MSU brought a D performance tonight. The OLine was just dominated by ND's front 7 and that was pretty much the deciding factor. They couldn't establish a run, which pretty much had them playing catchup down two scores from midway through the second. Then they tried getting cute with the Fake FG (which I hated) and reverses/wildcat early in the 3rd right after they got first downs which killed their drives.
Their gameplan wasn't great either. ND's front 7 is quite strong, so they should've passed to set up the run to spread out ND's LBs and get some draws. Their line isn't what they want to be like yet (like a Wisconsin type) so they should've started with their strengths and had Kirk pass earlier on then he did. And the penalties killed them.
With that being said, had Keyshawn kept going on that INT pass and they scored it still would've been a game with 4 to go. They played awful (while ND didn't play great to start, once they got in a groove they were pretty good) and were in it till that INT.
This team has a lot of work to do on the O-line, but luckily for their defense, there's not a receiver in the Big 10 that's as dangerous as Floyd is, and he killed us for a good part of the game. They'll definitely need to improve on getting the run game going, but again only Nebraska and Wisconsin (that are on MSU's schedule) have better D-Lines then ND's does. This loss does anger me because we shot ourselves in teh foot quite a bit and never found a groove, but they have 2 weeks to prepare for OSU (with a cupcake game against CMU in between that) and if they don't play better there I'll be shocked.
Disappointed, but not as disappointed as if it was a loss against a contender in the Big Ten (like Wisconsin or Nebraska). I never thought they were going undefeated, but they still have more then enough talent to get 9 or 10 wins. Just have a lot of work to do on the run game.
