It's rivalry week here at FFFF! Michigan and Michigan State will clash in what is the rivalry's biggest game in decades on Saturday, two 7-0 teams facing off. Michigan State has attracted lots of attention this season with an offense powered by several elite playmakers and a surprisingly good quarterback, leading them to their perfect start. Is the Spartan offense an invincible whizbang unit of home run hitters? Or can Michigan keep them locked in a cell? Let's take a look: 

The Film: For the second straight week, we're using Nebraska's defense for an opponent's offense due to the scheme similarity between Michigan and Nebraska, as well as the fact that that Nebraska is one of two defenses Michigan State has faced that are comparable in quality to Michigan's. The other is Indiana, who don't run a 3-4 like Nebraska does. So, we're rolling with the Huskers, but we will be sure to reference some of the other games MSU has played too, in order to take a full scope of their season. As an additional note, because I've already combed through this game, quite a few of these clips you will have seen before if you read the Nebraska defense FFFF. Perks of using a game where two teams on your schedule played each other close. They are still useful, and so I'm still using 'em. 

Personnel: Seth's chart (click makes big):

Michigan State has landed on Payton Thorne at QB after fielding a QB competition between himself and Anthony Russo in the offseason. Mel Tucker definitely made the right decision, as Thorne has had a fine season for the Spartans, 15 TD to 4 INT on 61.2% completion and 9.3 yards per attempt. We will discuss Thorne quite a bit, and dig into his stats later on in this piece. At RB, they feature a Heisman contender in Kenneth Walker III, a master at making opponents miss and grinding out yards after contact. Like Thorne, we'll see Walker a lot in this article. 

At WR there's a bang-bang tandem of big play threats, Jayden Reed and Jalen Nailor, who are each averaging ~20 yards per reception, and both have at least one 60+ yard catch on the year. Both have breakaway speed and while Reed is the slot guy, both can line up outside and both go long. Tre Mosley is the "go over the middle for the shorter pass" guy, but even he is averaging 15.3 yards per reception with a 50+ yard catch of his own. The only other pass catcher to note is Connor Heyward, a beefy ex-RB who is now a sorta-TE, too short for the position at just 6'0", but his weight is sufficient enough to block (230) and they line him up all over the field. Those four all have 16+ catches, while no one else has more than 5 catches. The last name to note is blocking TE Tyler Hunt, who comes on in two TE sets and has five catches on the year. 

MSU's solution to their usually terrible OL has been to rotate 9-10 bodies and get by on committee, something that has worked decently well, although that might be a figment of weaker competition (we'll examine that later). The starters from left to right are Jarrett Horst - JD Duplain - Matt Allen - Kevin Jarvis - AJ Arcuri, many of those being names you may remember from the past, though Horst is a transfer in from Arkansas State. The second team includes Luke Campbell at tackle, Blake Bueter and Matt Carrick at guard, and Nick Samac at center. Each of those four players have received 189+ snaps on the season across 7 games, meaning that they are more than just a second string: there's real rotation at every position, hence the non-solid around every MSU OL starter. 

Special teams note: Jayden Reed is also the punt and kick returner and he's engineered some incredible returns. He's averaging over twenty yards per return on both punt and kick returns. Two of his punt returns were cashed in for TD's. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Boom or Bust?]

---

Spread, pro-style, or hybrid: MSU is running a spread offense under Mel Tucker and Jay Johnson. They play out of the shotgun on the vast majority of players and typically play with their four real receiving threats on the field on every play. Here's the distribution of formation by play (a few omitted on the Russian Torrent copy of the games that we are forced to use for these columns): 

Formation	Run	PA	Pass	Total
Shotgun	21	3	23	96%
Under Center	2	--	--	4%

Yep, this is a shotgun team. There's still the occasional moment where the Spartans will go under center in short yardage situations, but this offense has definitely been modernized since Tucker & Co. took over, compared to some of the Dantonio years. 

Our other table is interesting because it showcases the balanced nature of MSU as a team: 

Down	Run	Pass
1st	10	11
2nd	9	9
3rd	3	6
4th	1	-

Michigan State is remarkably consistent in a roughly 50/50 distribution of run to pass. Here's a look at the distribution of run vs pass by game in their other contests, with a separate QB run column again, as that contains mostly Thorne scrambles and sacks: 

Northwestern: 32 run, 26 pass, 5 QB run

Youngstown: 32 run, 28 pass, 6 QB run

Miami: 33 run, 31 pass, 8 QB run

WKU: 36 run, 30 pass, 7 QB run

Rutgers: 37 run, 27 pass, 1 QB run

Indiana: 28 run, 27 pass, 7 QB run 

If you count most of those QB runs as plays that were passing plays to begin with, you're looking at basically 50/50. 

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL: We mostly answered this earlier, but it's Basketball on Grass. Their primary TE is a running back, and though they rotate the whole kit and caboodle on the offensive line, it's rare that more than five offensive linemen are on the field at once. The FB is virtually nonexistent in this offense, and they even called an option pitch play during the game I saw. This is definitely not Manball. 

Here's Michigan State's base set: 

TE in formation, your three WRs (Reed, Nailor, and Mosley) on the field, QB in the gun and an RB next to him. That's the most common formation followed by this, where the TE (Heyward) is lined up like a WR (he's in the slot to the right of the OL): 

No Manball to be found here. 

Hurry it up or Grind it out: Michigan State plays with pace. They don't always hurry it up, but there was some hurry up plays thrown in during this game. Even when they weren't rushing up to the line, the Spartans were often hiking the ball with 20-25 seconds on the playclock, which is one of the quicker teams Michigan has faced this season. NIU showed tempo on the tape against GT that I covered for FFFF but then didn't use much of it when they played Michigan. I have to think that MSU will be a bit more aggressive in pursuing tempo as a way to try to throw Michigan off, especially if/when they get a big play to maintain momentum. Their rather quick nature, in addition to the big play-reliant offense has helped MSU to lose some time of possession battles this season rather badly. 

Quarterback Dilithium Level (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): Thorne has a pretty decent set of legs. Michigan State doesn't draw up too many designed runs for him, but Thorne has been very effective scrambling this season when protection breaks down and the defense loses contain. His yards per carry numbers are good when you remove sacks, and again, most of this is not planned. His legs were convincing enough of a threat for Jay Johnson to feel okay dialing up the option pitch with him, so we have to respect. I haven't been quite able to figure out if this play is a designed run or whether Thorne decides to go himself, but it's the kind of thing Michigan has to be ready for: 

All things considered, I give Thorne a 6. He's not a running QB in terms of his role, and he's certainly not Adrian Martinez when it comes to being a run threat, but his legs have to be on the scouting report and if this JH interview with Brad Galli is to be believed, it already is. 

Dangerman: There's a few players you could pick for this, but it has to be Kenneth Walker III, right? Walker is a monster running back who you have definitely heard about before if you have't been living in a cave. He's famous for doing this: 

Walker has tremendous acceleration and can change speed and cut back in the blink of an eye, but what he's best at is grinding out yards after contact/breaking tackles. Two of his best games of the season were against Miami and Northwestern, which are not coincidentally two teams who are atrocious at tackling. If your defense does not have good tackling fundamentals, Walker will rip you apart, because he's a nightmare to try and bring down.

This game didn't see Walker run wild for reasons mostly beyond his control, but every good performance against Michigan State this season by an opponent defensively has started with taking away the run, which is why Walker is the Dangerman. Despite not seeing many clips in this game like the above embedded video, you still get to see glimpses of Walker's brilliance like this: 

Walker averages 4.82 yards after contact this season, per PFF. I am not interested in engaging in the Corum vs. KWIII debates that so many Twitter users have been getting into because that's an unproductive use of time, but one need not be a Michigan State partisan to say that Walker is a phenomenal running back. One of the very best in the country and the best the Wolverines have seen since JK Dobbins in 2019. Stopping Walker is objective #1 for Michigan's defense. 

HenneChart: One of the more surprising things for me in watching this game was that I was... underwhelmed by Payton Thorne. I expected to give him a star on the Seth diagram (I control the decisions on the opponent's side of the diagram), but chose not to after watching this game and digging into his statistics afterwards (more on that in a minute). Thorne wasn't bad by any means, but he didn't knock my socks off either. Here's the chart: 

MSU vs. Neb	Good				Neutral			Bad					Ovr
Quarterback	DO	CA	SCR		PR	MA		BA	TA	IN	BR		DSR	PFF
Payton Thorne		10	2		1	1		2	1	4			63%	-

Fine. Thorne's deep ball was solid on the flea flicker: 

His other deep ball wasn't nearly as good, landing in the arms of a Husker: 

Otherwise Thorne was mostly hitting open guys with not huge depth when he was completing passes (2 screens not included in the HenneChart). His ability to throw on the run looked good here: 

The game took a turn in the second half when Thorne's accuracy began to rapidly deteriorate. As Nebraska thwarted the MSU offense, a not insignificant chunk of it was Thorne missing open receivers: 

Thorne didn't get a ton of help from his pass protection in this game, but he simply missed throws like that one above, or this one here: 

Yeah, the Husker corner is there, but that ball is thrown behind Nailor and makes it very tough on the receiver to make a play. My general conclusion after watching this game was that it must've been an outlier for Thorne, especially since we've seen him make so many throws like this on the highlight reels: 

But when I dug into the game log, I noticed a pretty stark gap between Thorne in conference games and Thorne in non-conference games: 

B1G competition: 59/101 (58.4%), 833 yards (208 per game), 6 TD, 4 INT

Non-B1G: 53/82 (64.6%), 868 yards (289 per game), 9 TD, 0 INT

I'm not sure what to make of that, because Rutgers and Northwestern (two B1G teams) are every bit as Not Good as say, Miami or WKU, but this performance from Thorne was not his worst of the year. That was against Indiana two weeks ago.

This is not to say Thorne is a bad QB. I think he's good, but he's a good college QB, which means he is capable of making regular mistakes, and more than perhaps get talked about in Spartan-land. Thorne and his ability to hit the deep ball is a huge reason of why MSU has such an explosive offense. But some of the accuracy issues seen from Thorne in these clips is also part of the reason that MSU's offense also has the "bust" end of the boom or bust label. 

 

Overview

We've been glossing over it, so let's say the thesis of this piece: Michigan State is an offense that is not terribly effective on a down-to-down basis (hence why its efficiency numbers are not great in advanced metrics), but it can kill you with one or two massive knockout punches. This is an offense that put up four 60+ yard plays on Rutgers and has three explosive home run hitters at skill positions. It's also an offense that was mostly de-fanged by Indiana and Nebraska (this game). The Spartans don't have an offense that's going to Army you and go on some 15-play, 88 yard drive that eats up 10.5 minutes of clock. Many of their TD drives are five plays or less, and there are also plenty of three and outs in the sample against good defenses. 

Here's what I'm talking about, showing Michigan State's offense in their six games against FBS teams this season, separating it out into two buckets, plays that gained 20+ yards and plays that did not gain 20+ yards: 

Northwestern: 

• 20+ yards: 75, 20, 23, 26, 23, 50, 30 = 247 yards on 7 plays (35.3 yards per play) 
• Non: 264 yards on 56 plays (4.71 yards per play) 

Miami: 

• 20+ yards: 26, 51, 25, 28, 24, 22, 39 = 215 on 7 plays (30.7 yards per play) 
• Non: 239 yards on 65 plays (3.68 yards per play)

Nebraska: 

• 20+ yards: 35, 35, 34 = 104 yards on 3 plays (34.7 yards per play)
• Non: 150 yards on 50 plays (3.00 yards per play) 

WKU: 

• 20+ yards: 46, 27, 46, 43, 20, 21 = 203 yards on 6 plays (33.8 yards per play)
• Non: 316 yards on 67 plays (4.72 yards per play) 

Rutgers: 

• 20+ yards: 63, 39, 63, 65, 94, 25 = 349 on 6 plays (58.2 yards per play) 
• Non: 239 yards on 59 plays (4.05 yards per play) 

Indiana: 

• 20+ yards: 23, 28 = 51 yards on 2 plays (25.5 yards per play) 
• Non: 190 yards on 60 plays (3.17 yards per play)

 

What this list shows is that Michigan State, in a typical game, generates between 40 and 50% of its yards on only a handful of plays. The remainder of the game sees them slowly accumulate yards on a multitude of plays, and the two best defenses they've faced held them to ~3 yards per play, which, if you do the math, is a clip that's a recipe for a three-and-out. The other crucial component here is the number of big plays they've gotten. Not just did Indiana and Nebraska hold MSU to barely 3 yards per play on their non-big plays, but they only gave up 2-3 big plays, and none that went for more than 35 yards. 

So how did IU and Nebraska bottle up the Spartans? Both games look very similar in that Michigan State got nothing on the ground. Walker has rushed for at least 5.3 YPC in every game this season, except those two, where he didn't even touch 3.8 YPC. Stop the run and everything else changes. I briefly mentioned this earlier, but Walker's low YPC clip in this game was not on Walker. In both this one and the Indiana game, opposing defenses stuffed Michigan State's OL in a locker. Looking at some of the footage of this game, it's a testament to how good Walker is that he even got to 3 YPC. 

Many of the clips I'm about to show you are ones I used for the Nebraska defensive FFFF as examples of highlights for the Husker DL. Like say, this: 

Michigan State's OL has improved this season, and the Tucker staff gets a lot of credit for that, but these are still mostly the same dudes who got caved in for years from 2018-20, and a good DL can still bring that back out in them. Another one: 

And another: 

Walker is going to make guys miss and is going to grind out yards after contact. That's what he does. But if you're meeting him at the line of scrimmage, or in the backfield, that's going to mute his overall impact. Winning the battle at the line decisively is the biggest thing that Michigan can do to win this game. Because doing so won't just stop this article's dangerman, it will also throw Thorne off: 

Thorne has taken quite a few sacks on the season, which I think is partially on him, but also partially on the OL when you watch games like this one. Setting the Spartans back behind the sticks changes the offense and it forces them to be less aggressive in taking the deep shots down the field because they have to focus on getting the first down. Moreover, if your front seven can handle the run game itself, and you don't have to roll a safety down into the box, you can sit back and give your corners more help deep. 

Even if the big play deep isn't working, MSU will look to stretch the field laterally and integrate some screens in. Nebraska was ready for the delayed RB screen in this one, but given how effective it's been against Michigan's D this season, you have to think it's coming: 

Otherwise you can expect to see them get the ball into the flats for their playmakers in space, whether that's Mosley, Reed, Nailor, or Walker: 

In terms of personnel notes, Connor Heyward is the TE who they will throw to more. He only had one notable play in this game, and it was one I originally clipped because of Nebraska's bad tackling (also peep the marginal throw from Thorne here): 

The other TE, Tyler Hunt, I cyan'd because I thought he was a poor blocker, especially for one who is mostly used as a blocking TE: 

#97 lined up in the slot to the left of the OL

The OL is indistinguishable. I showed the clips earlier, and over the course of the game, nearly every lineman had one nice block, one ugly whiff, and then generally got no push on the average play. This was the case for this game and against Indiana. The only area that was particularly weak was center, where both Nick Samac and Matt Allen graded out poorly in my numbers. But there isn't a Nolan Ulizio-like disaster spot, just a lot of rotating guys who are all "ehh", fine against lower level teams but really have struggled against better front sevens. 

 

What does this mean for Michigan?

I've already laid out the roadmap for how Indiana and Nebraska contained Michigan State, but let me reiterate it. Win the battle at the line of scrimmage (which I think is doable, if Seth's UFR DL grades are legit). If you hit KWIII right at the line of scrimmage, he won't be able to do as much damage with the yards after contact. Dictate the game up front and you'll be able to get to Payton Thorne, and perhaps either force him into an ill-advised throw or a potentially drive ending sack. If Michigan is able to keep MSU's running game in check, the whole rest of the offense changes. 

This is a game where I'd tell Michigan to sit in Cover 3 and give the corners 5-10 yards of cushion. Cede the 6 yard out, because you cannot get beat over the top. If you keep the first down run to a minimum, the 6 yard out on 2nd down turns into a third and short, which, if you're winning at the line of scrimmage, you should have a decent shot of stopping. Turnovers will also play a factor. I showed the Thorne numbers earlier, as he's throwing an INT per game against B1G foes. Forcing him into a pair like Indiana did also changes things. 

Michigan will give up a few big plays to MSU. Every team has, but if it's the 30 yard variety, and it's only a few, you're okay. Three 50+ yarders is the nightmare you cannot give up, and certainly is the vision running through everyone's heads after last year. That said, Michigan hasn't been beaten over the top much this season. The big passes allowed to Nebraska came through clever deception in the play design, and less of the KJ Hamler toasts Michigan's safeties type. Don Brown is gone, so hopefully that shouldn't be an issue. But man, MSU has some playmakers.

The last thing I'll note is that MSU is going to have some scripted stuff drawn up. They always do, because this is the biggest game of their season. But Mel Tucker has also pulled a lot of tricks out of the bag already this season to beat opponents who don't rank highly on the totem pole of importance. MSU has run a flea flicker multiple times this season, they ran a trick play where Thorne was a receiver against Indiana, and the list goes on. For a team that's already calling plays like a riverboat gambler, in the biggest game of their season, it's gonna get weird. We saw Scott Frost come up with a handful of well designed plays in the Nebraska game that were mostly executed to perfection, and you have to think that Jay Johnson's group will have some too. Whether Mike Macdonald and Michigan have an equally good game plan is the big question.