Butterface or Butterface Boy for the lady folk. For many long, laborious, football-droughty months the MSU Passing Attack has been the perceived butterface of the MSU 2012 football team. Even the wildest hopes in the preseason included the idea that maybe MSU might be able to move the ball with some sort of consistency by the end of the 2012. Until then it’s going to be 98 carries a game from Le’Veon Bell and the hope that the Defense can party like it’s 1951 and that a 10-10 tie is the limit. What’s strange though is that you might not have to wait very long for the Pass Game to pass the Run Game, because at least in yardage it already happened.

Michigan State currently ranks 41st in Total Rushing Yardage nationally and 31st in Total Passing Yardage. Michigan State is moving the ball effectively through the air, but not spectacularly, ranking 50th in Yards Per Attempt. Yet, MSU keeps throwing, ranking 30th in total pass attempts. Some of this is the result of CMU being a glorified practice game, but Maxwell’s 22 of 38 against Boise State retrospectively was more significant than it sounded at the time. Indeed Captain Kirk only threw 38 or more pass attempts three times in his MSU career, Northwestern in 2010(come from behind win), Notre Dame in 2011(The misery) and The Outback Bowl in 2012. In the VERY early goings, Maxwell is on pace to average 34.5 pass attempts per game. Kirk’s highest total for a season was 29.9 in 2011(he had 26 in 2010 and 27.3 in 2010).

There’s been some message board criticism of the pass protection this season as well, but so far the Offensive Line has allowed zero sacks. There are nine other teams who have played two games who also have allowed zero sacks. Most of those schools play quick-release passing attack football(See: State, Boise). Maxwell may not have had eons and epochs to throw, but, he’s getting the ball out on time.

Right now the perception of MSU’s offense is that Le’Veon Bell is judge, jury and executioner of the whole offense. But as anyone knows who’s watched some MSU football in the past two years, Dantonio knows a thing or two about Sleight of Hand. MSU is very quietly throwing the ball as much as they did under the Captain Kirk regime and Maxwell will continue to improve throughout the season. (The way the Big Ten this past weekend he might not even have to improve after Ohio State.)

So “Run Le’Veon Run”, but MSU will continue the death of 1000 paper cuts in the passing game all season long.

The offense stepped onto the field friday night for it’s first series. There’s a good chance the poor kids in Africa who get all of the Buffalo Bills Super Bowl championship t-shirts from the 90s knew that MSU was going to hand off to Le’Veon Bell on the first play. So MSU lining up in the I formation should be expected, right? RIGHT? MSU lines up in the I Formation and Roushar tosses in his first wrinkle of the season on the very first play.

Yes, that’s right. Larry Caper was lined up as the fullback. Boise doesn’t appear to react at all. There’s really no reason for them to, after all the I formation is still the I formation and Bell is still getting the ball.

The ball snaps and Caper goes out to get his block on this HB sweep.

Caper gets popped here. While he doesn’t lay waste to second level linebackers like an Offensive Lineman would, he does manage to take a potential Bell tackler out of the play at the Line of Scrimmage, which allows Bell to pick up four on this play.

The strange thing is that one of the things I’ve learned from rewatching Friday night’s game is that Palazeti is a definite upgrade from previous years in the run blocking game at Fullback. He routinely took his guy out of the play all night long. So why even bother with this wrinkle?

Then in the second quarter:

Notice how much farther back Caper is lined up in this instance? He’s almost an extra yard back, which doesn’t seem like much, but it might be enough to telegraph the upcoming “FB handoff”.

Caper gets the handoff and start his off-tackle run. The linebacker who is correctly crapping his pants everytime Bell touches the ball tonight, freezes when he realizes Bell doesn’t have the ball and that Caper in fact has the handoff. MSU has handed off to the Fullback probably less than two dozen times since Dantonio came to town, so it doesn’t surprise me that Boise would ignore the notion that MSU might have handed off here.

But by now Caper is already out to the same level as the linebacker and appears to have a hole the size of Rhode Island to run through. Sims is already engaged with a second level blocker and Caper looks almost assured to pick up the first down.

Caper cuts inside instead of outside. Just outside of the frame to the upper left of where it says “Wide Open Spaces” lurks a deep safety who is probably just waiting for Maxwell to drop the hammer on playaction. So the space is open for now, but cutting outside isn’t the obvious good I thought it would be when I screencapped the play. So to answer my own rhetorical question, you bring Caper in as the “fullback” so he can take an unexpected handoff later in the game and pick up some needed yards.

This is the kind of Rousharian quirk that’ll get you some extra needed yards out of this run formation when you really need them.  By having Bell and Caper(both capable receivers) in the backfield the potential to move into a 5 WR set is there, the potential to motion Sims(Dion) back as an H-Back into a heavy run formation is there. This ties strongly back into Roushar’s shared tendency with Scott Linehan to line up in a typically strong run formation and switch to a pass play or vice versa.

Or maybe it’s just a quirk MSU played with once and we’ll never see again. You just never can tell.

The first week of Spring Ball is in the books and MSU is off to the races. In case you’ve not heard yet, Shilique Calhoun is turning heads and by turning heads I mean drawing comparisons to Julian Peterson. This week we’ve heard lots about how MSU is working to find homes for Calhoun at DE, RJ Williamson at Free Safety and Jack Allen at LG/C. Coincidentally, in the case of Williamson and Allen they are pushing more experienced players for the only playing time available in their position groups.  Spartan Nation elaborates on the progress of the Offensive Line. It sounds like previously injured Skyler Burkland and 2011 starting LT Dan France will be having an American Gladiator position battle at the Left Tackle spot.

How about the Wide Receivers?

From Roushar:

    “At this time nobody’s really jumped out at me," Roushar said. "I think Tony Lippett’s getting better. A.J. Sims made some catches today, I noticed him. DeAnthony’s getting his feet up underneath him and getting experience in the system. Keith Mumphery had a much better day today. I thought the first two days, there was a lot of effort and a lot better route running than he had last year. But he’s just got to catch the football first, he’s got to slow the process down, first things first.”

Dammit. I was hoping to hear that one or two guys are getting some separation, not Roushar just naming some guys on the roster with generic coachspeak attached.

A Brief Eulogy

Mark, a reader of SLS has written up a goodbye post to MSU basketball for the season. Give him some love in the comments below.

While most MSU fans are still licking their wounds from the unexpected flop against Louisville in the Sweet 16, let’s take a minute to reflect on the championship season that Izzo and company accomplished.  Izzo has said time and time again that what made this team special was chemistry.  This was a team that stuck together both on and off the court and exceeded all expectations.  They took home two championships, the B10 and the B10 tournament, something that hasn’t been done at MSU since Mateen and the infamous “Flintstones” back in 2000.  On top of that, the big boys were able to take home some serious hardware with Izzo winning his 3^rd B10 COY honors and Draymond garnering B10 POY and All American honors.  But the one thing to me that stands out the most is how hard they worked to earn the respect and admiration that they were able to achieve by the end of the season.  Don’t get it twisted- starting the season unranked and losing your first two games, albeit to UNC and Duke, while ending the season with a championship and a #1 seed is an accomplishment of great measure.  It’s not often that an MSU basketball team starts the season unranked and after last year’s disappointing season it is no surprise that is where the Spartans found themselves at the beginning of the year.  While their stay in the NCAA Tournament was a bit succinct, it is hard to argue that part of that disappointment isn’t there simply as a result of Izzo spoiling MSU fans with 6 Final Fours in the last 14 years.  It’s as if every year you could flip a coin: Heads, MSU to Final Four.  Tails, we’ll get ‘em next year.  Unfortunately, in that regard it was a tails kind of year.  Izzo may be as close to a golden god as you can get in college basketball but nobody is immune to early exits from the tournament every once in a while.  Looking ahead, they’ll have some big shoes to fill with Draymond leaving but once again Izzo will bring in some of the top talent in the country with the 2012 recruiting class, including the highly coveted Gary Harris and Mr. Basketball in Bay City’s Matt Costello.  And by the way, I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself but I just flipped a coin for good measure.  Heads up.  Go Green.

Bonus Bits

Vannini does the deep dive on 2013 RB Commit Gerald Holmes over at the Only Colors.  Little Brother Blog drops the hammer on the sad professionalization of college athletics.  The Munn Minute has a new and improved look, stop by and check it out.

This has been covered a couple times by a couple of different and excellent bloggers today. Not one to be deterred by more educated and intelligent opinions, I plow ahead anyway

Andrew Maxwell, like Kirk Cousins, but better?

Last year in the dark, uneducated corners of the Spartan internet there were rumors of dissention and mutiny. Maxwell was going to replace Kirk Cousins as MSU’s Starting Quarterback! Obviously, this didn’t happen because… well… Mark Dantonio isn’t an idiot?

Here’s what you can expect out of Andrew Maxwell both in Spring and in the Fall. Even if his arm is better, his ability to read a defense and check into the right play will not be as advanced as Cousins was in 2011.  So, he’ll be better than 2009 Cousins(if for no other reason than he won’t compete with Keith Nichol until midway through the Big Ten Season) and worse than 2011 Cousins. (I’d be happy to be wrong about this.)

Fine, you want proof?

Here are the first year numbers of starters in the Big Ten from 2007-2011 at the QB position provided they had more than 14 pass attempts per game. Which despite ESPN’s policy of sapping the joy out of things actually makes a lot of sense.

* - Pro-Style Average is comprised of UW, PSU, MSU and Iowa. 

So, do I have any idea how Maxwell can do? No, but there be some averages for your comparison shopping.

What of the Tight End situation?

I realize Tight End play isn’t necessarily everyone’s bag. (It’s tough to drop that joke and move into serious talk, so clunky transition goes here.) Late in the 2011 season, Roushar used Linthicum frequently as an H-back to keep defenses off-balance right up to the snap. This helped conceal the intent(pass/run) of the play right up until the snap and was a very important piece of MSU’s late season successful running game. MSU is going to be thin at Tight End for all of 2012, but they will be extremely thin prior to the fall arrival of Evan Jones and Josiah Price. Dion Sims will be back this spring, but he has spent his time at MSU battling injury(human beings aren’t meant to be 6’5, 280 with his speed) and legal issues(computers that say property of DPS, probably doesn’t mean Dion P. Sims.). So while he is extremely talented, he has yet to put together a consistent season on the field. Denzel Drone has moved over as a Spring Time Band-Aid, but he’ll move back to the DL in the fall. He did too much good work late in the season to get moved off of the D-Line permanently.

Be excited if in the Spring Game you see someone doing the Linthicum H-Back works who looks natural at the job. Otherwise, we just see what happens here, won’t we?

ZOMG! Who is Maxwell going to throw to?

I’m probably a bit less concerned about this than your average blogger/serious MSU football fan. This is of course, as big a deal as whether or not Maxwell is any good, but he’s had three years of throwing to Bennie Fowler, two years throwing to Keith Mumphery and Tony Lippett(yes, I know he played corner last year) and a year throwing to Andre Sims and Juwan Caesar(who was hurt in 2011). Then of course MSU brought in an outstanding 2012 receiver class as well as transfer DeAnthony Arnett. Of those folks, Arnett and 2012 early enrollee Kyle Kerrick may make appearances in the Spring Game. Fowler is rumored to be 100 percent for the first time in a while, Lippett looked good as a corner last year. If Arnett is indeed eligible by fall, that could well be your X,Z and Y positions right there.  Depth is going to be scary this year because the youth is inexperienced and talented. Regadless the position group is too deep as a whole for Maxwell not to find a group of guys he can throw to by fall. Spring could be bumpy though.

Will our Offensive Line be better?

Nothing can be gleaned from this in Spring Ball that is definitive. The Defense’s major loss, Jerel Worthy, was part of a two man tag team of first round Defensive Line talent in 2011. If MSU’s interior line looks improved in the Spring Game it might be just because they’re not playing Worthy.

That said, we can measure how well the Offensive Line did in pass protection by using their pass attempts per sack statistic which I am proudly making up right now.

I somehow think this statistic would be better measured if it somehow included the number of picks thrown too, but whatever. There’s a whole summer of NO SPORTS to figure that out.  The point is for every 26 times MSU dropped back to pass in 2011 they took one sack. I’d be worried that this is simply a measure of how savvy your QB is, but PSU’s number was even better and they didn’t have a person playing Quarterback in 2011 to my knowledge. One could argue that Cousins low YPA numbers might have accounted for this too, but you just shut up with that argument.  The pass protection was plenty solid enough and returning four of five starters has me thinking it’ll stay that way.

Obviously, run blocking was the big Bugaboo in 2011. MSU averaged a paltry 3.95 yards per attempt while the traditional rushing powers(Neb, UM, Wisky) were north of 4.62. It’s more of a fall point, but I’d really like to see someone a little physically larger than Fonoti show something at Right Tackle this spring. This run blocking is a huge question for MSU this spring and it is nearly impossible to measure whether or not there’s been any serious improvement using statistics, divination or even film.

Running Back?

Bell, Caper, Hill. In that order. This is an area of little to no complication. That’s great news for MSU. Stay injury-free and things will be happy. A question will be does Caper stay in his third-down back role only while Nick Hill moves into the Edwin Baker spot? Or will Caper chew up most of Baker’s carries?

Anything else?

Not really. Obviously, there are a lot more question marks on Offense than Defense this Spring. As Izzo showed this past fall, sometimes a squad can take what would be devastating hits and sometimes that resets chemistry in a good way. I don’t expect that here, there’s no chemistry reset needed in the football game.  In the Spring Game, to measure passing chemistry, don’t worry about whether Maxwell makes his throws, be concerned if you start seeing lots of blown routes or WTF handoffs to the wrong side of the ball. Trickeration in the Spring Game doesn’t count toward the fall since those plays are WAY on tape, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be any. Roushax 5 misses it’s proud son and hopes he’ll start returning some phone calls once in a while.

After the loss at Notre Dame there were plenty of people wondering if Dan Roushar was in over his head.  Roushar didn’t have his best day in South Bend and afterwards he completely threw the baby out with the bathwater as it regarded the Unbalanced Line. I was hoping as the season wore on that MSU would wheel that back out again, but they never did.

The Unbalanced Line

Before we can really nitpick apart whether or not Roushar was hasty in throwing this formation away, we need to talk a little bit about what it is. According to Wikipedia, “Usually refers to an offensive formation which does not have an equal number of linemen on each side of the ball. Done to gain a blocking advantage on one side of the formation; typically one tackle or guard lines up on the other side of the ball. For example a common alignment would be TE-G-C-G-T-T-TE.”  In short, a line is unbalanced when the center aint so center anymore.

Pictorially

For the purposes of these and all future MS Paint Hack Job in the rest of this post Green means Senator Cousins, Blue means running/fullbacks, Purple means Wide Receivers and Red means Offensive Linemen. So in the Roushar Unbalanced Line package, he lines up Guard-Center-Guard-Tackle-Tackle-Tight End-Tight End, or G-C-G-T-T-TE-TE if you’re into the whole brevity thing. According to an article designed to talk chalk on ESPN!!! with Bob Davie *sad face* he talks about the offensive line and shows off some unbalanced line formations. Notice anything missing? Right, the instance of a formation where there is only one guy to the left of the center.

Not an Unbalanced Line

In this formation, this is not an unbalanced line because all of the Offensive Linemen type gentlemen are lined up symmetrically to the center with two on either side of him. The guy furthest out on the right of the line is a Tight End and is eligible to catch passes in this diagram. So very key to make sure we’re not incorrectly ID-ing Unbalanced Lines in the future. This one was for the Mrs.

So why run an Unbalanced Line? You’re not going to run for eleventy yards on every play.

The first and most important reason is confusion. I distinctly remember a defensive player asking after last year’s Fall Practice whether or not it was even legal for them to line up five to the left of the center? Legal? Yes. Advisable? Apparently not.

In the example above, the issue for the defense is they have no idea how the Offensive Line is assigned to block out the play. They cannot shift all resources over to covering the glut of offensive linemen because then they could get beat in misdirection to the left. Also, if you’ll recall, MSU was not very strong at run blocking this year. I’m cool with DANBALL using confusion to mask a weakness.

A Few Plays From the Notre Dame Game, Which Sucked.

I diagrammed this play on the old site in a throw away post that 14 people read. If you were one of those 14 people, sorry, I’m trotting this bit back out as part of a larger picture.

Play 1

The offense lines up in the Unbalanced Roushar going G-C-G-T-T-TE-TE. The fullback Anderson is lined up to the Strong side, B.J. Cunningham is split wide, Edwin Baker is the running back. Notre Dame is lined up in a 3-4 with the two inside linebackers lined up deep(presumably to give themselves more time to diagnose the play.

As the play develops, you see it’s going to be a run to the strong side. Rock runs up to take the Rock and pound the Rock in the House that Rock Built. The Offensive Line has not gotten great push so far. The ball snapped at the 30 and that’s where the Offensive/Defensive line battle is still taking place.

Notre Dame’s OLB(Lynch I think it was) comes around unblocked and has a clean run at Baker. Meanwhile the guys who stayed home to engage the horde of Notre Dame defenders are overwhelmed. Had the play got into the Second level, Celek would have been in good postion to block someone, Burkland was just kind of lost out there. (It was his third game, so that’s not entirely ridiculous.)

The guys who stay home end up losing the line of scrimmage and the ND defenders are able to hold down the fort long enough for Lynch to run the play down from the backside and Baker ends up taking no gain on the play.

What would have helped here?

Whoever was playing just left of Center(it’s hard to tell in these pics sometimes.) either needed help or needed to have someone stay home to seal off the play from the backside. As many of you know, Baker was not MSU’s strongest runner this year, so putting him in a situation with that much traffic was not going to emphasize his skillset, which was more of a one-cut and go runner. Also in the last pic you see three guys blocking number 83 from ND, that’s a fail. Plain and simple.

Play 2

Same Line formation. The fullback(Anderson) lines up directly behind Cousins this time though. Notre Dame in their base 3-4, MLB’s lined up deep again.

The play snaps and the play runs… left? Makes perfect sense, there’s no one watching the left, so obviously you want to use your weakness to attack their strength.  Blake Treadwell(Center) takes on their DE. The OLB swings out WAAAY wide to open a gap for his Mike buddies to come through between Treadwell(Center) and McDonald(Guard left of center).

The good news, Baker makes it out of the first level blocking. The bad news is that number 42 is coming unblocked and has all day to get to Baker.

Cunningham sees 42 coming and pulls off his block from the photo before. Which of course leaves his guy to prevent Baker to avoid getting the corner. It’s hard to tell, but after Baker got by someone, our Offensive Line didn’t turn around to block that guy out of the play. Which is frustrating.

What would have helped here?

This play looked closer to working for big yards than it’s result would indicate. Despite the fact that France and Foreman are clearly blocked out of the play, if everyone hold their blocks, this play had BIG Potential. I guess it would have B1G Potential.

Play 3

You know the Drill. Roushar unbalanced formation for MSU, 3-4 with two high Mike’s for ND.

The play snaps and it’s going… left. DAMMIT DAN. You’re trying to get away with misdirection in a set that doesn’t really support it. Roushar’d.

The blocking is setting up really well on this one if everyone can hold their blocks.

Unfortunately, McDonald, who was playing Left of Center couldn’t hold his block and Anderson has to stop to double team McDonald’s guy, so Baker’s lane doesn’t collapse.

Baker is able to get out a little ways and ends up getting four on the play, which isn’t too bad. It’s a successful play according Heck’s New Math.

So What Went So Wrong?

A few things actually went so wrong. The first is that there are two other examples of where Roushar ran left instead of right. It’s like he went to all of this trouble to construct a throwback to the College Football game prior to the invention of the forward pass and didn’t trust his linemen to execute. This is akin to using math to determine you must go 70 miles an hour to jump a motorcycle over the Grand Canyon, then deciding in the moment it’s safer to go 8 mph, because you have more control and you don’t trust math. If you’ve put a good chunk of Spring and Fall ball putting this package in, you have to trust your players to execute.

Second, there’s no way in hell he should have trusted his players to execute this scheme. These screencaps are filled with missed blocks, overblocking and people not holding their blocks long enough for the play to develop. Run blocking for the 2011 Spartans was a liability that didn’t resolve itself until the back half of the season. I’m sure this was one part Roushar learning what his guys can do and one part gradual improvement.

Finally, if Rock Baker had Le’Veon Bell’s vision, he would have rushed for 2000 yards this year. Baker throughout his career at MSU ran to where the hole was supposed to be and not where the hole actually was. So to compensate for that you’d want to run him to the weakside, but that’s not what this formation was built for.

Pictorially

A move from this to

this

would prevent the play from getting run down from the backside as easily. It unfortunately rules out any possibility for a forward pass, which is a newfangled twist to this old-fashioned play.

I don’t think this should have been thrown out completely. I think it should have been saved for later in the season when MSU really needed some good yardage on a 3rd and short and was ok with picking it up all cheaply and such. Any single 3rd down and short conversion failure in the Big Ten Title game comes to mind. Bielema’s mind would implode at something he’s never seen before, it would be the saddest little supernova ever.

Dan Roushar. Wizard or Alien?

I’d say inconclusive. Finding the deep magic spells hidden in a book in some grotto in Olde Europe was a neat trick. In all of the variants I found of this online except Roushar’s the Guard left of Center gets some sort of help. Add to that the fact that this Line had not yet figured out how to block their way in a situation like this AND Baker was not the best runner in traffic and I’m kind of left to wonder why he decided to try the Unbalanced Line to begin with. Vague memories of LSU doing this a few years ago are coming to mind.

In a way this play formation summed up all that you loved and hated about Roushar in his first year. Brilliant ideas executed averagely or even below-averagely at times. Obviously the execution will need some clean-up in year two to show the kind of progress we’re all hoping to see.