About Last Week I’m back! Sorry, I had a thing last week. But enough about me. How are you? Hope your week went really well, and that your Halloween preparations are coming along nicely.
Look, keep your chin up. You almost had him that time. The Road Ahead Michigan State (7-0, 4-0 B1G) Last week: Won at Indiana, 20-15; Bye Recap: If you were watching this game for entertainment, man, you are bad at TV-watching. The teams combined for 563 yards of offense, with neither team reaching 4 yards per play. Peyton Thorne’s 4.8 yards per attempt with 1 TD and 2 INTs only looked good because they were standing next to Jack Tuttle’s 3.6 YPA/0 TD/2 INT afternoon. Hell, the best QBR on the day – by 69 points — belonged to Tyler Hunt, who was 1/1 with a 15 yards completion to… Payton Thorne On the ground, a great hubbub was made this week of the suggestion that much of Kenneth Walker’s statistical hay was made against teams ranked in the bottom half of in yards per carry allowed, and that while he is obviously a supremely talented and effective back, there is a question of whether such production can be sustained when his final five games are all among teams ranked in the top half in the country. This space draws no conclusions on this matter, but Walker finished with 84 yards on 23 carries. Surrendering 15 points in a full conference game sounds pretty good. But then you consider Indiana’s prior (and subsequent) exploits in conference play:
Against Iowa, Penn State, and Ohio State combined: 13 points Against Michigan State: 15
Michigan State also continued their streak of facing so, so many offensive plays; Indiana ran 88 plays, bumping MSU’s season average number of plays faced to 83.4/game, highest in the nation by 3.7 plays. This team is as frightening as: When you want to step quietly out of the bar to have a nice private alley fight with your brother, but someone yells “FIGHT” and now the entire bar is coming outside to watch. Fear Level = 8 Michigan should worry about: Use your imagination. Michigan can sleep soundly about: Michigan State is an offensive Jekyll and Hyde team. Through four conference games, they have put together four halves of dynamic offensive football and four halves of concentrated Big Ten sludgefart in its natural juices. For the Northwestern game, the first half against Rutgers, and the first half against Nebraska, they have come up with explosive play after explosive play, and generally looked like one of the best offensive teams in the Big Ten. On the other hand…
Nebraska (2nd half): 5 drives, 0 points, 0 first downs. Rutgers (2nd half: One 94-yard individual effort, and outside of that, 28 plays over 6 drives totaling 88 yards and 3 points. Indiana (entire game): 13 drives, 13 offensive points, 14 first downs gained, 3.9 yards per play, and their sole touchdown drive coming after a turnover at the IU 39.
When they play Michigan: Noon. Which is good. Because… reasons. Next game: vs. Michigan, noon, FOX (MSU +4.5) [AFTER THE JUMP: we discuss… that.]