[VIDEO] MSU FOOTBALL FRONT-BURNER: Seven Games In and We Can't Tell What's Real? [All-Access Video: Purdue]

Our weekly feature on MSU Football brings diverse responses to a variety of questions 

surrounding the Spartans program. Even as the team appears to be coming together, 

our panelists present unique opinions about many facets of Spartan football.

The MSU All-Access video (RB and OL special, Purdue game)
 is also attached at the bottom of the post.

Below are this week's Front-Burner questions.

(Reader comments are welcome by clicking the link at the bottom of the post.)

-OFFENSE-
How do you see the offense functioning with the tougher opponents and higher stakes on the horizon? Should we keep ragging on the Spartan Offense, or can we just agree that it's not a team strength this year and move on?

-DEFENSE-
Considering your response Question #1, can the defense carry the team through the balance of the Big Ten schedule if needed? Is the Spartans' defense really as good as advertised or are we drinking a little Kool-Aid based on the teams MSU has faced this year?

-QUARTERBACKS-
Should a second Spartans quarterback have seen playing time against Indiana? How about with Cook struggling against Purdue? Should Dantonio be looking for an opportunity to play a second QB at Illinois?

-AUDIBLE-
Did you observe any interesting developments, plays or story-lines from Saturday's game that may have gone largely unnoticed or lacked meaningful media focus?

-DUMPing the chUMps-
Michigan has two weeks to heal and prepare for MSU. What do you think each team's performance this past Saturday says about the November 2 match up in East Lansing?

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1. How do you see the offense functioning with the tougher opponents and higher stakes on the horizon? Should we keep ragging on the Spartan Offense, or can we just agree that it's not a team strength this year and move on?

MSUSpartan76 (Follow him on M-Live)
Ragging? No, but there are many things to discuss. Why no ragging? Because there is nothing we can say or do that will have any influence on the result of any game. Also, Monday morning quarterbacking is so much easier than planning and executing a game in real time.

What we have seen is 4 weeks of revolving QB starters, followed by 2 fair weather weeks and 1 foul weather week. Would we even be having this conversation had we had a known starter since week 1? No. The Purdue game had a lot of good things, and things that did not follow the script. Ask this question again after the Illinois game. It will be relevant then.

SpartanMan82 (See all of his posts here)
The coaches are holding back so much of the playbook that it's hard to know what will happen when the "real games" begin. Either way, the Offense is not a team strength right now, and no amount of Internet commentary will change that.

ATownAndDown (Follow him on M-Live)
I am still right where I was last week in the discussion of the offense... We have made some vast improvements from where we were to start the season but we are not yet to the level we need to be at. We regressed last week against Purdue. No excuses about it. Frankly, I think Purdue played us a lot like ND in that they would let us pick up yards with the run and short passes knowing that we would get impatient and try and force something and the drive would stall. We fell right into that trap and we don't have the tools that can make a defense pay on a consistent bases for playing us conservatively. U of M, Nebraska and NW do not have great defenses but they are better than what Purdue has. If we don't call a game that forces defenses to adjust and Cook can't make teams pay for those adjustments, there are going to be some ugly games that we don't have the consolations of "hey at least we won."


2. Considering your response Question #1, can the defense carry the team through the balance of the Big Ten schedule if needed? Is the Spartans' defense really as good as advertised or are we drinking a little Kool-Aid based on the teams MSU has faced this year?

ATownAndDown (Follow him on M-Live)
MSU's defense is good... really good. The numbers might be inflated a bit because of the competition but what would you expect from a top ranked defense against this level of competition? This defense is going to have to put up some really average numbers the rest of the way out in order to even regress to last years numbers and last year was a top-5 defense no questions asked. With that said, I do not see them being able to carry this team to a championship level. They will keep us in every game the rest of the way out. The only way we will be down by 2 or more scores this year is if the offense is so bad that they are putting up 3 or less points in a game. Our defense is good but at the end of the day you have to score at least a few points to win football games. You are not going to simply be able to outclass the likes of U of M, Nebraska, or NW as you have to this point in the B1G season.

MSUSpartan76 (Follow him on M-Live)
The Spartans have already equaled the 2012 regular season wins. So, yes, the defense can carry the team if needed. The defense is as good as advertised (sans the "no fly zone") but it is not perfect. Teams will make plays against Duzzi's Dawgs. It will happen, but it is the aggregate of the whole game that defines how good or not so good the defense is.

SpartanMan82 (See all of his posts here)
The Defense is our team strength, and it seems good enough to keep us in every game unless the Offense gift-wraps multiple red-zone turnovers to a good opponent. The Defense is not "magical", and it can't be counted on to score points, so the idea that MSU can be "carried" by it is a little far-fetched. The Offense still needs to score points.

We must keep in mind that our coaches are perfectly willing to let an opponent move the ball downfield, as long as it happens little by little. They have geared the Defense to stop the big play, and in so doing, we are left vulnerable to lots of little plays. Dantonio has correctly identified the chances of opponent mistakes to be higher the more plays they have to run.

3. Should a second Spartans quarterback have seen playing time against Indiana? How about with Cook struggling against Purdue? Should Dantonio be looking for an opportunity to play a second QB at Illinois?

SpartanMan82 (See all of his posts here)
Yes/Yes/Yes. O'Connor should have received pre-scheduled playing time in each of the last two games, and again this weekend. It's not a "controversy", it's a simple need for depth at the most important position. O'Connor should absolutely NOT be "thrown in at the end" out of desperation; if Cook is the starter, it's his game to win or lose at the end.

But Dantonio has been repeating his self-acknowledged mistake by over-committing to a single player and locking-in on that guy to get all of the available playing time. If Connor Cook were only vulnerable to Kryptonite, I would be good to go with him playing every down. But if there's any chance he could be injured, I'm certain we need a #2 ready to go on short notice.

We were beating Michigan in 2004 when Woodley knocked Stanton out of the game. We lost that year because we had no viable backup. We need a backup quarterback ready to go, and we needed it two weeks ago.

ATownAndDown (Follow him on M-Live)
As I said last week to a similar question... No, no, no. Preparing a second quarterback when your first quarterback has so much to work on is silly. Cook is the QB. There seem to be a universal agreement that pulling him in the final moments of the ND game was a bad decision on multiple levels. But pulling him in a game like Saturday would have caused so much more of an uproar. Let's step back for a minute because we all know that it was a bad game for him. When would you have pulled Cook? At the end of the first quarter? End of the second? Maybe some time in the 3rd? Cook went 4-for-6 for 74 yards and rushed for 11 yards (including a huge 3rd down conversion on the final drive) in the 4th quarter. Does anyone think that there was an option on the team that would have had those numbers in the 4th quarter? I don't. Cook's game was off. He had some obvious mechanical issues (specifically he was throwing the ball like a baseball player and not like a quarterback and so he had a lot of balls sail on him). But at least when the game was on the line he came through and not only guided the team to a bit of a cushion but also ate up nearly 11 minutes of the 4th quarter.

MSUSpartan76 (Follow him on M-Live)
7 games done and 5 to go (regulation) and the backup is not getting snaps? Regardless of Cook's performance (good or not so good), another QB needs game time. Maxwell has experience, but if he is the backup he needs time on the field. Throwing him into the ND game with little or no practice reps and hardly any time to warm up really did not work. It should be part of the game plan to have a second QB in there. Something happens to Cook and then what?


4. Did you observe any interesting developments, plays or story-lines from Saturday's game that may have gone largely unnoticed or lacked meaningful media focus?

ATownAndDown (Follow him on M-Live)
Once again, to remain consistent... no one is talking about Warner's play calling. Langford picked up 5.5 YPC and was getting stronger as the game progressed. We opened the game with 3 rushes for 30 yards and then went to an end around and a pass to kill the drive. Next drive one run and 2 passes. In the first quarter Langford ran the ball 8 times for 52 yards. On the last drive he ran 6 times for 34 yards. That means that between the 1st quarter and the final drive Langford combined for 14 carries for 86 yards. That means for the 2.5 quarters in the middle he only got 10 carries (despite still picking up 4.5 YPC). I saw very little from the play calling that would suggest that we used the run to set up the pass. MSU's offense has been at its best when it leverages its running game to set up the everything else. This year we have gotten away from that.

And even though we scored, that was a poor play call down at the goal line. Lippett could have run it in himself but being a non-quarterback in that position he threw it anyway to a guy that isn't known as a pass catching TE. So much could have gone wrong with that play and its another "cute" play call instead of just going after a tired and worn down Purdue defense. Use the run and get away from the cute stuff.

MSUSpartan76 (Follow him on M-Live)
The game plan and play calling is evolving and becoming more creative (other than not giving a second QB quality playing time). This is not referring to the trick plays, but the down and distance calls.

SpartanMan82 (See all of his posts here)
The MSU Coaches are crushing the life out of our Offense by limiting the playbook to a fraction of what could be used. They're doing it so that nobody will be able to tell what we can do in the "real games" yet to come. This strategy may work in the long run, but it results in some extremely ugly football games in the meantime.

They ran RJ Shelton three times on the same end-around against Purdue. How many times does a true freshman carry the ball three times in one game on a fancy play like that? It's like our coaches are trying to bore their opponents scouting us in advance by giving them next to nothing to review.

This is why Dantonio is consistently so defensive about his strategy critiques, constantly pointing out that we won the game and that he "won't apologize for winning". This is "Tressel-Ball" without the vest. It is ugly to watch, and without big plays on offense, it turns games into white-knuckle events.


5. Michigan has two weeks to heal and prepare for MSU. What do you think each team's performance this past Saturday says about the November 2 match up in East Lansing?

MSUSpartan76 (Follow him on M-Live)
Who? We do not worry about the Ann Arbor Charm School ball club until it is the week of the game. There is only one game this week and that ain't it.

SpartanMan82 (See all of his posts here)
MSU obviously has a lot of game video to see how UM can be scored on, not only from Indiana, but from every game after the opener against CMU. There's probably not much they can do to improve their Defense with the bye week, but they gain an edge in game-planning to beat our Defense on November 2.

The bye-week is an advantage for the Michigan Offense in terms of preparation and also to come down from their inflated ego-state after running all over the Hoosiers.

The Spartans can win simply by knocking the UM Quarterback out of the game. Sadly, the same can be said about Michigan. MSU was in position to develop multiple quarterbacks during October, but our coaches were too (fill-in-the-blank) to do it.

ATownAndDown (Follow him on M-Live)
U of M is a very talented team. I have been saying it for a while now, don't let these games fool you because this team's going to be different when they roll into EL. They are young and far from ready for the big time but they have a lot of talented players on their team. Michigan has been very good coming out of bye weeks too under Hoke. The defense is going to have its hands full with their offense and our offense is going to have to do more than it did last week. I still like our chances but that contest will be a game we have to win and not one that we can escape with a win in.

MSU Football All-Access video:
Special focus on MSU running backs including highlights and interviews with players and coaches.
Special focus on the MSU offensive line including highlights and interviews with players and coaches.
Special feature on Sally Nogle, PhD, AT, ATC - Spartan's Head Athletic Trainer, national Hall of Famer and the nation's first only female to hold that position.
Purdue game highlights and insider camera work.






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