Spartan Football Essentials: Iowa City Landslide
OFFENSE
Down 21-0 after a deep ball to Jalen Nailor, the Spartans had a 3rd & 1 and somehow decided to run the ball? Did Jay Johnson and Mel Tucker forget about their Rutgers blunder already? MSU had to have a 1st Down there, even if it took two plays, and they got nothing. Kicking the long Field Goal after that run went nowhere wasn't a bad idea, but dialing up a slow to develop running play that had no option element on the 3rd & 1 was brutal. That's the second time in three weeks such a bizarre decision has stopped MSU on a situation critical drive. Jay Johnson and Mel Tucker need to end that trend quickly. Michigan State Football doesn't have that big a "on the job training" learning curve. This program should be a bit better than that.
It's not too much to ask the Offense to put its players in their best position to succeed consistently. That should be the standard for a major College Football program that wants to compete at the top of the sport. It's critically important to do that during the handful of key downs each week. This Offense has now whiffed on critical calls twice in each loss. The first time it cost them a chance to beat Rutgers; today, it cost them a chance to avoid a blowout. Conversion or not, it looked like a really bad choice that had a very low chance of working. That stretch was MSU's last show at avoiding the big time snowball.
Rocky Lombardi had a nightmare of a Half and looked to be injured during that horrible start. It's hard to imagine why he wasn't pulled after it became clear he had an issue with his left leg. Credit Lombardi for trying to hang in there and keep playing, but what was he doing with a limp leg that was affecting his throwing motion during a game that got out of hand?
MSU burned a chance to get a good look at their backup Quarterback options long after the game was out of reach. They were far too slow to make a change during the first half that left Mel Tucker and company sitting in the little road locker room staring at 35-0. But they do have to make up for a significant chunk of game experience Rocky Lombardi did not get in 2018 and 2019 that he should have had. For all of the Spartan Nation that pled for Mark Dantonio to get Lombardi meaningful minutes the last two years, often, part of that bill came due at Iowa City today. Sadly, it even trickles down to Theo Day and Payton Thorne, who ideally would have left a big blow out at Iowa City with at least several quality snaps under their belt.
DEFENSE
The Spartan Defense was put in a bad spot quickly at Iowa and could not hold off the flood. The Hawks came out focused, energized, and a bit galvanized, given all that's going on around their football team these days. And, they were remarkable salty about the dramatic come from ahead 1-point loss last week. Michigan State was not ready for that as a team, and the Defense could not stand on its head well enough to keep the game within reach for very long.
No one associated with Spartan Football will be happy with the massive egg laid in Kinnick Stadium today, but it's not like the Spartan Defense collapsed to cause the damage. The Defense gave a good number of reps to various players that could prove somewhat beneficial later this year, but make no mistake, that's not what anyone went to Iowa City hoping to do this week. 49-7 or not, this Defense cannot allow 226 yards rushing and expect to compete with the big boys in the East that are left on the 2020 schedule.
Scottie Hazleton and staff will have their hands full next week as an improving Indiana Offense brings a dynamic Quarterback to town that's already given MSU trouble in the past. Michael Penix is the real thing. He's full of confidence after knocking off Penn State and Michigan in recent weeks, and he brings an Offense with him that can compete up front with Michigan State like we have not seen in decades. The Defense needs to bounce back quickly if this football team can steady itself after the beat down they took at Iowa.
SPECIAL TEAMS
This unit took a step or two backwards in a sloppy and lacking performance today. Early on, as MSU was getting ambushed, the punt coverage team picked an awful time to get loose, sloppy, and beat for a big return. They got bailed out later in the Half by a couple of big Iowa flags too. There are pretty significant issues that must be cleaned up this week.
The Hawkeye punt return that completed the 1st Half knock out looked dangerous from its line drive beginning. That trajectory leaves so much green space between the returner, and any would be tacklers. Those line drives produce many big returns across the sport, and unfortunately for the Spartans, that converted into 28-0 with a couple of minutes left in the 1st Half. It was the painful final blow of the Hawkeyes 1st Half knock out. This unit has work to do in order to make today's effort their worst of 2020. It can get better from here, and it should.
INTANGIBLES
That was a relatively immature look from Spartan Football today, from top to bottom. Given the chaos around Iowa Football right now, their 0-2 start to the season, and their very steady leadership under long-tenured Head Coach Kirk Ferentz, what were the Spartans expecting? Iowa wasn't going to show up today? They were just going to mail in 2020, come out flat and disinterested, and yield to the Spartans will? Please. This is Iowa Hawkeye Football. They rarely ever fold it up. They did their part. Why didn't the Spartans come out ready for the challenge ahead? That's a question MSU's leadership (players and coaches) has to figure out in a hurry.
One of the first keys to winning on the road is to at least match the home team's intensity over a full 60-minutes. Live audience or not, you still have to get there. MSU did that at Michigan and surely did not at Iowa. It showed up from the early minutes, and Iowa took full advantage of nearly every opportunity. That's how they landed the shocker of a knock out in the first 30-minutes that no one saw coming. Many saw Iowa coming to play, bringing a better effort than we've seen to date, but not a complete mauling like they gave the Spartans today.
Mel Tucker had the biggest win of his relatively young career as a Head Coach last week, and right now, he's forced to digest the worst loss of his relatively young career as a Head Coach. Tucker has outstanding football coaching experience at the highest levels of the sport, including an interim head coaching stretch with the Jacksonville Jaguars back in 2011. But he only had 14-games as a College Head Coach before this one kicked off. Perhaps that helps explain how this one got so far out of hand so fast.
This one looked a lot like either of the back to back smoke show losses at Purdue and Wisconsin in 1999, after beating Michigan. That's not a good thing. That was decades ago now, and though it was only his fifteenth game as a College Head Coach, Mel Tucker should have the coaching tools needed to avoid such peril. He probably has moves to cut off that blow out from exploding like it did, but he did not look to use any of them. He left an injured and rattled looking Quarterback out there too long. He did not do enough to slow the game and keep it competitive before the Half, and it's possible, like many before him, that he did not do quite enough during the practice week to make sure that kind of loss did not happen. It's one thing to lose on the road, that happens every week in the sport; it's another to get blown out of the barn in a jiffy like Tucker's team did today.
Nick Saban used to bark and squawk about how hard it was for a growing program to handle success. He remains famously harder on his teams after a big win than he is after any other result. Mel Tucker was on staff for a few of those with Saban at MSU and has seen others at other coaching stops. He's also been on staffs that somehow kept a loss from getting out of hand, which is a known commodity around the Spartan Nation.
It hasn't happened every time, but Tom Izzo has stopped a number of games from getting out of hand at MSU. He's even brought the Spartans back to win some of those that looked really bleak early on. Not many coaches can do that in any sport, and it might have been a mistake to assume Tucker was ready to do that this early in his career leading MSU. But it's not impossible, and the complete landslide at Iowa today should serve as an important lesson for Mel Tucker and staff. Iowa forged ahead and boxed all the damage needed to close his Spartans out in less than one Half. Mel Tucker and company head home with a lot of work to do before the Spartans welcome a hot Indiana team next week. As high as this football program was last week, they were humbled in the other direction at Iowa today. What a difference a week makes in major College Football.
EXTRA POINT
2020 has been a rollercoaster in the American sports world since approximately March 11th. It's not slowing down anytime soon. College Football is naturally more prone to wild swings from week to week, and even during a thrilling sixty minutes, but that's been even more the case this fall. It's almost expected at this point, and it's not likely to slow down completely as we enter the middle stretch of the shortened season. Keep that in mind as you watch a wider spread of good and bad across the world of College Football this month and expect things around the entire American sports world to look more normal as next summer fades to fall. These wild and crazy swings are not just happening to College Football teams in the state of Michigan.