Michigan State football: 3 not-so-quick takes from rewatching Washington loss

2. I can’t defend Jay Johnson anymore but his players did him no favors

Michigan State was never, is not now, and probably will never be an offensive juggernaut in the way the old Oregon teams were or teams like Florida State or Washington are like now, but for an offense to look like this in their fourth year is inexplicable.

The one play that sticks out happened early in the game. The Spartans were facing a third-and-3 when Brandon Baldwin committed a false start penalty (more on this later), turning the third-and-3 into a third-and-8. The play the offense executed was a 7-yard curl to Maliq Carr which would have been flawless if it was still third-and-3. Noah Kim had no pressure when he released the ball so either he’s getting trigger happy or he ran the play that was called that seemed to not change after the penalty took them back.

Neither of these options are not OK.

I swear, every drive has a play or sequence that just doesn’t make sense to me. I’m not an offensive mastermind by any means, but a toss sweep to the short side of the field is some Dave Warner-type garbage and has never and will never work with speed of college players. At the very least, have some motion to the opposite side to get the linebackers to just think about the play going to the wide side.

Now, he did have some creative play calls to get Nathan Carter the ball, like a nice screen and right on cue, it was the execution the made the play fail. There’s no rhythm, little pre-snap motion to keep the defense on their toes, and slow starts caused by asking Kim to make tough throws outside or have Katin Houser roll out to the left as a right-handed quarterback on his first throw of the game.

The coordinators are not helping the players and the players are not helping the coordinators and it made for an embarrassing performance.