Michigan State was bad at football last year. To me? That was really funny.
In fact, as a sick freak who consumes RCMB meltdown threads like a hungry dog, last year was a feast – week after week of listless performances, capped by one of the funniest losses I have ever seen to a horrendous Indiana team that completed exactly two (2) forward passes. It ruled, and I hope it happens again.
This article, though, is not about rubbing it in. At least, not primarily. On the contrary, I’m here to offer a hand to my many Spartan Mufos in a time of need and provide actionable solutions. For the low low price of $12.99/month, Mel Tucker can subscribe to Meet at Midfield dot com and take some much-needed lessons from me, Thicc Stauskas, on how to fix the MSU football program. After all, who better to evaluate the state of a program than someone who follows its every move religiously, out of pure hatred?
In this three-part series, I will review the Spartan defense, offense, and big picture to provide genuine, non-condescending, and constructive feedback to the state of Michigan’s greatest university west of Highway 52. Welcome to Green and Spite.
What Went Wrong?
Michigan State could not defend the pass last year. Full stop, point blank. The Spartans weren’t actually very good at defending anything outside of their own 5-yard line, but any other issues with this defense – the athletically limited linebackers, piss-poor edge play and general disorganization due to injuries and bad coordination – paled in comparison to the complete and utter inability to stop any forward pass from an offense with a pulse.
If you have watched this team at all since 2021, you probably already knew that. Let’s get as specific as possible with some truly depressing statistics.
MSU surrendered 7.0 yards per passing attempt last season, with a 49 percent success rate. That sounds better than it really is. Let’s dig a little deeper.
Against functional offenses (those in the top 55 of SP+, meaning Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Washington and Maryland), MSU surrendered a staggering 9.2 YPA, at a success rate of 56 percent. I could probably stop right there, but let’s go one level further.
Against those same functional passing attacks on standard downs (first or second down-and-six-or-less), the Spartans ceded 10.1 YPA at a 57 percent success rate, and a whopping 14.4 yards per reception. They generated exactly two sacks on 84 dropbacks (2.4 percent), and forced no interceptions. That, right there, was the death knell for this defense. It would be the death knell for any defense. Every offense with a competent quarterback could take a five-step drop with no fear of a drive-ending sack or turnover and expect to pick up a first down more often than not. Even in the Big Ten, there are enough competent quarterbacks to make that a losing proposition.
Forget any of the other flaws with this unit. It’s all irrelevant when your pass defense is purely theoretical until third down. MSU’s defense failed in 2022 because it generated zero organic pressure on standard downs, which left a bad secondary completely exposed to long-developing passing concepts.
Why?
To answer this question, we must go to the film. This one play in the third quarter of MSU’s game against Washington should’ve served as a dire warning for the problems the Spartans would spend the rest of the season combatting.
To set the stage, MSU has just put together a drive early in the third quarter to pull within two scores of the Huskies. The home team is driving, but a stop by MSU can make this a brand-new game now that the Spartan offense is starting to move the ball. Then, this:
Play action, cross-country route, Angelo Grose gets smoked and Ja’Lynn Polk takes it 53 yards to the house. Let’s take a closer look:
Washington comes out with unbalanced twins to the field and an ineligible tight end. MSU responds by bringing an extra linebacker on the field and showing a one-high look pre-snap with Grose rolled up over the slot and the corners staying on the boundaries, rather than matching up.
Washington runs a soft play action with a half roll by quarterback Michael Penix Jr. I describe this as soft play action because the offensive line does not sell the fake and has a guard influence pulling away from the run action. This should be a dead giveaway that it’s a token fake, and to their credit, the MSU linebackers do not bite and mostly get into their drops.
Unfortunately, free safety Kendell Brooks does not get the memo. Playing in place of an injured Xavier Henderson, Brooks steps up hard and never corrects his mistake. Washington is anticipating Cover 1 (man coverage with one high safety) and gets it. The Huskies have their H-back to the short side of the field running a 10-yard hook to serve as eye candy and keep Brooks too shallow to interfere with the cross-country route that Ja’Lynn Polk is running.
In the backfield, the Huskies are employing a seven-man protection with both edges doubled to take advantage of MSU’s lack of an interior pass rush with Jacob Slade also sitting out due to injury. MSU predictably gets no pressure and Penix delivers an easy throw to Polk, who has beaten Grose by 10 yards.
There are a couple of season-long trends here:
- Poor defensive back play
Brooks has no business stepping up as the free safety. There are eight gaps in the offensive formation and MSU has eight players in its front. Brooks is not part of the run fit. Why is he stepping up on a weak play fake? Then, Grose is too slow to be a Big Ten defensive back and doesn’t come close to contesting this throw. He is not a playable starter in this conference. He hits hard and tackles well in space, but in coverage, he is a traffic cone.
- Lack of pressure
Khris Bogle and Jacoby Windmon both get locked out and the interior gets no push. You need an organic pass rush on standard downs because exotic blitzes are not an option on 1st-and-10. MSU could not get any consistently all season.
- Simple, easily identified playcalling
Look at this presnap alignment.
This is how the defense lines up if you call Cover 3/Cover 1 in NCAA 14. There is not even a hint of a disguise here. This is day one of spring ball coverage install alignment. Penix has spent roughly a decade in college football. You cannot make it this simple for him unless you have the superior talent to make it work, which MSU clearly does not. Washington sees this coming from a mile away and has an easy answer ready to go.
- Nonsensical personnel deployment
Now, I am going to stand up for Grose. He is an old-fashioned box safety being asked to line up seven yards off a future day one NFL draft pick. At no point does Polk have to alter his route to get screamingly wide open. That is not Grose’s fault. He’s been in the program for three seasons and the coaching staff should know his limitations. Asking him to cover a receiver like this, in that much space, is asking to get scorched.
- Lack of depth exposed by injuries
Henderson and Slade could’ve made an impact on this play if they were not injured in the first two games of the season. The players behind them cannot. MSU does not have the depth built up to sustain these kinds of injuries – which isn’t necessarily the coaches’ fault. Yet.
These five themes repeated themselves week after week against any team that had a QB who could push the ball down the field. This wasn’t the only problem with the unit, but it was a fatal structural flaw around which the rest of the defense crumbled. When you’re this bad at stopping standard down passing, there’s just no room for error in any other phase of the game, and MSU made plenty of other errors.
So, What Should They Do About It?
Let’s go issue by issue here:
- Poor defensive back play
This can be addressed by either recruiting better players or providing better coaching. MSU clearly felt it needed to do both, bringing in former Buffalo Bills secondary coach Jim Salgado to coach cornerbacks specifically. Clearly, the Spartans were deeply disappointed with the work of whoever was getting hands-on with Michigan State’s secondary to open the 2022 fall camp.
I think that Salgado should bring some instant competence to the room with his high-level NFL experience. Nothing about his resume jumps out as exceptional, but I do think Harlon Barnett was not up to the task last season, and Salgado should be an instant improvement.
As far as better players go, let’s take a quick look at Tucker’s recruiting at the position, class by class:
2020 – Grose, who has been a contributor and a decent tackler but just does not have enough athleticism to play in this league.
2021 – Charles Brantley, who has the opposite problem. He is too small to play corner in the Big Ten. AJ Kirk, Michael Gravely, Antione Booth, and Steffan Johnson are all gone for one reason or another. Woof.
2022 – Dillon Tatum was a head-to-head recruiting win vs U-M who I think fits perfectly at nickel. Ideally, he supplants Grose during fall camp. Jaden Mangham is a prototypical free safety who just needs to get more reps under his belt. I bet he will round into a nice player by the end of 2023. Malik Spencer looks to be in line to start at strong safety this season and has drawn rave reviews from the staff.
I am high on this class, but it has to be pointed out that they are lacking in talent at the true corner position. Caleb Coley and Ade Willie are low three-stars with uninspiring offer lists. Corner is not really a spot where you can make up for a lack of athleticism. I would have recruited more than two if I was Tucker and Co.
2023 – MSU lands three-stars Chance Rucker, Sean Brown and Eddie Pleasant at corner, as well as three-star Phillip Davis at safety. Rucker and Brown were wins over Arkansas and Arizona respectively, but Pleasant and Davis did not have a ton of other P5 interest. I am ok with the smaller safety class given the 2022 haul, and I commend MSU for at least taking more bodies at corner, but it just feels once again like this is not enough talent in a position room that demands it.
2024 – Jaylen Thompson, Justin Denson and Reggie Powers are all high three-stars with good offer sheets. Syair Torrence and Camren Campbell are on the lower end of the rankings, but I like that MSU is taking numbers here. There are no blue chips, but if you can’t get quality, get quantity and hope that a few are hits. This is the right way to go about it for a program in MSU’s position (broke).
Portal – Ronald Williams, Marqui Lowery, Khary Crump, Chester Kimbrough and Ameer Speed have all either not played or stunk out loud. It cannot be overstated what a disappointment the portal has been for the Spartan secondary. Good corners are at a premium in the portal, and unless Tucker drastically improves MSU’s NIL program, he is going to have to find his cover men from the high school ranks.
Overall, there is promising talent here, especially at safety, but at the most athleticism-driven positions on the field, Tucker has recruited zero blue-chip corners and only two blue-chip safeties. Blue-chip corners are undeniably tough to land, and failing that, Tucker should be employing the volume method. Get three corners in every class with high ceilings and hope a few of them pan out in the end. It’s tough out there for a non-blue blood at premium positions like this, but ask Mark Dantonio, it’s not impossible.
- Lack of pressure
This is another “get better players” problem, and to their credit, MSU really did that in the 2022/23 cycle. After the 2020 and 2021 cycles netted just Derrick Harmon as a true contributor, the 2022 and 2023 classes both yielded a few gems.
Alex Vansumeren and Ken Talley (technically portal) were both 2022 blue-chippers and victories over U-M and PSU respectively. Zion Young was a low three-star who appears to be on the track to stardom after a promising freshman season.
The 2023 class was where one of Tucker’s most creative hires really paid off. Bringing in NFL pass rush specialist Brandon Jordan, MSU was able to lure four-stars Bai Jobe, Jalen Thompson and Andrew Depaepe away from a host of blue-blood suitors. Add former five-star Texas A&M transfer Tunmise Adeleye and depth pieces Jalen Sami, Dre Butler, and Jarrett Jackson to the mix, and this was a really solid haul for the Spartans.
Beyond the 2023 bumper crop, things look a bit more dire. Brandon Jordan and Marco Coleman both left East Lansing after one season and took with them the momentum that had been building for MSU in the defensive trenches. The 2024 class is months away from signing day, but the board has zero commits and few realistic targets. Diron Reynolds has a very questionable resume and his results thus far at MSU have not been particularly promising. DL is a position where you must stack talent and can rarely afford an off-year, especially when you’ve only recruited one true DT in the last two high school classes.
Overall, the talent level is rising on the Banks of the Red Cedar, but the roster balance just seems a bit off, and the future in recruiting is uncertain. Why have there been so few true defensive tackles taken out of high school? None of the portal DTs project to be true difference makers. Right now, Harmon is the only one who has shown an ability to play at an All-B1G level. Maverick Hansen is a fine player and Vansumeren is a promising prospect, but in a physical league, you can’t be this lackluster in the middle of your defense. A lot of MSU fans seem to be very high on this interior group and I may be proven wrong, but right now I just don’t see where the firepower is coming from.
The edge certainly has a bright future and the recruiting that this staff has done could start to pay off as soon as this year if a couple of the 22s or 23s break out early. I would take a hard look at Reynolds after the season, though – his body of work appears to be mediocre at best and I think there’s a reason a lot of Stanford fans were eager to get rid of him.
- Simple playcalling/Bad personnel deployment
I am going to kill two birds with one stone here: I think that Michigan State should fire defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton. This is a pretty common sentiment within the MSU fanbase, and it would be very sportswriter of me to discredit this idea as Not Knowing Ball. However, in this instance, I firmly agree with the unwashed masses. Also, I’m putting together a Masses Washing event to raise money for Meet at Midfield.
Let’s take a look at Hazelton’s resume, shall we?
He got his start at FCS powerhouse North Dakota State, where he contributed to and eventually led some very successful defenses. He made his way to USC as the linebackers coach under Lane Kiffin, but was hired away to be Nevada’s defensive coordinator before he was there for one full season. The 2013 Nevada defense was ranked 114th in SP+ and it appears Hazelton was fired, as he spent the next two seasons as an assistant linebackers coach for the Jaguars – which I cannot imagine was an intentional career move.
He was then brought in by legendary Wyoming coach Craig Bohl to coordinate Wyoming’s 2017 defense which improved from 116th in 2017 to 36th in 2018 and 41st in 2019. He jumped next to Kansas State, where he joined up with another former NDSU man in Chris Klieman and took the Wildcats from 61st in 2018 to 47th in 2019 before departing to join Mel Tucker’s staff at MSU.
Since arriving at MSU, the once proud Spartan defense has fallen from 13th and 12th in 2020 to 30th in 2021 and 86th in 2022. Taken in totality, Hazelton’s resume is populated by a standard level of success at an FCS powerhouse, an uninspiring stint at Nevada, an impressive turnaround at Wyoming, a decent season at KSU and a precipitous drop off at MSU. Oh, and two years with the Jaguars – his worst crime yet.
There are, of course, extenuating circumstances in East Lansing, considering just how little talent Dantonio left on the defensive side of the ball, but you have to really squint to try and justify Hazelton’s $1.1M contract at the moment. Plus, there are teams out there doing much more with much less right now.
But, his true undoing is that his philosophy is a poor fit for this league and the teams that he must beat to win it. His standard, 4-2-5 soft zone-focused defense is designed to let players line up and play without overthinking against the up-tempo RPO offenses that proliferate the Big 12 and Mountain West. He wants to bend but not break and wait for these high-efficiency offenses to make a mistake and get behind the chains.
It is not built to hold up to Michigan’s diversified heavy personnel power running game, and it’s actually almost perfectly designed to be susceptible to Ohio State’s complex NFL passing attack. You couldn’t design a worse matchup if you tried. Just look at the 2021 game… or the 2020 game… or the 2022 game. The Buckeyes have completed 76 of 95 passes (80.0%) for 1,025 yards (10.8 YPA), 14 touchdowns and two interceptions against MSU since Tucker and Hazelton came to town.
MSU has the money to hire a defensive coordinator with a more impressive resume and a system better suited to this league. There is scant evidence to suggest that Hazelton is an above-average coordinator, let alone the type that can overcome a talent deficit to the best teams in the B1G on a year-to-year basis. This feels pretty obvious.
- Lack of depth exposed by injuries
I will keep this short and sweet. MSU had terrible injury luck last year that exposed how bare the cupboard was left by Dantonio and company. That depth looks better this year, and hopefully, the Spartans will have a better roll of the ACL dice. There’s not much else to say there, but it’s a fair excuse to point out that the Spartan defense likely would have been at least slightly better if it hadn’t had roughly 25 different starters over a 12-game season.
There were a lot of problems here in 2022 that first appeared as red flags in 2020/21. The soft pass coverage, lack of DB talent and inconsistent pass rush were all present, to a lesser extent, during MSU’s magical 2021 season. In 2022, those warnings and cracks in the foundation led to catastrophic failure and, eventually, all-out collapse. I don’t see all those problems being fixed this season, but some of them are at least on their way.
The talent on the edge is improving, but it’s up to the current coaches to finish what Jordan started and stack legitimate, top-end high school talent. There are a lot of promising young safeties on this roster, but Tucker needs to do a better job identifying and recruiting true corners like his predecessor was so adept at.
From a coordination perspective, I just don’t see what Hazelton is bringing to the table. He does not have a long history of success, talent evaluation or player development. His scheme does not match up with the teams that he needs to beat. MSU has shown a willingness to invest in Tucker and his staff, and would presumably be willing to accommodate a change. If things don’t significantly improve this year, Tucker should use the opportunity to bring in a bigger name with a better resume who has experience coaching up the type of hard-nosed son-of-a-bitch that used to make Spartan Stadium hell for opposing offenses.