The Spiders played a fairly strong 1st half but eventually the FBS talent & depth took over, leading to the Spartans 45-14 win. Plenty of questions still remain but there were a few bright spots to take away as well.

Drives

1st half drives on the left, 2nd half drives on the right

Offense

10 drives – 7 punts (70%), 1 turnover on downs (10%), 1 FG attempt (10%), 1 TD (10%)

The bar was low after last week (like REALLY low) so we improved but the progress was minimal. Have to keep in mind who we’re playing but with only one offensive TD (on a drive that started in the high red zone) there isn’t too much to be overly excited about.

Offensive Line – With Cade Salyers still out the shuffle up front continues. Coll started the game at RG with Mitchell at RT, then we saw some of Scott Hummel at LG in place of Gouveia. Ultimately the Spartans finished with seven sacks and 13 TFLs in a game where Wickersham never looked comfortable in the pocket. It is Michigan State so they obviously have the advantage up front however any concerns raised last week weren’t alleviated this past Saturday. Big few weeks upcoming for this O-line.

Is no one open, or is there too much indecision? – Plenty of the sacks allowed felt like coverage sacks as Wickersham was able to look to a few guys before going down. A couple felt like some indecisiveness on his part so I’d guess there’s a few throws he wish he made. Some hesitancy from our young QB? Expected. However a majority of the time it seemed no one was open. That’s two weeks to begin the season of “not a lot of guys open” so if you’re concerned about what we’re running you’ve got every right to be.

Did we scrap the WR screens? – Huesman said they were going to cut some stuff out after week 1 and it seems WR screens were first on the list. Now, that may be an FBS opponent thing, as we weren’t going to be MSU sideline to sideline, however no WR screens was an interesting twist. We had nice success on a few RB screens so while we definitely shouldn’t cut 100% of our screens I was glad to see we weren’t a screen happy offense.

Our top WRs need more targets – DeGennaro finished with five catches which gives him 11 through the first two games – quite frankly he should have no less than 15 receptions at this point. There’s benefits to getting everyone involved but if you’ve got a clear #1 guy you’ve got to let him be playmaker. We’ve seen zero vertical shots to him so far and that can’t happen on a team that hasn’t stretched the field in 120 minutes of football. He’s very valuable in the intermediate passing game with his ability to make the first man miss, yet it feels like we’re wasting his speed. Ja’Vion Griffin only has four catches as well, so getting our top two threats outside the ball is something we need much more of.

Roll outs – Two weeks in and we’ve run around 10 rollouts, something we rarely saw last season. It makes a lot of sense – if you’re having protection issues try and move the pocket to slow down the rush. Hit and miss early on with more misses than hits. Michigan State still got pressure on a few and for a team struggling to get open cutting the field in half isn’t necessarily helping. I feel like this one is going to trend similar to screens, we won’t cut them out entirely but I’d expect to see fewer moving forward.

Pre-snap adjustments – The Spiders were a little slower getting the plays in Saturday however we clearly were checking more at the line. An overall positive adjustment and we only needed to burn one timeout for the play clock. It obviously wasn’t a great day offensively but there were almost no “horrible plays” as we were able to adjust out of any bad looks at the line of scrimmage. We’ll absolutely continue to see that going forward and it was nice to see something that was awful in week 1 be immediately addressed in week 2.

Defense

12 drives – 6 TDs (50%), 3 punts (25%), 2 turnovers (17%), 1 FG attempt (8%)

This game followed the traditional FBS/FCS format on defense, as the Spiders played a tremendous 1st half and then couldn’t hold up for the final 30 minutes. Take away the muffed punt and the defense allowed 10 points on five drives with overall strong coverage and push on the LOS. I was hoping we could keep that going somewhat into the 3rd quarter but there’s nothing to hang our heads about with that performance.

Jeremiah Grant status – First and foremost is the status of Jeremiah Grant. From the stands it looked like a dislocated shoulder – if this was a playoff game he likely gets it popped back in and returns shortly after, with it being Michigan State we weren’t going to see him again. If it wasn’t a dislocated shoulder then the midweek injury report will be very nervy for Spiders fans. Zander Barnett filled in well in Grant’s absence and there’s no concern about his ability to step up, but Grant does so much on this D-line that could change things for UR going forward.

Turnovers – Second straight year the Spiders force multiple turnovers against our FBS opponent so I’ll never argue with that. And how about Aaron Banks recovering the fumble and scoring – that makes four turnovers (2 INTs, 1 forced fumble, 1 fumble recovery) in four FBS games in his career. Pretty remarkable.

Run defense – UR held Michigan State to 162 yards rushing on 38 carries (4.3 YPC) which are numbers we would 1000% take going into that game. The two halves tell a good story here too, as Sparty only had 57 yards on the ground on 16 touches in the first 30 minutes. UR came out and set the tone upfront and did much more than just “hold their own.” Two weeks and all the hype about this front-7 is proving true. We’ll continue to lean on them each week throughout CAA play.

Secondary – Tough secondary day in the backend for the Spiders but we knew some of that was coming. Played mostly 4-3 due to their size upfront and lost a few big 1-on-1 matchups for big TDs. We didn’t get home with many blitzes which didn’t help this group so while it wasn’t a good day I’m not raising the panic meter yet.

Special Teams

Thankfully Michigan State kicked all touchbacks so our KOR unit had no issues, yet we missed another field goal and had two more penalties on our KOC unit. Throw in a second muffed punt in two weeks and it feels like we’re trending towards another season of subpar special teams. The coverage on the two returns they had was good but the offsides penalty on one and the kickoff out of bounds on another felt like more of the same. Was expecting to see some changes with this group but two weeks in it feels stale.

New Faces

Got to see some younger guys in game action as Jayden Alsheskie kicked PATs, Jamaal Brown got a few carries, Landon Ellis continued to play at WR, and Matthew Traynor got some snaps on defense and special teams. Throw in redshirt freshman Camden Byrd making some plays on defense and it was nice to see a couple guys get good experience. Hoping for more of that next week.

Moving Forward

We shouldn’t draw many (if any) conclusions from the FBS game but we’ve only got one more week before CAA play rolls around. A lot will need to be addressed during Delaware State week so we’ll need to see the Spiders start to turn a corner here soon. I’ll breakdown more of what we saw from the offense in the Delaware State preview as this should be the week the offense makes its biggest stride.

Next Post

Delaware State preview (Friday morning)