Michigan State Football: Revisiting Week 1 goals vs. CMU

3. One offensive drive of at least 10 plays

The closest we got to this was seven plays, 84 yards but it only took 57 seconds. Once again, Michigan State used big plays to move down the field.

Outside the two-minute drill to end the first half, scoring drives included drives of 16 yards thanks to a bad punt by CMU, five plays for 45 yards, three plays for 83 yards (72 yards on one Christian Fitzpatrick catch and run), and five plays for 55 yards.

Look, I’ll take a scoring drive any day of the week no matter how many plays or how many yards. But the key to beating teams with good offenses like Washington, Michigan, Ohio State, or Penn State is to keep them off the field. How do you do that? You sustain long drives and Michigan State has yet to show us that it can do that.

I had a big problem with the play-calling in the first half. Noah Kim did not get a fair shake with asking him to throw to the boundary that many times. There were too few over-the-middle throws even though when they did, like a 17-yard gain to Tre Mosley or the two screen throws, they went for big gains. I know chicks dig the deep ball and Maliq Carr and Mosley had some atrocious dropped passes but I didn’t see any resemblance of a passing scheme. Jaron Glover made some incredible sideline catches but I just don’t see that being a long-term solution.

Also, and I know everyone in the Twitterverse already knows this, but just stop with the fourth-and-short shotgun plays. It’s like the word “Fetch”. Stop trying to make it happen, it’s not going to happen.