Travis Jackson went down in the first half of the Ohio State game and with him any hope of a run game between the tackles this year. Drive charting the last two games since is not something I have time for, but it’s obvious to me that the interior run game has descended back into 2011 levels. This isn’t a sign of a terrible Offensive Line, there just isn’t an offensive line in the Big Ten that could take the loss of two full-year returning starters in Jackson and Fonoti and not struggle afterwards.

The good news is that an offensive identity is emerging. The bad news is that Coach “Run the ball and stop the run” Dantonio is probably not going to like it. MSU looks to have a legitimate offense in their no-huddle, dink and dunk offense.

In all of the games where MSU gets behind, they resort to a no-huddle, 5 WR/4WR and Bell passing look. AND THEY PROCEED TO MOVE THE BALL. When asked why they moved away from this look in the Notre Dame game Dantonio replied:

"I felt like we needed to change the tempo on the third quarter, which we did," he said. "From my perspective, I felt like we should probably have changed back and went with a more traditional offense after that, at least one or two more times. We sort of stayed in that mode too long. … We kept trying to force the issue instead of doing it more the conventional way.”

The conventional way? The conventional way is to have a QB who can run like Denard Robinson, Braxton Miller, Nathan Scheelhasse, MarQuies Gray, Kain Colter and T-Magic. Pocket passers are unconventional in college football. The rest of the pocket passers all run spread offenses, so playing pro-style football is decidedly unconventional these days. Who runs a pro-style offense anymore in CFB? Alabama? Central Michigan? MSU fans should all give Mark Dantonio a hug and tell him it’s ok to throw 65 percent of the time if that’s what wins games.

At the end of the Boise State game, Andrew Maxwell had 0 TD’s and 3 picks, only one of which was a terrible throw and even that came with 7 seconds left in the half. At the close of yesterday, Maxwell had 6 TDs and 0 picks in the other five games of the season. If MSU can move the ball in a five wide hurry up look three or four times a game, Maxwell has earned the right to run that offense. More importantly he seems to have the mental stuffin’s to do the job.

There’s gold in mixing two or three heavy passing quick series into the first half before MSU is down significant points. If MSU can pick up 7-10 points off of three no-huddle series in the first half that would lower significantly the odds of having to come from behind.

The offensive identity has emerged. It’s just that it’s come out the anti-Dantonio. We’ll see how he handles it.

So yesterday I got all "get off my lawn you damned whippersnappers" about the lack of identity within the Michigan State offense. I recanted a better time in 2007 when MSU converted all of it's third downs by running the ball down the opposition's throat. It seems unfair to level this criticism without some research to back it up.

I tried to think of a question that would provide a strong indicator to what the "identity" of an offense is and landed on this one. Since 2007, on 3rd and 4th down with 3 or fewer yards to go, what type of play does Michigan State run and how often is it successful? If you believe in your running game, I think this is a makeable down and distance. If you are skittish about your running game, I think this you'll see a lot of passing.

The stats were constructed taking the results of plays on 3rd and 4th down with 3 or less to go. They were only taken in Big Ten games to try and remove some of the fluff in non-conference games. Results are tabulated using ESPN play-by-play. Note: Discovered cfbstats about seven seconds ago, will probably use that in the future. The stars indicate a missing game. In 2007 it was Indiana, in 2008 it was Wisconsin, in 2009 it was Minnesota. An obvious issue is small sample size. 20 or 30 of something over 8 games is not really a lot. Second issue is that we've played the meat of our schedule in 2011 so there will be some fluff going forward or at least, I hope so.

So what does this tell us?

- First, I was half right about 2007. When we ran we converted 80 percent of our third and shorts in 2007, but we didn't run as often as I remembered. We only ran 45 percent of the time on 3rd and short in 2007 we just happened to be successful nearly every time.

- Next, MSU is having it's worst 3rd down rushing conversion percentage of the Mark Dantonio era in 2011. Again, this might be because we've played the meat of our schedule and things should only get easier from here. Also, our offensive line is not bad, but not the manbeasts we were expecting by year 5. With the exception of 2009 we haven't had a year below 58 percent. This year we're at 33 percent.

- I think the sheer number of 3rd and shorts is important too. In 2007 MSU had 33 3rd and shorts, in 2010 it was 29, in 2008 it was 26 and 2011 is projecting 26, in 2009 we had 16.

In these situations, we've run more than passed in 2008, 2009 and 2010. In 2007 we passed more than ran. In 2011, we have yet to play three spread teams with weak rushing defenses and Iowa, who's down, but still Iowa. I suspect the balance will end up at the end of the Big Ten season slightly in favor of rushing over passing.

So in this particular metric is Michigan State a power running team at least in terms of play selection? For the last three years and projected over this year, yes, anywhere from marginally (2008 and 2011) to definitely (2009 and 2010). The question might instead be after 2007's third and short success on third down, should we be?

Anyway, leave comments or areas for improved study below, stats was a long time and many hoppy beverages ago

Well here's where we pick apart the five questions Ty and I dissected on Friday afternoon. Bonus observations at the bottom as we obviously missed a few things that were key factors in the game. I'm going to try and keep the gnashing and wailing of teeth to a minimum, after all just Monday I posted about how this was still an 8-4 or 9-3 type to me.

This week's five burning questions.

1.) Will our defensive line be able to get penetration on an Offensive Line that is not comprised of high schoolers and ne'er do wells?

One sack by Pickelman to force a fumble. Nine tackles for loss. We only surrendered 275 yards of offense. That's far more consistent with 17 points(which is what the offense scored and wasn't gifted) than 31 points. The 31 points contained a Kickoff return* for a touchdown and a drive that started on the MSU 12.

How much of this is due to the defensive line? Eh, it's hard to say without film review. 4.5 of the TFLs came from D-Lineman which is pretty decent. You cannot pin this loss on the defensive line and the play of the defense is what kept us in the game at all.

*- More on this in a bit.

2.) Will Captain Kirk avenge the 2009 Kobayashi Maru at Notre Dame?

No. It wasn't even close. Two problems here. 1.) Our offensive playcalling did not put our players in a position to win. It's been a while since I've felt that way certainly not in 2010 probably not since the Cousins/Nichol merry-go-round of 2009. 2.)I don't think that Cousins trusts his line, I haven't had a chance to rewatch the game, but if I had a nickel for every time he checked down to the flat I would be rich.

3.) Who's gonna throw their beef around more BJ Cunningham or Michael Floyd?

If you would have told me prior to the game we'd hold Michael Floyd to 84 yards and no touchdowns AND BJ Cunningham would have 12 catches for 158 yards and also no touchdowns and that we lost convincingly. I would have tried hard to make a bet with you that would have involved money, humiliation and perhaps some real estate.

BJ Cunningham may not be better than Michael Floyd, but there's no way you can tell me they don't belong in the same conversation. Cunningham was getting double teamed just the same as Floyd and won the duel. He just lost the game.

4.) Brian Kelly: Can a person cause their own head to pop?

I don't know. Notre Dame came out and kicked us in the nuts. We responded by not kicking them in the nuts back. Then we changed our strategy to running trick plays that didn't work. Then we played catch-up the whole game. I'm not really sure what if anything Kelly had to be worried about.

5.) Do the Fighting Irish begin their season 0-3?

No they didn't.

Bonus Observations

- Kick return coverage this year really needs to improve. Even minus the kick return for a touchdown the Spartans are averaging 84th in NCAA in kick return yardage allowed. I made a note of this during the FAU game but wanted to see how we did against a team that was all growed up. How we did is we gave up a Kick Return for a touchdown.

- Well. Our offensive line. It sucks. With Burkland out, it's probably going to suck even more. I didn't want to ask about it in the five questions because I thought I had spent too much time nitpicking it already. Apparently, trying not to nitpick something because I'm bored of it, doesn't mean that it's not an issue. I'll be rewatching the game this week and will be paying close attention to this.

- I do not need to rewatch the game to say I was disppointed with the MSU playcalling. The Fake Field Goal was neither successful or fake. I'm not a strong X's and O's guy although, I'm working on it. A shovel pass up the middle seems a risky proposition to me. If they fan out to defend the fake you might catch them napping up the middle, but if they're honestly defending the field goal isn't the middle of the line where all the BEEF is coming through? If you want to go for it on fourth and 3 on the 3, just line up and go for it. That would have made more sense to me.

- Further, Roushar said several times he wanted the offense to be MORE unpredictable. If he wanted to be more unpredictable by running the same plays over and over to the point where the Notre Dame Defensive Coordinator said: "He cannot possibly be running again on First Down!", Roushar succeeded.

Overall Assessment

It's important to remember for me that Roushar hasn't been in this spot as a coach since 2004 and that he's entitled to a few goofs too. That said, games like this make me crazy. I don't like losing, but I despise losing when I feel like we could have won. We got punched in the mouth early and responded by trying to outsmart the opposition by taking unnecessary and long chances.

I'm looking forward to Central next week and a chance to get healthy and work on some of our weak spots. I don't suspect we'll see another Central special, but we'll be talking more this week with Mike from The Chip Report on that later this week.