what's very important to me is that we put our foot in the ground and plant our feet in the ground and drive forward, and that's what we will do.
“And, to be honest with you, I've taken the approach of hey I'm a new coach coming in here, gonna fix the things that other guy did last year. And that's how I'm going to take the approach. I'm going to take the approach that I'm going to get this fixed. And this will be fixed.”
ONE PREDICTION:
1. A lot of sources have indicated that Nicholson is leaning heavily toward forgoing his senior year and opting for the NFL Draft. But I could see in Dantonio’s eyes on Thursday that the head coach wants him back. I’m not an NFL scout, but I think Nicholson could take a big jump with one more year in the program. I think Dantonio wants to get through to Nicholson and bring him back and I suspect that ultimately Nicholson will listen to Dantonio, after he receives what I am guessing will be a less-than-stellar review from NFL scouts, and return for his senior year. Just a hunch.
Edit
Jim Comparoni | Editor
EAST LANSING - Three things we learned during Mark Dantonio’s press conference on Thursday, two questions and one prediction:
THREE THINGS WE LEARNED:
1. No staff changes.
Dantonio indicated near the end of the season that there would be no shake-ups on his coaching staff. He reiterated it on Thursday.
“In terms of our staff, there will be no changes made on my behalf on our staff,” he said. “It's the same staff we won the Big Ten championship with that everybody was celebrating last year. It's the same staff that won the Rose Bowl basically, same staff that went to the Cotton Bowl that had record-setting numbers in '14, and et cetera, et cetera.
“It's all inclusive. Everything is all inclusive. Doesn't mean we fire players or anything like that if they miss a tackle. So there will be no changes in that area. There will be no changes in terms of who's coaching what.”
My Take: This news didn’t surprise anyone, but it set off a storm of arguments on sports talk radio, and internet message boards, including SpartanMag’s Underground Bunker.
My opinion? Michigan State spent 40 years failing to establish a consistent, championship-level program. Dantonio finally got it done, with some high peaks between 2009 and 2015.
This season was horrible. Horrible players, horrible playing, horrible coaching, horrible results.
Do I believe MSU needs to sweep out some coaches, despite the fact that they are the only coaches who have ever won consistently at a championship level at Michigan State in my lifetime? Or am I more inclined to look at Dantonio’s list of 15 reasons why 2016 went down the drain and give them time to map out some solutions?
I’ll opt for the latter.
Forty years of football purgatory in East Lansing should help us realize we’re not talking about the Brazilian national soccer team here. Winning at Michigan State is not easy. And when a group of coaches has bucked a 40-year trend, I would be hesitant to dismiss the lead elements that ushered in the legendary successes of 2013, ’14 and ’15.
I think the wise choice is to stay the course and if you have another bad year in 2017, then you take a closer look at major alterations. But if you make major alterations now and have a bad year in 2017, then you might as well be Rich Rodriguez.
When Dantonio won 40 out of 45 games, he credited chemistry, continuity and senior leadership as the main building blocks of success. Let him try to rebuild with those three elements again, with continuity being the applicable piece in this argument.
Some people think the program is dying and/or dead. Those people might be proven right. But changing jockeys right now isn’t the right move toward repairing things. The right move is to first try to repair with the people who built it in the first place, if in fact the lead architect (Dantonio) believes that’s the right path.
He knows more about this building stuff than we do. It would be ridiculous for me to pretend I knew of a better way.
Most people that I talk to that want sweeping changes have no names in mind for successors. They just want change, almost for the sake of change, even if its a change to the nameless and faceless. These are emotional reactions, not practical ones.
Do I think coaches have been told within the walls of the Skandalaris Center that they had better damn well pick it up a few notches? Yes I do. Do I think there are coaches on staff that need to do a better job? Absolutely.
Does Dantonio think they’ll come through? Yes he does. I can’t argue with that, right now.
2. Montae Nicholson has not yet made a decision about next year.
Sources have told SpartanMag.com that Nicholson, a junior safety, is considering forgoing his senior year in order to enter the NFL Draft.
I asked Dantonio about Nicholson's status following Thursday's press conference.
Dantonio told me: “Like all of our juniors, they're getting evaluated. They're going through that pre-evaluation process with the NFL. They put their name in there to see what comes back. Everybody's done that. Shilique (Calhoun) did that, Connor (Cook) did that. They get evaluated and and wait and see what comes back."
Nicholson has not made a final decision?
"No final decision," Dantonio said.
Would Dantonio welcome him back in 2017?
"Absolutely," Dantonio said.
Nicholson started as a sophomore and junior at Michigan State in 2015 and '16, losing his starting status briefly in 2015 due to performance issues before regaining the job in the final month of the season. He started 10 games this fall, missing two games with an arm injury.
Nicholson ranked second on the team in tackles with 86.
3. Dantonio say sophomore Brian Lewerke is man to beat for the quarterback job with the completion begins (or resumes) in the spring (story by Paul Konyndyk).
3a. Dantonio penned a list of 15 main reasons for the failures of 2016.
“There are tangible things and there are intangible things,” he said.
Most of them are areas that were discussed and covered during the season. He listed only 10 of them on Thursday:
1. Turnover margin.
“Turnover margin usually allows you to win or make up deficiencies that you have,” he said. “We've led the Big Ten in turnover margin the last three years. Not this year. We ended up minus five.
2. Shortage of sacks.
Michigan State ranked dead last in the Big Ten in sacks with only 11. The 13th-place team in the Big Ten (Rutgers) had 21, dwarfing the last-place Spartans in this category.
“I think one out of every six sacks in the NFL results in a caused fumble,” Dantonio said. “Certainly makes it more difficult to move down the field. Sacks create pressure. It's not that we weren't there. We're there sometimes but guys get out of sacks or whatever the situation.”
3. Allowing big plays.
“That (lack of pressure on the QB) lead, I believe, to the big plays down the field defensively,” Dantonio said. “If you get (the quarterback) off the dime, off their intended area that they want to pass from, their percentages go down, way down. But if you allow the quarterback too much time or if you let him get out of trouble, if the quarterback creates or makes big plays down the field or whatever the case, you suffer.”
4. Red zone scoring.
“Missed opportunities, kicking too many field goals,” Dantonio said. “We’re leading in every football game, and inevitably when you look at them, too many missed opportunities in the red zone. You look at Michigan, at the Penn State game, too many opportunities missed in the red zone, and kicking field goals or not getting anything out of them.
“You look at the red zone at the two-point conversion against Ohio State, opportunity to at least go ahead in the game with 4:41 to go. But missed opportunities.”
5. Lack of senior productivity.
“You've got to ask yourself the intangible things: Did our seniors have their very, very best years? And that's up and down,” Dantonio said. “You have to have your best year as a senior if you're going to have a group of people moving forward to create great moments.
“Every football team is usually a senior-led team. I point down the road (at Michigan) and their seniors are having the best years of their careers. And you see the results of that. And that's a positive for them.”
6. Failing to win the fourth quarter.
“I don't think we ever stopped competing, but we didn't win the fourth quarter,” Dantonio said. “That's a tangible aspect of it. We were leading every game, either at halftime or at some point in the game, sometimes at the end of three quarters, but we didn't win the fourth quarter.”
Dantonio didn’t want to drag on and tell us all 15.
But he briefly mentioned:
7. Technique.
8. Leadership.
“You've got to have productivity to be a leader,” Dantonio said. “So as you go through this, your quarterback is knocked out of the game, with a foot, missed two games. We had some changes in there, giving other people some opportunities and he (Lewerke) did an outstanding job, an outstanding job in terms of leadership.
“You got our linebacker, Riley Bullough, who is out for three weeks with a fractured scapula, and then he comes back and he plays his first game and in the first quarter gets a helmet to helmet shot (and is ejected). So he's out basically four games. Those are tough situations. Both those guys raised up and led.
“Our senior group, guys are hurt, and they've got to have their best year but they’re in and out throughout the entire time.
“When you lose a football game, it's tough on everybody. It's tough on our captains. It's tough on your senior leadership. They did a tremendous job. If you're at practice every practice, they did a tremendous job. Practices are very competitive, they were very energetic. Had some fights. It's all good.
“So we got ourselves ready to play and our guys continued to work.”
Dantonio tried to end on a positive when talking about leadership, but clearly felt the team as a whole was running short on that intangible.
9. Leadership at the coaching level.
“It starts with me, but it trickles all the way down through our football program,” he said. “When you talk about leadership, you're talking about the head football coach, too. I have to walk in there every day, too, and make sure that I'm doing the best job that I can as well as our coaches.
“So we did what we could do. At the end of the day you’ve got to win. We had opportunities to win in a lot of games.”
10. Injuries.
The Spartans had 44 different starters in 2016. There weren’t a lot of season-ending injuries, but there was a rash of short-term injuries which upset the continuity of position groups.
“Quarterbacks obviously are a big part of everything and that's not to lay everything on our quarterback position, but all you’ve got to say is we played three quarterbacks this year. What would you expect? And all three of them were injury-related. Somebody got knocked out here, knocked out there. So that's not occurred since we've been here.
“We were hit with defensive linemen last year with four guys leaving due to graduation. And then we lost four other guys. You lose eight defensive linemen, what do you expect?
“Malik (McDowell) struggled with injuries all season long. (Demetrius) Cooper had injuries as well, so you’ve got guys that were not playing at their fullest. Eight of them weren't there.
“Ed Davis had a knee surgery in May. He was rehabbing back from that. He never really could get back to what his former self was. And he was a phenomenal football player.”
He didn’t mention losing defensive starters Vayante Copeland and Jon Reschke to season-ending injuries.
“You’ve got to be able to maintain that excellence that we've had there,” Dantonio said. “There's a lot of positions that are like that.”
TWO QUESTIONS:
1. What is being done RIGHT NOW to begin to fix the problems of 2016?
“The basic thought process is that we'll restart this,” he said. “We're using this time right now to basically identify our leaders on our football team, establish who they are, look at our personnel, make sure our personnel is set in terms of what we need to continue to recruit, what we have coming back, things of that nature. Develop our chemistry, our attitude, our discipline, refocus on that aspect of it.”
Attitude and chemistry are things that are developed behind the scenes. Coaches swear that if attitude and chemistry aren’t good, and - worse yet - if they are poor, then they will manifest themselves in poor play at the line of scrimmage, in the backfield, in the secondary, on special teams, basically everywhere on the field.
Dantonio didn’t acknowledge problems with chemistry or attitude DURING the season. And Dantonio didn’t directly acknowledge it as a problem during Thursday’s press conference. But now that the season is over, his stating that there is a need to refocus on the development of chemistry, attitude and discipline speaks volumes.
Dantonio used to say MSU won with people, won largely with team-oriented intangibles. In 2016, the Spartans didn’t merely lack in those areas, sources say that Michigan State was flat-out bankrupt in those areas - and Dantonio’s listing this category high on the winter season to-do list is further indication that much work is indeed needed in this area.
2. What about changes in x’s and o’s, and on-field schematic philosophy?
Dantonio said those things are under review.
“That's always the big question: Do you change something that's been very successful for the sake of change or do you change something that needs to be changed because it wasn't successful this year or do you change something because it just needs to be changed?” Dantonio said. “And so there's a combination probably of all that as we move forward.
“I think the most important thing is that we identify problems, we focus on the solution, we solve the problem. And that's what we've always done.
“When you look at techniques, when you look at certain schemes, are you benefitting from the scheme that you're currently running whether it's defensively, offensively or special teams? Do you have to change things?
“All these things go into play when you're sitting here as we're sitting here. And that's why we need to take a very pragmatic approach to what's happened and recalculate where we're going and get there. And that's what we'll do.
“We look at our scheme, what we're doing, self-scout ourselves, self-scout our opponents, look at some of the things that we have dealt with this past season, what we can benefit from looking at, learn from, those type of things, and then move forward.”
This type of self-scout usually takes place after the bowl game. And it usually takes place with fewer crises to solve.
“So we are starting earlier than we normally start,” Dantonio said. “Usually we start doing these type of things in February with a little bit more smiley faces around us, but here we are in December dealing with this. So it's part of the situation moving forward.
“We have young players. We have good football players on this football team. We got people we can identify as play-makers on this team. We just have got to grow. Growth took place last year and it'll continue to take place.
“We've taken a step back. Now what's very important to me is that we put our foot in the ground and plant our feet in the ground and drive forward, and that's what we will do.
“And, to be honest with you, I've taken the approach of hey I'm a new coach coming in here, gonna fix the things that other guy did last year. And that's how I'm going to take the approach. I'm going to take the approach that I'm going to get this fixed. And this will be fixed.”
ONE PREDICTION:
1. A lot of sources have indicated that Nicholson is leaning heavily toward forgoing his senior year and opting for the NFL Draft. But I could see in Dantonio’s eyes on Thursday that the head coach wants him back. I’m not an NFL scout, but I think Nicholson could take a big jump with one more year in the program. I think Dantonio wants to get through to Nicholson and bring him back and I suspect that ultimately Nicholson will listen to Dantonio, after he receives what I am guessing will be a less-than-stellar review from NFL scouts, and return for his senior year. Just a hunch.
Edit
