This is rather misleading - “Last year MSU was 8-0 when Lewerke threw 35 or fewer passes. MSU was 1-3 when Lewerke threw 36 or more passes.
A Heisman candidate needs to be able to put his team on his shoulders. Anytime Lewerke had to put MSU on his shoulders, they lost.”
In those 4 games he averaged 319 yards passing, 38 yds rushing & 2TDs. He also threw 5 Ints in those games, along with a fumble or two, but overall I wouldn’t chalk up those losses as him failing to up his game.
MSU doesn’t run a system that’s going to generate Heisman numbers for their QB like Oklahoma or Louisville or some other pass happy or spreadish teams. Lewerke also hasn’t shown to be accurate enough either, below 60% passing %.
IMO 2019 has a lot more potential as a “special” year than 2018. The experience of the top players, the depth, the schedule.
That was a very talented ‘16 team to lose 3 games & finish 3rd in the Division, “fantastic” wouldn’t describe the coaching if you asked me.
I agree Nebraska will be a troublesome team for MSU, Lincoln is a tough place to play - MSU lost their last game @ Nebraska & that was to a rather poor Husker team (2015). IMO MSU probably only actually played 4, maybe 5 “coin flip games”, just because a margin was 8pts or less doesn’t make it a coinflip. MSU is thin at DE, a little thin at RB, and only has one QB who has taken D1 snaps. That being said, there’s no way you should consider them thin at LB - they return 2 starters and 5 reserves who have all taken a good amount of college snaps.
So what’s a daunting schedule? UM’s 12 game schedule includes 6 teams that won 10 or more games last year, 4 of those games will be on the road. Every pre-season ranking I’ve seen has OSU, Wisconsin, ND, MSU, and PSU in the Top 20, if not in the Top 15. That schedule has to be one of the toughest in the Nation.
In 2018, Erik Gibson (MLK/Minnesota) was ranked #27 in the State of Michigan with a .8548 grade. If he graduated in 2017 with that same Composite ranking he would have finished 14th (Marcel Lewis is 20th in ‘19 & would have landed at 14th in ‘17). From a stars viewpoint, the 2017 Class dropped significantly after Paea. He was 13th with a Composite score of .8721, Zach Morton was 14th with a .8545. There were 16 recruits (all P5 commits) ranked from .8720 to .8546 (high to mid 3*) in 2018, currently there’s 9 of them in 2019 Gives you a good idea how much the 2017 Class fell off a cliff after Paea, if you’re measuring from recruiting rankings.
‘18 had much more depth than ‘17, and ‘19 has more top end talent than ‘18. ‘17 vs ‘19, ‘19 looks to have equal or slightly better top end talent than ‘17 & discernibly more quality talent.
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