Nearly two days later and it still seems somewhat incomprehensible. The Spiders lose to a bottom-half MEAC time on opening night, and in week 1 put themselves in must win mode for most of the CAA slate. For a team with such high expectations and a large number of starters returning it’s hard to think of a worse loss in recent memory.

What we learned

We learned plenty, and very little of that was good.

It can get worse than Fordham in 2019? – A few people have already said Fordham in 2019 was worse but I think this one takes the cake. That team was coming off a 4-7 record in 2018 and still trying to establish themselves. That by no means is a reason to lose to Fordham that year (before they were a playoff team) however coming off a playoff appearance in 2022 with 13+ starters returning makes the Morgan State game feel on another level. I don’t really care to think about what was truly worse but this is at/beyond the level of 2013 Gardner Webb & 2019 Fordham.

Certain Special Teams areas haven’t improved – Terrible kickoff return yardage and another blocked kick allowed on special teams. Lopez did drive that field goal low however watching the replay back there was plenty of penetration on each of the first two field goals. I won’t count Tristan’s kickoff return since he’s an up-man, but the two outside of that resulted in 22 yards total. 11 yards per return with an average starting field position inside the 20 is no improvement from where we were last year.

Stretching the field matters – I’ll go into this more below but at some point you can’t keep everything within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. No urgency to work the ball downfield, and when we tried we were met with an inability to protect the QB.

The defense is deep – They got hit with a few chunk plays on the opening drive that resulted in a TD but other than that things pretty much went to plan. Good pressure on the QB, low yards per carry, and saw 15+ guys play meaningful snaps. The 4-2-5 unit looked good, as did numerous linebackers. They’ve got a big test next week that will really set the bar for what they can do.

Drives

1st half drive top left, 2nd half below the red line on the left side & the entire right side.

Defense

This one will be the easy one so I’ll start here.

14 drives:

• 6 punts (43%)
• 4 turnovers [one on downs] (29%)
• 2 TDs (14%)
• 2 FG attempts (14%)

One TD they allowed started at our own 10 so that doesn’t really count against them. Essentially 10 points given up, three turnovers forced, three sacks, and 10 TFLs. They faced a not-good Morgan State offense and ensured they looked that way. All you can ask for.

Aidan Murray – #99 is back and he doesn’t look too far off from his 2021 form. Seemed to play a regular number of snaps based on how we rotate DTs and got himself four tackles, 1.5 TFLs, and a sack in his return. Very promising start.

Depth – Both Jared Joseph and QMW looked good at Will linebacker, we got to see Jarmo play in the 4-2-5, and Donovan Hoilette did a nice job at both LB and edge rusher. The secondary wasn’t tested so overall it was a clean game on defense that allowed us to play multiple packages. Expect that to continue going forward.

Offense

Now for the not-so-easy part.

12 drives:

• 5 punts (42%)
• 3 turnovers (25%)
• 3 FG attempts (25%)
• 1 TD (8%)

The field goal drive started on the Morgan State 26 yard-line so we effectively only had one scoring drive. Opening kickoff, 12 plays, 75 yards, easy 7-zip lead. After that? Nothing. And not even like we were close a bunch of times. Aside from that field goal drive where we were gifted the ball at the 26 we never got back into the redzone again. Just a complete headscratcher that only gets more confusing as we look at the 1st/2nd half splits and the play-calling distribution.

1st half/2nd half

Interestingly enough the offense wasn’t too bad in the 1st half despite only 7 points. Here are those drives:

• 75 yards – TD
• Two plays – INT
• 40 yards – punt
• 52 yards – FG attempt
• 38 yards – FG attempt

Multiple first downs on 4/5 drives, two missed FGs, and an early INT. If one of those field goals goes in we’ve got 10 points at the half, 200 yards of offense, and four drives where we moved the ball well. Not anything to be overly excited about but a decent start for a new QB. The INT wasn’t even that bad, as he sat in the pocket well, took a 1-on-1 shot deep, and probably threw it two yards too vertical instead of two yards more horizontal. The 2nd half though is a different story – look at these drives:

• 1 yard – punt
• 1 yard – punt
• -7 yards – fumble
• 15 yards – FG
• -6 yards – punt
• -5 yards – fumble
• 19 yards – punt

18 YARDS OF OFFENSE in seven drives. Against Morgan State. The Morgan State that hasn’t had a winning record in seven years. I don’t have an explanation for it and it didn’t seem like the team did either. Morgan State made halftime adjustments and we weren’t ready for them. We continually tried to run the ball inside and play wide with WR screens, however once those weren’t working we didn’t have anywhere to turn. Two things stood out from the 2nd half struggles:

Pressure

I mentioned in the preview that Morgan St was top-5 in the FCS in TFLs but I never expected them to give us that much trouble. Bob Black mentioned in the broadcast that Cade Salyers (RG) was out however that’s no excuse for our inability to control the LOS against the Bears. We started with JMU transfer Scott Hummel at RG and then switched to Parker Mitchell at RT (w/ Coll shifting to RG) for the 2nd half. The ultimate result was five sacks, eight TFLs, and three QB hurries for the Bear defense.

The run game wasn’t much better either as we only netted 2.6 YPC. Wickersham and Smith looked good running on the opening drive but after that there was no room to operate. Aside from Kyle’s 22 yard run we didn’t have anything longer than eight yards. They brought pressure off the edge and from inside and we couldn’t solve it. Very uncomfortable four quarters of football but what shocked me even more was how nothing changed as the game went on.

Air yards

Air yards are the total distance the ball travels from the line of scrimmage to where the receiver catches it. There’s no yards after the catch factored in, so a screen play that goes for 50 yards can be measured differently than a true 50 yard completion on a deep ball. The Spiders air yards on Saturday told the story for me – After a 16 yard completion to Veney on the third drive of the game (11 air yards) we did not have a pass that traveled more than eight yards downfield the rest of the game (until the final “hail Mary” at the end). Meaning for the final 40 minutes we either threw screens/short routes or were under too much pressure to work it deep. Here are the air yards on passes in the 2nd half:

• 4 yards – quick out
• 7 yards – incomplete
• 5 yards – incomplete
• 0 yards – screen
• 0 yards – screen
• 0 yards – screen
• 0 yards – screen
• 0 yards – check down
• 5 yards – slant
• 4 yards – snag
• 0 yards – screen
• 0 yards – screen
• 0 yards – incomplete

It was shocking to see screen after screen deep into the 2nd half and unsurprisingly it came with the expected results. I do understand that air yards and pressure are directly related, as we definitely had some plays designed for deeper routes that were disrupted by the pressure. However Morgan St saw our unwillingness to take our chances outside and they played fearless – look at how they played some situations in the 2nd half:

They were beyond unconcerned about us figuring out a protection scheme and taking shots in 1-on-1 matchups. That’s a huge 3rd down in the 2nd half (top image) and instead of accepting their challenge outside we ran it straight at them for a loss. In the end it was too predictable with too many 1st down runs and not enough of using our talent at receiver.

Where does the Offense go?

Watching the game again it almost seemed like we got spooked by Kyle’s early INT and didn’t want to have him throw it downfield again after that. I’d like to believe that isn’t the case because he’s more than capable of making bigger throws but I’m trying to find some explanation for the vanilla offense. Either that, or we didn’t trust our protection to hold up. No matter what our thinking was teams will continue to key on the run and dare us to take our shots and we’ve got to be willing to. Nothing about this fall eluded to such a simplistic offense so at this point I don’t know what to think.

On one hand our new QB didn’t play poorly, we just didn’t let him go make plays. I’m sure he missed some reads and maybe scrambled too quickly a few times but that’s understandable. You don’t want to force him to make a ton of big throws each drive but you’ve got to let him be a quarterback. On the other hand, Huesman didn’t do much to squash the notion that he can’t win without Billy Cosh.

This Saturday in East Lansing will be a fascinating watch. I hope the defense continues to play to the level we know they can and I’m hoping this offense let’s our talent go and try to make some plays.

Next Post

Michigan State Preview (Friday morning)