This might make me sound like a bit of a fair weather fan, but I have a confession to make: A couple years ago, I basically decoupled myself emotionally from the Michigan State football team.
I still followed the team (although with nowhere near the obsessiveness I follow the basketball team), but I managed to put myself in a place where I no longer got too worked up either way after a big football game. I couldn’t take any more of the agony of the team building up early-season expectations each year before proceeding to systematically crush our spirits with a series of terrible losses down the stretch.
With three days until MSU’s opener against Cal, though, I’m starting to feel a bit of that old sense that this might be the season Spartan football breaks out of its recent history of mediocrity. I’m not sure if it’s the fact that the only football game I attended last year was the comeback win against Penn State, the general consensus that the Big Ten is ripe for the picking this year once you get past Ohio State, the sense that Mark Dantonio might finally be the guy to build the program the right way, or just the anticipation of a prime time opening game against a quality nonconference foe. But I fear I’m getting sucked back into the expectations vortex.
Anyway, let’s the turn the tables here. My guess is that many of you, if not most of you, are more well-informed college football fans than I am. So tell me, Spartans Weblog faithful, what should my expectations for the Spartan football team be going into this season?
Are the pieces in place for a run at a New Year’s Day Bowl? Or will the team build up my expectations again only to fall flat when it counts? Or will our Spartans do something completely out of character and simply win the games they should win, lose the games they should lose, and make a second consecutive bowl appearance with 7 or 8 wins?
Let me have it.
Ah yes. Hope springs eternal, or so they say. I follow MSU football quite closely. That said, I couldn’t tell you what to expect. I’ve given up hoping for things, I just go and cheer and try to have a good time win or lose. I think this year and next year will give us a better idea of what to expect from Dantonio. He is showing that he can recruit (seventh best class according to rivals), and the team showed more fight last year, but we need to see better results, especially in-conference. I guess that wasn’t very substantive, but oh well.
“I’m not sure if it’s the fact that the only football game I attended last year was the comeback win against Penn State”
Good choice. That comeback to assure a bowl was one of the best things to happen to MSU football since, what, 2001?
I’d predict it’ll be the third option, actually, Dantonio is imposing his calm and steady influence on the team, just as John L. imposed his fruitloopedness. I’m thinking another 7-5/8-4 type year. Likely losses at Cal, OSU, at PSU, maybe losses at Northwestern (secondary is still not great and Bacher could break out) and who knows what’ll happen at U of M. FAU is a classic ‘better take ‘em seriously’ team. I’m strangely confident MSU will beat Wisconsin in East Lansing. They came within a field goal last year in Madison and Wisconsin is without an experienced QB. They don’t seem to play well on the east side of Lake Michigan, historically.
Ringer and Hoyer staying healthy are obviously key. We’ve got the players to compete, but the problem might be depth, especially on the O-line. Look at the FS position, where starter Roderick Jenerette being out led to the starting CB being moved over. We seem to have a lot of talent at reciever, but it’s unproven.
A another 7-5 season and trip to a bowl would be an improvement, because the schedule is tougher this year. And at this point, that’s the main thing I want to see, continued improvement.
I think the absolute limit would be 10-2 or 9-3, especially if we start off with a win at Cal and we avoid costly injuries.
My take, for what it’s worth (I, like you, follow bball much more closely than football) is that we are set up for another one of those fades at the end of the season just because of the way the schedule shakes out. Our first game is Cal, at Cal, which there’s no shame in losing. After that we have a couple of direction U’s who we should beat, followed by Notre Dame at home. We’ll have to see how Notre Dame is this year – if they don’t show significant improvement over last year that should be a W for us (hopefully the football Jesus will continue punishing Charlie Wise for committing one of the seven deadly sins, namely pride).
Then, the Big 10 season Opens with Indiana, Iowa, and Northwestern – three winnable games. Assuming we win the games we are supposed to win and break even against Cal/ND we are sitting at 6-1 going into the Ohio State game. Unfortunately that is where the schedule stiffens. We get OSU, UofM, Wisconsin, Purdue and Penn State to round out the season. Of those teams, only Purdue and UofM are currently ranked below us, which means that, assuming we win the ones we are supposed to, we’ll go 2-3 down the stretch. If we drop the UofM game (always a possibility) or Purdue then we go 1-4 down the stretch. That still leaves us bowl eligible with 7 wins, but will reinforce the perception that we fade down the stretch. But that’s just the way the schedule shakes out this year. The one break is we don’t play Illinois – they are predicted to be one of the top teams in the Big 10 this year as strange as that sounds.
We’ve got talent, but lack depth so a lot will depend on the injury situation – if we get lucky we may wind up winning 8 or 9, but 7 looks more probable if we have any significant injuries to starters (especially quarterback or Ringer).
Yeah, you have to remember this team is still littered with borderline Big Ten quality players from the awful John L recruiting classes (“hey, we’re not even going to try to recruit in Michigan and Ohio outside of QB!”) and Dantonio’s makeshift first couple of classes. This was a program in complete disarray 18 months ago, so though it’ll be easy for Drew Sharp and a few other lazy dots of ESPN comments to regard another 7-5 finish as “yet another Spartan late-season slide”, but the truth is maintaining consitency of play for the better part of two seasons will be a vast improvement for the program. Hoyer still has to prove he can reduce the brain farts, the corners are still very slow (MSU: proud tradition of pro-caliber WRs… and snail-slow DBs), the receivers and linebackers are complete unknowns, and Don Treadwell still has to prove he knows his personel.
That said, I like Dantonio’s stance of maintaining his goals high, aiminig for a conference championship. That should always be the stated goal for a school with the size and resources of MSU. Remember last year many thought he was nuts to promise a bowl appearance. An improvement for him would be to not get into hissy-matches against other teams’ players, and getting Hoyer to not talk about being one of the best QBs in the nation with his outside voice.
This is good stuff. Maybe I’ll post a football-based Coffee Talk every week this fall. It’ll be like my own personal blog to read about MSU football.
I don’t have a lot to add as it’s already been pretty well covered already. 7-5 is a reasonable expectation as long as we can avoid any major injuries. Taking Ringer off the kick team would certainly be a start. Our defense should be the strength of the team this year. We lost some playmakers on the D-Line, but the increased depth this year should make up for that. Unlike DP99 indicated, we actually have some very well known linebackers. Greg Jones was a 1st Team Freshman All-American last year, and Sophomore Eric Gordon is pre-season All-Big Ten, so look for them to have big years. If Hoyer has learned to look to his checkdowns and increased his accuracy at all, then I think that this season should be an improvement over last year.
Ok, maybe I overreacted to the articles last week or so about there still being open competition for a couple of the LB spots. Competition mentality is a good thing, I guess.
I’ve posted a preview of the Cal game on my website.
Anyway, your expectations should be hopeful, if guarded. MSU proved they weren’t the same old chokers by beating Purdue and Penn State to get to a bowl, ad they didn’t lose any game by more than seven points. That said, I think the depth at wide receiver linebacker, and especially quarterback is an issue; all bets are off if Hoyer is knocked out for a prolonged period.
Anyway, I think MSU will go 8-4 in the regular season.
I struggle with this. For starters, I honestly, truly believe that we’re going to win this weekend. I think we’re a good matchup against Cal — their defensive line is young-ish and not all that good, and I think Ringer has every opportunity to start the season in a big way. Cal’s quarterback situation has been discussed ad nauseum, but it suffices it to say that I’m not confident that they will be able to take significant advantage of our secondary — in my mind, clearly the weakest unit on our team. (Which, arrggggh, got even worse with the loss of Jenrette.) I think we win this one by a deceptively close score — say 27-21.
If we can win the first game, I think we’ll go 3-0. It’s been rightly pointed out that FAU should not be completely dismissed, but I think we’ll get the job done. Those first two home games could look a lot like the first two games last year — utter demolition of Eastern (a la UAB), and a somewhat nerve-wracking three quarters against FAU before we put it away (like BGSU last year).
I have a bad feeling about the ND game. Bad bad bad. Let’s hope I’m wrong.
We should win the first three games of the B10 season — realistically, we’ll win two of them, with the most likely loss against Northwestern. I think we’re better than Indiana, and that we’ll be sufficiently motivated against Iowa after that absolutely atrocious performance in Iowa City last season. Northwestern? Meh. Probably the most likely loss of the three, because their offense seems to give us fits — although, just as the offense should be out for redemption against Iowa, the defense surely needs to prove itself in Evanston. 86 points allowed in the past two seasons against Northwestern is not exactly conducive to winning football games.
Then . . . ugh. OSU, @Michigan, Wisconsin, Purdue, @PSU. Utterly brutal. OSU is really, really freaking good, I refuse to predict victories against Michigan until it’s proven that such a thing actually exists, Wisconsin is slightly winnable, but they’ve improved more than we have, and we’re not winning in State College. I hate that matchup — we always play terribly there, and they’re going to want to come down like a hammer against us after last season. If we score 14 points, I’ll be surprised. Purdue is an absolutely, positively, good-God-we’d-better-have-this-one, must win game. Why the hell are our schedules always, always, always backloaded like this?
Bottom line? 8-4′s a possibility, but 7-5 is probably more likely. We just miss playing on New Year’s, but we’ll win our bowl game this season. And given our personnel difficulties this season, I’ll be relatively satisfied by that. 8 wins would be tremendous; 9 would be phenomenal, especially because I don’t see any possibility of that without a win in Ann Arbor.
Honestly? Do not expect anything above mediocre out of the Spartans this year. the class of 2009 is looking alright for MSU but I have been researching MSU football for a while now and here is how I predict it will go:
California- A probable loss
Eastern Michigan- Probable Win
Florida Atlantic- Toss up (i think win)
Notre Dame- Probable Loss (possible win though)
Indiana-Probable Win
Iowa- Toss up (i think loss)
Northwestern- toss up
Ohio State- Auto Loss
Michigan- Loss (again)
Wisconsin- Loss
Purdue-Probable Win
Penn State-Loss
So that is probably a 5-6 maybe 6-5 year.