Brian is using some of his spare time to consider our football team’s plight. His main point is quickly conceded, as it’s a point I’ve made repeatedly over the last three months: This is fundamentally a 7-6 football team, not a 9-4 one. He goes on to cite the following quote from an Atlanta blog, Braves & Birds:
Mark Dantonio is Jim Tressel without the talent base. Exhibit A: punting in the first quarter on 4th and 1 from the Georgia 39. Exhibit B: an offense built around running the same guy over and over between the tackles. (At least Tressel came out of the dark ages with Troy Smith.) Exhibit C: a kicker who attempted 25 field goals this year. Exhibit D: an on-field personna that makes Ben Stein’s character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off look like Sam Kinison. With the way Dantonio’s team approaches offense, I’m constantly reminded of the Japanese officer who said in 1944 that Japan didn’t need radar because its soldiers could see perfectly well.
In terms of the specifics cited, I’ll concede to Exhibits A and B. I complained about A yesterday and B earlier in the year. But we’re missing some important context here.
Regarding A, Dantonio’s actually been fairly aggressive on fourth down this season–in several cases, even more aggressive than I would have preferred (example: going for it on 4th and 1 from the 10 against Purdue, up 7-0 at the end of the 2nd quarter). MSU was third among the seven bowl eligible Big Ten teams in fourth-down conversion attempts during the regular season with 12. (Bad teams tend to go for it more often because they’re usually trailing.) And last season, MSU ranked 2nd in the entire conference in fourth-down conversion attempts with 19. So yesterday’s conservative calls on fourth down (after the failed fake punt) are not part of a long-term pattern.
Regarding B, the offense was, in fact, on the conservative side of the ideal aggressiveness-conservatism equilibrium this season. But that’s partly a function of the personnel available. Last year, when Devin Thomas and Kellen Davis were around, the offense was pretty wide open, averaging 30.2 pass attempts and 33.1 points per game. This year, those kind of weapons weren’t available, and those weapons that were available spent a lot of time banged up (Mark Dell, in particular).
From a bigger-picture perspective, the primary piece of context that’s missing is that this is only Dantonio’s second season. Imagine a world where we did, in fact, go 7-6 this season. That’d be two seven-win regular seasons to start Dantonio’s tenure in East Lansing. (Let’s ignore the fact they lost all their close games last year, meaning Dantonio’s overall regular season record of 16-8 is probably pretty accurate in terms of the program’s overall performance the last two seasons.)
Those results are building off a team that won just one Big Ten game the season prior to Dantonio’s arrival. Ironically, I think most Michigan fans would be happy with a seven-win season in Rich Rodriguez’ second season, building off a team that won six Big Ten games in Lloyd Carr’s final season. (The departure of Michigan’s entire offense is conceded. Of course, the 2006 MSU team lost Drew Stanton–who practically was our entire offense.) If Dantonio had won just five games in his first season, which was a reasonable prediction, this season’s results would look even better than they already do.
(I realize I haven’t gotten to exhibits C and D yet. Regarding C: Again, Dantonio was pretty aggressive on fourth down this season. So a lot of field goal attempts is probably a good sign, on balance. Regarding the persona-part of D: So what? And I’ve already addressed the offensive-philosophy part of D.)
Brian’s concluding sentence:
At best he makes Michigan State into a Wisconsin or Iowa level program, and even that seems pretty doubtful.
There are, of course, no guarantees that any coach is going to get any college football program to a certain level, but it’s unclear what exactly Brian’s standard is for Dantonio to be judged as a success to date in terms of moving MSU into the upper echelon of the conference. He’s won the games he’s supposed to win, despite the core of the team still being guys recruited by the previous coach for a different system. And he’s doing a pretty good job locking up in-state talent for the future, as far as I can tell.
Wait a minute. Boring offensive philosophy designed to avoid upsets? No personality? Recruiting focus on in-state talent?
Hey, that formula worked pretty well in Ann Arbor for a few years, didn’t it?
Dantonio has taken MSU football to two straight bowl games and won 16 games in his first two years. Our defense (especially the secondary) looks competent for the first time in years.
Quite frankly, that whole article sounds like a lot of whining based off the silly assumption that turnovers are random. As you’ve stated above, we had the talent to put up big offensive numbers last year. We didn’t this year, but anyone who has paid any sort of attention to MSU football in the past decade could see the improvement in the mentality and discipline of the team.
It’s amusing that Michigan fans on that site hate Dantonio so much. To me, that says he is doing his job admirably. The future of MSU football under Mark Dantonio is bright.
Keep in mind, Brian of mgoblog predicted 4-8 for Dantonio in his first year at MSU and was also crying “doom and gloom” for not cleaning up on recruiting when UM was searching for a coach. I’m confident that MSU football and Dantonio will continue to defy his biased expectations.
I also have a few points I disagreed with when I saw Brian’s piece. First, I’d be interested to see what Team A and B look like if you don’t include the blowout losses we had. Last year, every game was close, we just didn’t win them. This year, we won close games, but lost the others big.
Second, looking at that Northwestern game for a yardage comparison is just plain dumb. We started in NU territory most of the game. If NU can’t stop us, it doesn’t matter where we started from, but it means lower yardage totals than if we had had even typical starting position.
I also disagree with the random turnovers theory. MSU was one of the top red zone defenses this year. That’s not an accident, that’s the result of successful bend don’t break defense. Look at the NU game again. We gave them yardage, but held them out of the end zone. Who cares if your opponent nickels and dimes into scoring position, if you stop them from scoring? Turnovers tended to happen in the red zone for us, and more often in the form of interceptions than fumbles.
I’m with Brian on fumbles being complete luck, but interceptions are not. State had some great coverage/blitz calls some games and the interceptions are a result of that.
Offensive play calling has bugged me, but it’s been the types of run plays/ pass plays called more than the ratio of pass to run. We flat out did not have the receiving talent to be a good passing team. Drops made Hoyer look a lot worse than I think most people thought he was. When State gets better hands, I expect a great passing attack from State. I mean, Treadwell is getting our guys wide open
Blame this on Kool-Aid, but next year we’re going to at least match this season’s win total, and it’s possible we could beat it. Nichol/Cousins/Maxwell, one of them should emerge as a good starter at QB, and we have talent to run RB by committee. Receivers should hopefully improve and we have starters returning all over the place. And the schedule is easier because we have no OSU on the schedule and a soft OOC schedule.
Is the standard ‘is the coach at Michigan State who says things about Michigan Brian doesn’t like,’ check yes or no?
Being 2-1 and having a +2 turnover margin doesn’t exactly seem like freakish luck to me.
The other thing about Brian not being ‘afeared’ (great word) of Dantonio is that John L. Smith’s teams played Michigan close 3 of 4 years. Bobby Williams lost 14-0 his first year, beat Michigan his second year and got blown out in his third year.
Dantonio doesn’t have to be that great to, at the very least, end Michigan 21st Century free ride.
Along with others here have said, there are valid gripes/concerns regarding the first couple of points here. But when coupled with the rest and wrapped in a nasal whine, the whole thing loses credibility quite fast. One thing has consistent value, however — the entertainment value.
2-1 in close games, I meant.
More teams would be guilty of exhibit C if they had a guy as money as Swenson was this year. Good kickers are something of a luxury in College football (ask Bobby Bowden, they cost him a national championship or two) and as a result a lot of teams are unwilling to try anything beyond a glorified chip shot. He is one of the reasons we won many of the close games we did this year. When you have a weapon like that on your roster you use it.