Michigan State Football: 5 overreactions from first half of 2017 season
The first half of Michigan State football’s 2017 season has been a pleasant surprise and here are five complete overreactions.
If you saw Michigan State football posting a 5-1 record through six games, you probably didn’t pay much attention to the Spartans’ offseason or 2016 campaign. However, that’s where we sit with the football program as Mark Dantonio has turned things around in a hurry.
Michigan State is currently 5-1 and a single victory away from bowl eligibility. This team will get a crack at making it into the postseason with a victory over Indiana on Saturday afternoon which would also improve their ranking from No. 18.
The season as already exceeded expectations as no fans believed this team would be ranked at this point. That has caused some drastic overreactions.
Here are five of the biggest overreactions from the first half of the season.
5. Dave Warner hasn’t gotten any more creative
This might not be completely true, but the creativity that fans were hoping for hasn’t truly shown up on a consistent basis yet. However, Dave Warner has had to battle the elements over the past couple of weeks and he still put together a solid enough plan to lead the Spartans past Michigan and Minnesota in torrential downpours.
Unfortunately, he’s still going to have to prove himself in fair conditions. We can’t make excuses for him each week because of bad weather.
Granted, Warner’s play-calling in the first half of the Michigan game was arguably the reason the Spartans were able to win — that, and the defense. He ran a beautiful screen pass to Madre London in Michigan’s red zone right before half to take a 14-3 lead and it was arguably the best play-call of the season.
Other than that, he’s been sticking with conservative play with runs between the tackles. That changed a bit at Minnesota as he ran pitches to the outside to allow the line to get out and block for LJ Scott and Madre London. Those pitches worked wonders.
Warner is still learning and getting as creative as Mark Dantonio will allow him. Unfortunately, there’s not enough creativity yet to fool Ohio State and Penn State in a couple of weeks.