Mark Dantonio Gives You the Latest STATE of the Michigan State Spartans Football Program!

Dantonio: I think the biggest thing you look at right now as far as a program is seven wins. Seven and oh right now. Certainly on the season and in the series

Dantonio: I think the biggest thing you look at right now as far as a program is seven wins. Seven and oh right now. Certainly on the season and in the series (vs. UM) seven out of nine. This is 60 wins in a period of five and a half years for our football program right now. We are on track. I am excited about the win, obviously.

Q: To be able to do this with a beat up offensive line, but with hope that they are closer to being healthy, does that give you even more hope moving forward for those bigger goals?

Dantonio: Absolutely! Kodi Kieler was a guy out a couple of weeks, came back last week but he played hurt. This was his first week back healthy and I don’ t think he has all of his strength back yet. Jack Conklin came back but was not playing 100% as well. But he finished the game. Certainly we will be able to get Jack Allen back whether it is this week or, well you guys know I don’t talk about injuries, but we’ll see how it comes and how people heal and what the times lengths are. Yes that is our thought process and that is where we intend it to be.

Q: We didn’t get a chance to ask you about the Tyler O’Connor fake punt, was that a called fake?

Dantonio: Yes that was a called play. We felt like we could get an out cut by Monty Madaris on that. I’m sure you all saw the film and saw him breaking out and I thought he did break away from the corner. We thought Tyler could deliver that, but he made the decision to run it and didn’t quit make it.

HONDO: After analyzing the film could you give us an assessment of your two true freshman safeties in Khari Willis and Grayson Miller?

Dantoinio: I thought they played excellent for true freshman playing in their first game AT Michigan, in such a big series. With so much on the line I thought they played outstanding. Both of them have a couple of things that they have to clean up, but they are active and they were productive. They are very good players and think they are beyond their years in terms of how they handle things and in terms of adjustments and the intensity of the football game. I thought they did very very well.

Q: Update on Jalen Watts-Jackson

Dantonio: He had surgery (Sunday morning) I talked with him last night talked with his father (Sunday afternoon) and obviously the doctors. He had surgery down in Ann Arbor at UM and obviously he is out for the season. Dislocated hip and then a fracture as well. They repaired the fracture and reset the hip. He will be out for the year. He will remain inactive, he has not got a cast on or anything like that, three months is way of nothing on it. No weight bearing on it. Then he will be able to start rehabbing at that point. I am going to talk to him this evening (Sunday night) hopefully he will be out of sedation. It was about noon when I talked with his father.

Q: Did he get the injury during the tackle or the celebration?

Dantonio: He told me that it happened on the tackle. As he was being tackled is when it happened. When you look at the film you can see the pain, you can see him in pain. So that is when it happened and it is unfortunate that everyone piled on him, but I think people started figuring it out pretty quickly what was going on.

Q: You said after the game you wanted to play some pool. Has there been any chance to soak it all in yet?

Dantonio: I never made it to the pool table, but I just yea, it is soaking in but at the same time it’s probably what it is like on the other end a little bit. What just happened type of thing. But we coach for it, and we had a plan and also a belief. We had conviction. Our players believed they could block it or something could happen. Something obviously happened and we took advantage of an opportunity. Leading up to that point, the last four series defensively for us where outstanding. I don’t know if they were able to gain 13 or 15 yards or something like that. Obviously not allowing a first down on the last series and then the previous three series where huge. We went three and out four straight times. I thought Connor Cook played very very well, put the ball right on the money. When you watch the film of it he had a couple of others that would have clearly been difficult catches but were right where they needed to be. He threw for 328 and I thought Burbridge had an outstanding game. Macgarrett Kings made some big plays and so did RJ Shelton. Obviously our front seven played very well in particular Lawrence Thomas and Shilique Calhoun, Malik McDowell and Joel Heath. Those four guys allowed our linebackers to play very well as well. Played a great game defensively. When you give up 10 first downs you expect to win. Need to play better on special teams. That is the underlying thing. We gave up too much field position on special teams and that has been a reoccurring situation that we need to correct. But we made up for it on the last play. Sort of a day by day situation that we need to try to clean it up., but our specialists need to punt and kick better. Bottom line.

Q: A play like Jalen made can immortalize you with this fan base. How big was it for a guy that mostly plays on special teams to make that big of a play?

Dantonio: Well Jalen is a redshirt freshman but he has been playing very very well. He was about ready to start playing for us whether it was in nickel situations or getting him involved. He has been very active on special teams and has played very very well. He is a red shirt freshman and the two guys that hit him, Grayson Miller is a true freshman and Matt Morrissey is a redshirt freshman and then Andrew Dowell (true freshman) was involved in that. Jermaine Edmondson is the guy that ushered him down the sideline with a huge block, and I keep sitting there counting to ten. I don’t know where the thing is at. Maybe go out of bounds with two seconds to go, but that block was huge that Jermaine put on them. I don’t think it was any coincidence. I don’t believe in coincidences. As we got off that bus to come to the game, I had the players just sit there and think about what could happen. I just counted it out. So it was kind of ironic that those ten seconds came back to us at the end of the game.

Q: You have talked about the punt being the most important play in football; do you feel like each time one is about to happen that it can change the course of play?

Dantonio: Yes. Absolutely. They did a good job with it, with Peppers returning a punt. They also stopped a fake punt so it goes both ways. We were just able to execute on an opportunity. We didn’t cash in on that opportunity that was given to us at the end of that game, we were able to execute on that opportunity. Just make it happen or create a situation. Scoop it up and get it in the end zone.

Q: Have you come up with a name for that play?

Dantonio: I’m taking suggestions. I have heard a lot of them. Just needs to be something simple. So we will take some suggestions as we move forward. I’ve got all kinds of thoughts. We will pick the right one.

Q: Your decision to use Burbridge and go at Michigan’s best cover DB?

Dantonio: They matched him against Burbridge in a lot of ways. It was a decision by them to match him on Burbridge. AB is going to catch balls for us. I thought it was a great matchup. I’m sure it went a little bit both ways but he caught nine passes for 136 yards I think. If we could have thrown 12 maybe he could have gotten a couple others. I just think the matchup was just one of the more interesting matchups in the game. Football is a game of matchups and you have got to win your battle and sometimes it goes one way and sometimes it goes another way. Both guys are very competitive and I thought Lewis is a very good defensive back.

Q: The national narrative is that you were lucky?

Dantonio: I think we were in the game the entire way and I think that we hurt ourselves with some plays just like they hurt themselves at the end of the game. That is football. Both teams stopped he run. Both teams did a great job of stopping the run which always had gone to the winner, but it was just a few yards difference there. Both teams were sacked three times and we threw for more yardage. We didn’t play well enough on special teams so that was an equalizer there. At the end of the day you just count the score. That is all you count. You can rationalize all you want, but at the end of the day the job is to compete until the end of the game and win the football game. And that that is the one stat that came our way in addition to others, but that is the one true stat that really matters.

Hondo: Is there a danger with such a big emotional win, with a team like Indiana that loves to throw the ball and that is your defensive weakness?

Dantonio: We have sort of prided ourselves on being very good after a big game. If you look back at our history right now, our recent history we have played well after big games whether win or loss. Our players understand what is at stake and they also understand what kind of football team Indiana has. What kind of offense, defense and special teams and issues that are going to present themselves. There will be nobody sitting there saying that we overlooked Indiana. Our players understand the opportunities in front of them and they also understand what could happen if we don’t play well. If we don’t prepare well. We may not play well, but what is important is that we need to prepare well. We will do that.

Q: Have you had time to reflect on that game being your 100th win?

Dantonio: I have thought about that as a program. I’ve got a lot of coaches that have been with me for 12 years. Three at Cincinnati and then nine years here. Harlon Barnett, Mike Tressel, Mark Staten, Dave Warner for the most part, all but two years at Cincinnati. So we’ve got a lot of guys who were involved in that. It is really a hundredth win in what I believe is a program win not just for myself, but for all of the assistants that are with us and have been with us as well.

Q: In terms of punting has Tyler O’Connor replaced Jake Hartbarger for performance? Where are you at the position moving forward?

Dantonio: We felt in that particular game that Tyler O’Connor had more experience in terms of handling a big situation like that, down at Michigan. Just felt like at that time we wanted to punt him and I also felt like there were fakes available if we chose to go in that direction. Which at that point and time I thought we needed to. Those are the reasons behind it. Also I felt like the two preceding games that we needed to punt better.

Q: You mentioned your team had belief and conviction that they were going to win this football game. How do you quantify that?

Dantonio: That is an intangible thing so that is hard to quantify. When you are in it, and you feel it and you are around your players you understand whether there truly is a belief in what you are trying to do or if it is just words. Our players truly believe that they have a shot to win at every turn. That there is inches. We’ve lost by inches here before. Now we are creating opportunities and we are winning by inches. That has been the history here for the last couple of years. Really the last three years. We have won 60 games in five and a half years now. So do the math over six years. A lot of those games have been by inches. I think our players understand that you stretch a little here, and you play with a little bit more effort there and great things can happen. Doesn’t mean that it will happen, but it definitely won’t happen if you don’t have the belief.

Q: You mentioned you didn’t get a chance to catch up with Coach Harbaugh after the game. Have you yet?

Dantonio: No. No, I haven’t. I don’t really have his number and just, you know. Coach Harbaugh is a good man. In a game somebody is going to win and somebody is going to lose and I am sure that is a tough loss.

SID JOHN LEWANDOWSKI: Just so you all know on his way out of the tunnel he (Coach Harbaugh) did seek out Mark Hollis and congratulate him on the sidelines just because he did not see Coach Dantonio, just so you guys are aware of that.

Q: The UM game sits in the middle of the year? Is this like a midterm exam? Are there positives that can come from a game like this being where it is on the schedule?

Dantonio: I am sure that there are. I have never really approached it like that. Just because I know it is next game up for us and we just take them as they come. I look at the schedule prior to the season saying we play this team there and this team there and get ready to go. You’ve got tough games really throughout the season. So we had a premiere game I guess you would say in Oregon early on, and then we’ve had this game middle and we are going to have other great games on our schedule. The next one is just as important. Because it is the next one.

Q: You said you had danced in the locker room before, but Connor Cook said he had not seen dance moves like that before. Can you give us a description?

Dantonio: It was the Rich Homie Quan dance before, but he wasn’t playing last night. So I really can’t describe it. I’m just in the mob with everybody else. All you’ve got to do is toss your fingers up and down a little bit and you are all good.