Michigan State Football: Revisiting Week 7 goals at Rutgers

1. Run the ball, stop the run

The Spartans did a solid job stopping Kyle Monangai, limiting him to 41 yards in the first eight drives of the game. The problem is that they allowed him to go for 35 yards in their touchdown drive to cut the lead to three, then allowed a one play, 21-yard touchdown run where MSU’s tackling could only be described as pathetic.

Defensive End Tunmise Adeleye crashed in way too hard (a byproduct of bad coaching) when his job is to contain the running back to the inside and what happens? Monangai runs it outside where Kahlil Majeed can’t control himself and over pursues for a tackle attempt that would make Manolete (an extremely famous bullfighter) jealous and Jordan Hall tries to wrap him too high and slides right off.

Even when they had a chance to get one stop when they really needed it and get the ball back, the Spartans allowed Monangai runs of 11, 9, and 11 yards, helping Rutgers hold the ball for the last seven minutes of the game.

Don’t even think about blaming this on the rain, as Nathan Carter and the Rutgers defense had to play in it too and they held him to 52 yards on 20 carries resulting in an average of 2.9 per carry.

Again, pathetic.

Even Jalen Berger was no great shakes despite what the box score says. There was one drive where he ran the ball four times for 30 yards and it resulted in a touchdown. Great. But take that one drive out and he was left with seven carries for 19 yards.

Mix the offensive lines lack of ability to re-establish the line of scrimmage with Berger’s lack of ability to make any defenders miss, and it results in his 2.9 average outside of one drive.