Breakdown Sports

Back in January, Ian Boyd dropped the disrespect alarm on many within the Spartan fan base when he seemed to indicated that the Michigan State run of success may be coming to an end. Review: Has the window closed for Michigan State I don't necessary believe that Boyd was necessary calling the demise of MSU football with his article. Nonetheless, it's understandable for MSU fans, who have been hearing that same, repetitive rallying cry for nearly a decade, to attempt to shoot him down. In the process of doing so though, I believe some pertinent points have been missed. In this post I'll discuss my thoughts on Boyd's article, where I agree with him, and where I'd like to expand on his thoughts.

Over at the PAC 12 Website, Rich Neuheisal had a very cool segment with regards to how Oregon found and exploited a flaw in MSU's scheme. Take a look:

For how basic much of MSU’s defense is, on third downs when the offense is behind the sticks, the Spartan’s defense is anything but. Much of the focus is on Narduzzi’s blitz package, and often rightfully so. But what I took away from Saturday’s game against Michigan was a very interesting coverage on the back end. In this post we’ll look at how Narduzzi pulled out a very unique Cover 3 look (some have called it an inverted Tampa 2 defense, which it kind of is, but I honestly think it’s closer to a cover 3) and we’ll discuss why this is such an effective context within the scheme that MSU often runs. MSU’s Cover 4 I’ll briefly discuss the Cover 4 just to give a primer of what it looks like. Basically, the cover 4 will look like a flat back. Two safeties will be even about 10 yards off the LOS and will not retreat on the snap. They have responsibility for the #2 receiver, while the CBs on the outside will essentially be playing man coverage on the #1 receivers. Tampa 2 ...

Introduction On normal downs and distances, it’s safe to say that MSU isn’t the most creative defense. While they are obviously still very good, they typically do a limited amount of things and do those things extremely well. But once you get behind the chains, well, that’s a different matter. Against Notre Dame, Narduzzi and Co pulled out an interesting formation and scheme. We are going to look at it briefly and how it is supposed to be run and why. Formation Here, the Spartans clearly line up in a single high look, and with the depth of the defenders in the slot, it’s almost surely going to be a 3 high type of defense. The question for the QB is: “Are the CBs going to drop into deep thirds?” or “Are the seam defenders going to drop into deep thirds?” Coverage Turns out that it is a basic cover 3 zone but with a few tweaks with the way that it looks. And the underneath coverage follows the eyes of the QB. Video Concept and Theory The scenario is third an...