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Michigan State football: Play-calling or execution, the constant chicken-egg debate
By Tom Brew
Published:
It’s third-and-2 in the red zone, and one score is going to decide the game. The quarterback fakes the handoff, rolls right and throws a pass that goes off the fingers of an open receiver in the end zone.
The play fails, and the game ends. Another loss.
The howling begins. Half of the fan base is ticked off at the coaching staff for calling such a stupid play. A quarter rips the tight end for not catching the pass and the rest blame the quarterback AND the tight end.
Do the math and no one is happy.
But it’s the old “what came first, the chicken or the egg” argument, really. Was the play-call bad, or was it just poor execution? It happens to every team in every game.
And it happened a lot to Michigan State lately, too. That’s the nature of a 6-5 team that hasn’t met expectations this year, especially when you’ve had an offense that’s struggled to score points this season, wasting a dominant year by the Spartans defense.
Everybody is frustrated, even Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio, who’s seen it all in the past 12 years in East Lansing. He saw a lot of frustrating stuff in the Spartans’ 9-6 loss at Nebraska on Saturday.
“I would think if there’s a level of frustration it would come from the head coach, too,” Dantonio said. “So, yeah, I’m frustrated about points. But the play calling was fine. We’ve got to execute. There’s an execution factor that’s involved here. Now, some of it’s weather, some of it’s them playing, making plays on the ball. Some of it’s us. So you’ve got to be able to sort it all out and sort of look at it and say, ‘What’s the underlying factor here?’ But you’ve got score points. We’re all inclusive on that.”
Any time a team loses, there’s nit-picking going on. It never stops.
“There are teams out there losing 42-41. They’re going in the other direction in frustrations,” Dantonio said.
And he’s right.
For the Spartans last Saturday, there were several dropped passes. So blame the tight ends and wide receivers. There were missed throws, so blame freshman quarterback Rocky Lombardi. But why the heck were the Spartans throwing 41 passes in rotten weather anyway? Blame the coaches for bad play-calls. There’s plenty to go around.
“We had too many drops. If you’ve got to point to one thing in the football game, it would be the dropped passes,” MSU coach Mark Dantonio said. “I thought Lombardi played pretty well,” Dantonio said. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to put the ball in the end zone in the red zone.”
Dantonio trusted Lombardi to throw the ball 46 times in his first career start, and he won 23-13 against against Purdue, but that’s a team with one of the worst pass defenses in the country. He went 26 of 46 passing for 318 yards and two touchdowns.
“I felt pretty confident in my first start, and I still feel pretty confident,” Lombardi said Saturday after the Nebraska loss. “I think it’s the same. Obviously, the main difference between this start is you’re in the loudest place in the Big Ten, the atmosphere was great. That was a big difference.”
The weather stunk, too. It was cold and wet, certainly not conducive to throwing the ball. Michigan State abandoned the run completely in the fourth quarter, even when there was still time for a game-winning drive that could have included running plays in the final four minutes.
Even Michigan State’s defenders saw the problem from the sidelines. When the play is called, make the play. That didn’t happen enough against Nebraska. Players need to accept responsibility, and many did.
“There were times where plays could have been made,” Michigan State linebacker and team captain Joe Bachie said Saturday. “We saw it as a defense on the sideline. Offensive coaches saw it. Everyone saw it. Just make the plays when it comes to you. You’ve done it your whole life. And that’s kind of gotta be the message.
“You look at the game, and you could point fingers at anyone, but you just point the thumb at yourself for not making the play,” Bachie said. “Maybe in the defense, you bust your coverage, that is not on the coaches. Offensively, if you drop a ball, that’s not on the coaches. You make those plays that we have all done before. We have all made them before, so there is no pointing fingers here. Own up to it.”
Tom Brew has been a recognized reporter in Big Ten sports for decades. Among other projects, he writes about Big Ten football for Saturday Tradition.