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CHICAGO - The seven top storylines surrounding Michigan State football for 2019 as Big Ten Media Days is set to take place here through Friday:
1. Will coaching changes and style adjustments fix Michigan State’s offense?
The Spartans were historically bad on offense in 2018, due largely to an apocalyptic level of injuries on that side of the ball. Regardless of the injuries, head coach Mark Dantonio said changes were needed.
Dantonio elevated Brad Salem from quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator, and demoted Dave Warner from offensive coordinator to quarterbacks coach. Cynics say internal coach shuffling won’t result in progress. But it seemed clear during Redbox Bowl preparation and the Green-White Game that Dantonio has given a green light to major philosophical changes on offense.
Warner was O.C. for the final time in the bowl game, but changes were already in motion. Salem has been studying the new wave of offenses for several years and is eager to make his mark on the program.
Michigan State will join the national mainstream in employing an uptempo, one-back offense, with RPOs, pistol formations and horizontal stretch concepts. There are plenty of teams that lose every Saturday running these style of offenses, but Michigan State felt the time was right to join the modern movement.
In recent years, Michigan State was among the last teams in the country using a huddling, two-back offense as its base mode of attack. That philosophy served Michigan State well earlier this decade with six double-digit win seasons since 2010. But rule changes, especially the 2008 introduction of the :40-second clock in replacing the ready-to-play signal and the old 25-second clock, caused a metamorphosis that eventually gave an advantage to offenses that are capable of snapping the ball every :12 seconds, or quicker. Combine fast pace of play with college football’s lenient downfield blocking rules, and the uptempo, spread-formation, RPO-based offenses became increasingly hard to stop. Two-back, traditional power offenses had to become more and more mistake-free in order to keep up on the scoreboard. The margin for error has become thin for old school offensive attacks.
It remains to be seen whether Michigan State will try to employ an ultra-fast pace of play, but it seems clear that a check-with-me system of looking to the sideline while under center rather than huddling will be part of the Michigan State offense. Now will it get results? Critics claimed that if Michigan State merely had a national Top 50 offense a year ago, when combined with a Top 10 defense, the Spartans could have made a run at another Big Ten championship. We might see if that holds true this year.
2. Will the offensive line regain strength?
Injuries caused the Spartans to use nine different starting o-line combinations last year. None of the combinations controlled the line of scrimmage the way a power-based, two-back, ground-first system should.
Dantonio promoted venerable Jim Bollman from tight ends coach to offensive line coach during the off-season, and demoted former offensive line coach Mark Staten to coach the tight ends.
Bollman earned praise for coaching the o-line at Michigan State in the mid-1990s under Nick Saban, and his line was a key component in helping Ohio State win a National Championship under Jim Tressel in 2002. Now Bollman is tasked with sparking an o-line renaissance in East Lansing.
Bollman has seven offensive linemen returning who have starting experience. None of them have domination experience. He’s working to get a level of competence and excellence out of them this year. If he and they succeed, Michigan State will become a live contender in the Big Ten East.
3. Does Michigan State have a star-quality running back?
Connor Heyward is the leading returning rusher. He netted 529 yards last year to go with 32 receptions. Heyward worked on making his footwork more economical when cutting upfield, getting north with one step rather than chopping his steps. Little nuances such as these for the former high school quarterback could help Heyward go from functional to standout as a junior in 2019. Salem, MSU’s new running backs coach, is trying to wring as much acquired skill as he can from his stable of ball carriers.
Michigan State needs to see progress from Heyward early in 2019. Three or four understudies will be looking for a chance to become the go-to feature back. Michigan State needs one. No one was close to delivering last year, after L.J. Scott went down with injuries.
4. Does Michigan State have a leader in the secondary?
The Spartans will miss Khari Willis, who delivered a memorable keynote speech here at Big Ten Media Days a year ago, and followed it up with third-team All-Big Ten senior season at safety en route to becoming a fourth-round NFL Draft pick. Willis’ intelligence and stern respectability helped raise the level of play for his defensive teammates. Everyone is expecting the Spartans to be great on defense again, but Willis’ knowledge, voice and example won’t be replaced.
5. Is Brian Lewerke back to good?
The senior quarterback completed 60 percent of his passes prior to sustaining a shoulder injury during the upset victory at No. 8 Penn State, and connected on just 43 percent afterward. His arm and confidence improved markedly by the end of spring practice.
Now, will Michigan State get the continuation of the outstanding level of play Lewerke showed in the Holiday Bowl victory over Washington State two years ago, or a continuation of last year’s struggles? He wasn’t quite up to the level of his sophomore excellence last September, even before the injury.
His arm strength is back, and so is his swagger. Add that to his sophomore level of running the football and Michigan State should have enough offensive components to be difficult to beat each Saturday.
6. Will the defense be dominant again?
Michigan State led the nation in rushing defense last year and ranked No. 10 in the country in total defense. Michigan State returns a mess of talent in the front seven and one of the best cornerbacks in the Big Ten, if not the country, in Josiah Scott. Experience and depth are strengths. The Spartan defense will attack opponents in waves.
Michigan State needs to regain the penchant for making the big play, or preventing the big play, late in close games. Michigan State’s defense cracked at key moments in losses to Arizona State and Nebraska last year, and had its usual problems against Northwestern. Michigan State will get a chance to avenge the ASU and Northwestern losses by the end of September.
Last year, the defense showed strong character in resisting the urge to point a finger of blame at MSU’s anemic offense. This year, the defense will need, and expect, more help from their teammates on that side of the ball.
7. Can Michigan State emerge as a darkhorse contender in the Big Ten East?
Darkhorse? Dantonio has won three division championships. That’s more than any active Big Ten coach. There’s nothing dark about his horses. Many of the players who helped Michigan State win 10 games two seasons ago are still around, and yearning for more.
“Our defense is back pretty much intact; we lose three players,” Dantonio said. “We lose three players on offense, and the offense was injury-plagued last year. We have to reaffirm ourselves a little bit. We have to be more productive, got to get more explosive plays, got to run the ball more effectively.
“Defensively, if we play like we’ve played, we’re going to be pretty good.
“We were very, very close last year. Now we would have won the games tight, but that’s what we did in ’13 and ’15, and if we had closed out some of those games down the stretch we would have been very successful.”
MSU’s defense gave the Spartans a chance to win each week last year, and that should be the case again in 2019.
“It should,” Dantonio said. “That’s the expectation here, but we are going to play against good people. Our schedule is extremely competitive, we play in a great division and the standards are high. We need to understand that our standards are high and come to play every single week. But I think we have great chemistry. We are a well-intentioned group and we are tied together very well and I think we have good leadership, so it’s going to be exciting to watch in 2019 because I think we’ve got a chance.”
A chance to win the Big Ten East?
“Every year I expect that,” Dantonio said. “There’s not a year that has gone by that I haven’t expected that.”
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