With the season opener against Montana State two months away many fans and sports writers are starting to break down the Spartan schedule and give their prognostications for the entire season. As a sports fan it is a natural tendency to speculate on what we believe will play out, and often with a jaded view. I’m no different, but maybe because I have seen so much over the last forty-six years of watching MSU football I have learned to temper my optimism. I’m not saying I don’t believe MSU will have a winning record in 2009, or that they won’t make a bowl game. My tempered optimism is more along the lines of expectations of how I believe things will play out.
Montana State: This should be by all intents a win for the Spartans. With Dantonio having to replace Hoyer, Ringer and the entire right side of the offensive line, don’t expect much in the way of fireworks offensively (unless it comes in the form of long running plays by Spartan backs).
MSU will most likely play a very vanilla offense that will look to establish the run. Dantonio wants to get his offensive line as much opportunity to work on technique in run blocking. This game will be more about developing cohesiveness among the starting five that can only be acquired in games. Blocking will be at its most basic form with a sprinkling of a few traps and sweeps, but straight ahead power football is what can be expected.
The Spartans will employ a large number of backs, with returning veterans and the two highly touted freshmen sharing equally in the work load. I fully expect four or more long runs (40 yards or greater) by the Spartan running backs, where they simply out run the defense after breaking the line of scrimmage. MSU should be able to amass more than 275 yards rushing as each candidate will get the opportunity to stake their claim to the starting position.
Everyone is going to be concentrating on the quarterback competition between Cousins and Nichol, and some may come away disappointed by what they see, or should I say don’t see. With two equally talented quarterbacks many would assume that come September 5th, Spartan Stadium will be filled with passes. Maybe against CMU or Notre Dame, but on this day I don’t expect the ball to be put in the air more than 20 times. Most of the passes will be of intermediate distance (15-20 yards) with the possibility of each quarterback entitled to make one deep throw. I also don’t expect to see either of these two using the read option to gain yards. Any running they do will be a result of scrambling while avoiding pressure. Most of the afternoon will be spent handing off to the running backs and winning the battle of time of possession.
This is a game where MSU’s physcial superiority and athleticism should allow Dantonio to play it close to the vest and win by simply wearing an opponent down by running the ball 90% of the time. Dantonio is not the type of coach that will dileberately run up a score on a lesser opponent, and by keeping it on the ground MSU should be able to score more than enough to win by four scores without embarrassing them.
Defensively MSU will run a lot of bodies into the rotation for a couple of reasons. One is to allow some of the redshirt and true freshman to get a taste of live competition, and the other to keep fresh bodies out on the field as it will likely be a hot and humid day on the field.
I rarely if ever predict a shut out, but the MSU defense has its best opportunity to do just that in the opener, especially if the Bobcats fall behind early and are forced to pass.
The MSU offense is predicated on a strong running game, and because of this I believe Dantonio is going to use the opener to get his OL prepared for run blocking. As I mentioned in my write up, the Spartans should be able to win this game by simply running the ball.
I expect to see more passing in the following two weeks against CMU and ND, but CMU is not going to have much to go on defensively when devising a scheme to try and stop MSU.
Not trying to discount what took place in the spring game passing wise between Nichol and Cousins, however both offenses running game was completely shut down by the defense that day (not to mention most of spring ball as well). The defense is going to be very good this year to the point where some might consider them dominant. Because of this Dantonio pandered to his audience of roughly 25,000 and let his QB’s wing it all over the field. Unless MSU has the same difficulty running the ball against the Bobcats as they did defense in the spring game I am just not convinced that MSU is going to show much of their passing game. I don’t believe there will be much of a need to, and why provide CMU an opportunity to gain information about the passing game when it isn’t necessary?
CMU and ND will likely be a whole other animal, as these two are more capable of stopping the run if MSU does not employ more play action passing and a more balanced attack. It would not surprise me (in fact I expect it) to see MSU’s offensive balance to be almost 50-50 with regards to run/pass the rest of the year, just not the opener.
Whoa, dude. I would think this was written for ’08 if you hadn’t noted Ringer and Hoyer are gone. Perhaps that was a smoke screen in the Spring Game when Dantonio had them filling the air with passes to the tune of 357 yards EACH for Nichols and Cousins. I understand you’re just talking about the MSU-MSU game (you are, right?), but even then I’d be shocked if we don’t see at least 30 passes from the Spartans. Dantonio knows his offense by necessity needs to be more pass-oriented this year, although I predict the running game will lose a lot less than expected because of Baker and Caper. These freshmen are going to see a lot of playing time. But, let’s face it, they’re young, and for that reason Dantonio is more than smart enough to know that establishing the PASS this year, will loosen up the run for our youngsters. He can’t afford to wait to do that just because Mont. St. is weak. Central and Notre Dame are no slouches.