Patrick's blog

MSU football - final grades

MSU lost over the weekend to Hawaii 41-38, marking the second straight year the Spartans have lost to a WAC school. I could just leave things at that, but instead here's grades for the 2004 season.

OFFENSE: Drew Stanton is the player MSU can build their program around. When he plays and is healthy, the Spartans can beat just about anyone. When Stanton wasn't able to go this year, Damon Dowdell and Stephen Reaves were mostly horrible. Reaves is a freshman and gets a pass; Dowdell is a senior who never developed into anything more than a below-average backup. The running backs were pretty good. Jason Teague ran hard and caught the ball well out of the backfield, but probably cost MSU the game against Notre Dame when he was stripped and the ball was returned by the Irish for a TD. Jehuu Calcrick is a bull and will be fun to watch for the next three years. DeAndra Cobb should have played much more. The offense's grade is lowered considerably by the wide receivers, who again dropped a ton of balls and made few big plays. Matt Trannon came on at the end of the year. Jerramy Scott started well and then played very poorly down the stretch. Eric Knott is a highly coveted TE by NFL scouts. They can have him. The offensive line was very underrated, giving up few sacks and negative running plays. Against elite-level competition like Michigan, Ohio State, and Wisconsin, the o-line dominated at times. GRADE: B

DEFENSE: It was a very Jekyll and Hyde type year for the D. Up front, Kevin Vickerson and Brandon McKinney played the run very well at times. Clifton Ryan was inconsistent in getting to the quarterback off the edge. Most of the other defensive linemen were complete non-factors. At linebacker, MSU is in very bad shape. The LBs did a very poor job all season of getting off blocks and made very few impact plays. John L. Smith seems to favor quick, undersized LBs - not a very good fit for the Big Ten. MSU's secondary in 2004 was quite possibly the worst I have ever seen at the college level. Roderick Maples was the "shut down" corner, but he got beat for multiple big plays in almost every game. To be fair, Maples was very good against Minnesota and Wisconsin. Jaren Hayes is a converted RB, so I refuse to blame him for his struggles in 2004. I never once saw Hayes dog it, but he simply cannot play defensive back at this level. When I watched Ashton Watson during games, he looked serviceable and should have been given a bigger opportunity. GRADE: D+

SPECIAL TEAMS: Without question, the strength of this football team. Dave Rayner wasn't as accurate kicking field goals as he had been in the past, but his kickoffs were usually unreturnable and you can expect to see him kicking on Sundays. Brandon Fields had a high gross average, but his kicks were often line drives that yielded big returns. DeAndra Cobb made many, many big plays for MSU and will be sorely missed. Cobb came very close to single-handedly winning the Michigan game before his defensive teammates and his coaching staff failed him. MSU allowed a kickoff return for a TD against Indiana, making that game closer than it should have been, but otherwise the coverage units were solid. GRADE: A

COACHING: Once again, it is very difficult to look at the talent on this team and equate it with a 5-7 record. If you take four games - Rutgers, Notre Dame, Michigan, and Ohio State - that MSU lost and look closely, you'll see that those probably should have been wins. The coaches simply failed to make any adjustments on defense to cover the gross deficiencies at cornerback, inexplicably failed to give Cobb a bigger share of the load even though he made big play after big play all year, failed to get their team ready to play against Ohio State after losing a heartbreaker to Michigan, and most importantly, failed to get a talented team to a .500 record or a bowl game. GRADE: D

posted by Patrick @ 1:35 PM