After Michigan State's 31-10 loss to Oregon Friday night, Spartan head coach Jonathan Smith gave credit to Oregon, Coach Dan Lanning, and his staff.
"They've got a good team, and they came and played well tonight, way better than we did, forced some issues on us, and we've got to find a way to respond and get better," said Smith. "You look at the game, a couple early turnovers that we got in (and near) the end zone were huge. Obviously, we turned it over early that was not ideal."
Smith thought the game really separated when Oregon scored a touchdown going into halftime, pushing the lead to 21-0.
"(I) challenged the guys at halftime, like ‘Hey, we need to play four quarters,’" said Smith." I thought we did that, but we just did not play well enough against a really good team. They found ways to separate."
The Oregon defense posed some significant issues for Michigan State.
“The line of scrimmage was not to our advantage, I mean, looking at the run game and protection ... we've got to find a way to get better," Smith said after the game. "They’re good up front schematically and did a nice job on a couple of things that we needed to respond to sooner, and we didn't get that done.”
The first play of the game was a loss on a run play on first down.
“So we started with a negative play," said Smith." We've got to take that out of it. We've got to find a couple runs that ... pop explosion-wise. We want to be efficient in the run game, and we're not there right now.”
On the other side of the ball, Oregon was successful in the running game.
“It was similar to last week," Smith said, referring to the Spartans' loss to Ohio State. "I mean, picking and choosing, they've got some perimeter play. That quarterback's a good player. They had great balance on both sides. They were throwing it, running it. We needed to find a way to get them one-dimensional. Didn't do it tonight.”
Smith is confident that his team is going to stick together.
"You look at ... everyone involved, not just the players, the coaches, right, but we're going to stick together and find ways to do it better," said Smith. "I'm confident these guys (will) keep working, we'll improve, and we need to.”
After six games, the Spartans are 3-3 and Smith knows the next two weeks are important.
"(We're at the) halfway point of the regular season, and we come on the bye, and we've got to regroup, we've got to find ways to improve, starting with us as coaches, finding, you know, best ways positionally, where we're putting them in, scheme, where we're at, flaws, and find a way to improve on it, and move forward because we've got a lot of football left in front of us," said Smith. "These guys have been working. We went six-straight games, but also, you think about the five weeks of camp, that's 11-straight weeks of going."
Smith said he is looking forward to taking a step back, slowing it down a little bit, and looking at the tape.
"As coaches, (we'll) deeply digest that, and find ways that we can play better," said Smith. “When you play really good teams, the small errors are going to get exposed, you know. Execution's going to be tougher, and we're not there yet.”
Looking forward, the schedule lightens up a bit as there are no more Ohio States or Oregons left to play. The Spartans head into their bye week and Smith is looking forward to the players getting some recovery time.
“We're going to get back early, or even late morning now, and so we want these guys' mindset of recovering," said Smith. "(After a) day or two, coaches evaluate the thing, come back, we're going to practice Wednesday with some areas that we need to fix. I think ... there's a lot of shred on the tires (of the players) ... and so ... a couple days off would be good for them.
"I do think this team, we're going to bounce back, we're going to keep working. We're going to stay together. I think we've got some good leadership, player-led guys that understand this is a team game, and we're going to keep working together as a team.”
