EAST LANSING - Michigan State defensive coordinator Mike Tressel sounds like he is secretly a fan of Wisconsin’s running game.
He loves Wisconsin’s brawn, power and old school approach. Yet Tressel is plotting all week to try to slow down the nation’s 10th-ranked rushing offense and the most prolific rusher in college football, Jonathan Taylor.
After practice on Tuesday, Tressel spoke in glowing terms about the traditional nature of Wisconsin’s offense, even to the point of welcoming the impending weather forecast of temperatures in the low 40s with a chance of snow in Madison.
He smiled when talking about Wisconsin’s old-style conventional offensive weaponry.
“Sometimes it looks like a bomb just went off,” he said with admiration. “They’ve got 22 personnel (two backs, two tight ends) and they’re running iso’s and powers and super-counters and sometimes it just looks like a bomb went off, there’s so many bodies. And we need to embrace that mentality.”
Tressel already has. His defense looked great for the first 16 plays of MSU’s loss at Ohio State on Saturday while playing against a balanced Buckeye attack that might be among the top two or three offenses in the nation. Michigan State blew a couple of assignments and missed a couple of tackles and suddenly what had been the makings of a potentially terrific defensive performance quickly dissolved.
How have MSU’s players reacted when watching film of the carnage?
“They’re sick. They’re sick. I’m sick,” Tressel said. “That’s not what we do and we’re upset about it and probably there’s a little bit to be said that people were trying to do too much.”
Guys got away from the strict orders of their assignments, and ended up springing leaks. That happened when guys got out of their gaps to help elsewhere (wrongly), and that happened when guys went for strips and fumbles when they needed to secure the tackle first.
“The talent at Ohio State is good enough that M.A.s turned into C.E.s, so when we grade, missed assignments turn into critical errors when you’re playing a team like that,” Tressel said. “So you might make those same mistakes two or three times in any given game but effort and your skill set can cover for those and they end up being eight or 10 yard gains.”
Against Ohio State, they became 60-, 67- and 35-yard gains.
“When we looked at the film, we achieved a lot of our goals in terms of run-win percentages, and pass-win percentages,” Tressel said. “And third-and-long we were 100 percent. But it was the explosives (that cost us) and it was the plays where one mistake or maybe two mistakes, we couldn’t cover for it. Our talent level wasn’t superior to where we could cover for it and the guys need to understand that that attention to detail is so important. And we probably got away with some things in previous games that we just can’t when you’re playing the top teams in the country.”
Now comes another opponent that ranks among the best in the country. And they are going to run the ball right at the Spartans.
“That’s exactly what we talked about,” Tressel said. “If you want a chance to redeem yourself after this past week, what more could you ask for than to go against Wisconsin who is going to just line up and try to hit you in the mouth?”
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