Sucked in by the vortex of winning
Posted by kj on Saturday, October 11th, 2008
I’ve noticed that my football-related posts tend to be much more pessimistic in tone than my basketball posts. I’m not sure why that is. The obvious explanation is that the MSU football team has a long history of disappointing us after getting our hopes up. I think it also has something to do with the fact that I watch a lot less college football than I do college basketball, so I tend to be unrealistic about how good a team should be to deserve being ranked.
Regardless, chalk me up as a believer today. I vow to say nothing but positive things in this game recap. Big picture:
- Six wins are now in hand.
- Seven wins and a bowl game would seem to be a foregone conclusion.
- Eight wins is a reasonable expectation at this point.
- Nine wins isn’t out of the question. (Did I hear someone say “New Years Day bowl”?)
Oh, and we now have four more wins than that school down the road in Ann Arbor.
This was clearly MSU’s best all-round performance of the season–controlling a game against a ranked opponent on the road from start to finish. The first glance at the box score raises the concern that the Wildcats outgained us by 176 yards. But much of that was due to their inferior average field position. MSU held Northwestern to just 4.9 yards per play on the day.
C.J. Bacher threw for 283 yards, but it took him 61 attempts to do it. Of Bacher’s 34 completions, only 9 went for more than 10 yards. And, believe it or not, only one of those pass completions went for 20 yards or more. The secondary and the linebackers held their ground all afternoon, allowing short gains but nothing more. Linebackers Ryan Allison, Eric Gordon, and Greg Jones each had 11 tackles.
Michigan State once again benefited from turnovers by its opponent, but at this point I think we have to start to say those turnovers are a function more of MSU’s defensive ability than of random chance. MSU has now forced 16 turnovers in 7 games. (And we’ve only turned the ball over six times on offense.) Both interceptions today looked to be a function of MSU defensive backs knowing just when to break on the ball to take advantage of Bacher’s relatively weak arm strength.
On offense, Northwestern did as good a job as it could have hoped to in containing Javon Ringer. He finished with an average of just 3.5 yards/carry (124 yards on 35 carries). But Brian Hoyer made Northwestern pay for stacking the box. Hoyer played flawlessly, completing 14 of 20 pass attempts (70.0%) for 169 yards (8.5 yards/attempt) and two well-executed touchdown throws.
And, last but not least, our special teams play was superb. Brett Swenson was perfect once again, Aaron Bates pinned Northwestern deep in key situations, and the return game set the stage for the early lead that would never be seriously threatened. (Note: As great as Javon Ringer is, it’s clearly much preferable to have a guy returning kicks who can go all out with fresh legs on every return.) Plus there was the heady fair catch on the onside kick attempt.
Expectations do still need to be reasonable going forward. Of our five remaining games, two are against BCS-quality teams and two are against teams that, as subpar as they’ve looked on the field, still probably have more overall talent than we do.
Sorry, that was just a tad on the negative side. I said I wouldn’t do that. Here’s the bottom line: Today’s win puts MSU in a position where everything from here on out is gravy. (Well, losing to Purdue would be bad, and you’d hate to lose a game to a team that had recently lost to a 1-4 MAC team. But you get my point.)
Filed in game recap9 responses so far
9 Responses to “Sucked in by the vortex of winning”
Kurton 12 Oct 2008 at 1:18 am 1No, I’m glad that you mentioned the bit about the opponents. Because while it is terrific fun to have our football team winning, looking at the schedule and seeing Ohio State next week is not something that makes feel optimistic going forward!
DP99on 12 Oct 2008 at 3:33 pm 2I agree this was the best overall team performance. The early case of the dropsies in the beginning of the game quickly went away. Hoyer was on the mark and 14/20 is going to count as an excellent day for him. About the only bad thing I could think of after the game is that NW went like 32/16 on 3rd downs. That’s right: 200% 3rd down efficiency. Or so it seemed. Cognitive dissonance, whatever. But their offense is designed for these short gains, plus MSU untimely blitzing didn’t help. In any case, as you noted there where no huge gains in the air, and Sutton breaking a long one sometime during the game had to be expected (caught from behind!). NW coaches consectuive 4th down decisions were puzzling (go for it ealier in the drive in FG range, then not go for it on 4th and 1 closer to the goal line when you are killing on the short gains) and helped our cause, but hey, that’s part of the game too. NW and Indiana aren’t exactly menacing road environments, but at this point we will gladly take it.
Like I’ve opined here before, MSU has shown it has a chance with any team that is not able to take advantage of the secondary (not even counting the injuries yesterday). OSU and the TPE do not look like they’ll be able to, Wisconsin does not look like it either, and Purdue is a bit of falling apart. OSU and Wisconsin so far have had to rely on defense and running, and MSU has shown they can hang with any team built like that. That leaves Michigan, which will be the first real tough road crowd, and PSU. Hoyer and the receivers still have plenty to prove regarding consistency, but it’s time to realize that 9-3 or 10-2 is completely within reach. This is the point where in the past players and fans got carried away before results were actually in. If I were Dantonio, I’d push it with the hardest week of practice so far this season (and I think he will). If the injury situation won’t allow that physically, I’d push the most extensive week of film study ever, until every guy was so sick of it they could vomit and still call out assignments at the same time. Focus, focus, focus.
SpartanDanon 12 Oct 2008 at 6:19 pm 3I was at the game. A menacing road environment it was not (I think the MSU fans might have outnumbered the NW fans there), but it was a good road win no less. I’m annoyed that they never showed a replay of the onside kick attempt, as I had to look almost directly into the sun to see that play, but that was brilliant. Hoyer did airmail a possible TD pass early in the game, but 14/20, 2 TDs, no picks is nothing to complain about. For once, we have a team that isn’t beating itself.
The back end of the schedule is loaded, but I think 9 wins is entirely possible. We should beat Michigan and Purdue, we’ll probably be favored over Wisconsin (they looked absolutely horrid last night), and we might be able to give OSU a good game here as well. (At Penn State … well, we have to be somewhat realistic.)
DP: Those 4th down decisions were somewhat reasonable, as the first was at long FG range (would have been 48, 49 yards) and by the time they got to the second one they needed to get some points just to make it a two-score game. I think they’d have been better off going for it, but I think the first 4th down call made sense.
Benon 12 Oct 2008 at 10:51 pm 4IMO, NW’s first 4th down call was justifiable, but the second one was garbage. We absolutely couldn’t stop them in short yardage situations . . . Fitzgerald really gave up on his team there.
Hoyer was very good, and he did everything even with Mark Dell in a seriously reduced role. Cunningham had a really bad drop early which should have been a TD, but was very good thereafter, and Keshawn Martin really broke out; looks like he really has potential as a Herb Haygood-style speedy slot receiver. The passing game is obviously the big side benefit of Javon Ringer; when the opposing team stacks the box like we’ve seen the past couple weeks, there will be opportunities for Hoyer et. al. The big difference is that we took advantage of those opportunities this week, whereas last week was highly meh.
It was my first game at NW . . . it’s an interesting experience, almost B10-lite. I thought their student section was tiny, quiet, and wholly unimpressive, and then I read on Lake the Posts that it was the best it’s been in a loooong time. Eesh. Also, apparently the State section seemed really loud to him; I thought our away support was pretty average. (Though, it wasn’t exactly an exciting game, granted.) Bonus points, however, for Northwestern being close enough for me to ride the El from my apartment to the game. Much better than slogging up 94 for 3 hours!
Adam Rittenberg on ESPN.com described our performance as “virtually mistake-free.” Not words usually used to describe MSU, but that’s how you get conference road victories. I love our coaching staff more and more every day. They truly _are_ the difference.
Not at all optimistic about this Saturday, but thrilled to be playing in a truly meaningful conference game. It’s nice to be in the mix, for sure. I just hope there’s a whole lot less scarlet in the stadium than there was two years ago. Beat Ohio!
Benon 12 Oct 2008 at 10:56 pm 5OH — and the biggest thumbs up from Saturday is definitely, definitely, definitely for the special teams, and I’m very glad that the media seems to be noticing. Winston was tremendous on kickoff returns, and that’s doubly fantastic because it means that Ringer’s not back there anymore. Bates downed 2 inside the five, 3 inside the ten, with only one touchback; Swenson continues to be automatic; and we didn’t let Northwestern get anything in the return game. Amazing field position let us take the big lead, and it also kept them from coming back.
Can’t say enough about the effort there . . . absolutely fantastic. A+++, would buy again.
kjon 13 Oct 2008 at 8:38 am 6I’d agree NW should have gone for it on the second 4th down play. It’s funny, because football coaches generally seem more concerned with “emotion” than with making sound statistically-based judgments. In that case, kicking the FG might be defensible from a numbers standpoint since you’re down three scores. But wouldn’t going for it give your team the emotional boost it needs to get back in the game? At the end of the day, most coaches look to minimize the point spread by which they lose the game–rather than maximizing the odds of a comeback win.
DP99on 13 Oct 2008 at 4:31 pm 7Yes, NW should have gone for it on the 4th and 1. Did Sutton have a single carry that didn’t get 1 yard at least all day? I wonder if the coaches froze for a moment facing that decision thinking back to seeing Decker getting to Shonn Greene on the game tape from the week before. Oh, how sweet are these days right now we are living in.
Rewertson 13 Oct 2008 at 6:25 pm 8If they had gone for it I think it would have needed to be a pass. NW was killing it with the short routes (as they usually do). Almost every time it was was third and short they picked it up. I will say the defense was ready for a lot of the quick screens to NW’s WRs. We minimized the damage on those, but the little 4 yd curls and outs were working all day (much the same way they did for toledo!)
Rewertson 13 Oct 2008 at 6:31 pm 9As for the OSU game, I keep reading something that is worrisome to me. Everything I read on the bucks complains that Tressel won’t let Pryor throw it deep and the offensive is playing very, very conservatively. Perhaps Tressel is holding something back for this game (and perhaps I am being paranoid). The common sense in me thinks that if the vest was holding anything back we would have seen in early in the 4th quarter against Wiscy 2 weeks ago. The voice in me that is freaking out about a potential big ten title run or a potential 1-4 finish thinks that Tressel knew this game would be absolutely huge and is holding Pryor back until Saturday to surprise us. The optimist in me thinks either way Coach D will have the team ready to go and it wont matter a lick what Tressel is or isn’t holding back!