MADISON, WI – Coaches love to talk about playing complementary football as a recipe for success.
So what’s the term when virtually everything goes wrong in all three phases? When literally nothing is complementary?
A mountain of mistakes? An offense that couldn’t finish drives and a defense that couldn’t stop them? Errors of execution, mental and physical? A lack of focus that turned into a lethargic haze when the game got away?
Questions aside, that's what happened Saturday at Camp Randall Stadium. The problems for the Spartans are clear, but the answers are few in the moment. Still, Michigan State football coach Pat Fitzgerald found the words for the wrong-sided beatdown by Wisconsin that no coach wants to use.
“It sucks to get your ass kicked,”
he said after the Spartans’ 31-3 loss on Saturday, Oct. 3. “That's what you take from it. … You get your ass kicked, there's nothing else.”
Let's review the tape
Another phrase coaches throw around after an ugly loss: “I gotta watch the tape.”
Fitzgerald used variations of that, in shorthand, five times during a nearly 11-minute postgame news conference, expressing his frustrating and desperately heated desire to dissect the film to find why things crumbled.
What went wrong, though, for MSU (2-3, 0-2 Big Ten) in its third straight loss was evident all afternoon and didn’t require much of a secondary visual review.
“They physically beat us in every aspect of the game,” Fitzgerald said.
On offense, Fitzgerald put on his best Dan Campbell mindset and went for it six times on fourth down, including twice on the Spartans’ first drive. Wisconsin at that point already had a 7-0 lead, after opening the game with a time-consuming march capped by quarterback Colton Joseph’s 20-yard touchdown pass to Jacob Harris.
Three plays after MSU QB Alessio Milivojevic converted a fourth-and-1 on U-W's 46 with a sneak on that first possession, the sophomore faced a third-and-5 on the 41. But left tackle Ben Murawski got beat off the edge and guard Nick Sharpe – briefly moved to the left side due to a first-play injury to Conner Moore – was shoved backward. Milivojevic stepped up to avoid the first rusher, right into the arms of Badgers defensive tackle Charles Perkins for a 3-yard loss.
Facing fourth-and-8 at Wisconsin’s 41, Fitzgerald and offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan gambled again. This time, Milivojevic’s deep ball to wide receiver Fredrick Moore – into double coverage down the right sideline – was broken up, as the first of five turnovers on downs in the game.
It was a harbinger of dark times, after going 6-for-7 on fourth down in its first four games. MSU was just 1-for-6 on Saturday. The Spartans also went 5-for 18 on third-down attempts against the Badgers (4-1, 2-0).
“It’s 100% frustrating,” said Milivojevic, who was just 15-for-32 for 103 yards. “Those are times that we have to finish. You have to be able to sustain drives.”
MSU managed just one field goal, by Liam Boyd at the end of the first half – the Spartans’ only red-zone trip of the game. Their second possession also ended in downs at the Badgers’ 24. None of MSU’s other nine drives progressed past the Wisconsin 39.
“Didn't win any one-on-one battles up front, didn't win them on the edge,” Fitzgerald said of the offensive shortcomings. “That leads to the point total that we received.”
Defense left behind
Fitzgerald was also asked why the Spartans defense struggled with the mobile Joseph, who totaled 286 of the Badgers’ 373 total yards – 141 of them rushing, with a touchdown, and 145 more passing, along with three touchdowns. The first-year MSU coach said the Badgers did “exactly what we prepped for. Exactly. Exactly. Nothing different.”
“It's disappointing,” he said. “So it'll start with us as coaches. I'm not gonna sit here and give you a magical answer. I mean, we’re calling the [Wisconsin] plays out on the sideline before they happened. We gotta look at why we’re not executing and just coach the living you-know-what out of the guys.”
There were plenty of breakdowns to look at, including Joseph’s 46-yard touchdown pass in the fourth quarter to a wide-open Malachi Coleman – well behind the Spartans’ secondary.
But no play exasperated Fitzgerald and epitomized the issues more than Joseph’s 47-yard touchdown run on Wisconsin’s first drive of the second half.
MSU got the ball to open the third quarter, trailing 17-3, then lost backup quarterback Cam Fancher, who started the drive, to an apparent knee injury. With Milivojevic back in, the Spartans turned it over on downs for the third time, just across midfield – running back Marvis Parrish was stuffed on fourth-and-short for no gain at the Badgers’ 46.
Three plays later, facing third-and-3, Joseph took a shotgun snap, hesitated as if he was going to throw, then ran the QB draw to perfection. Linebackers Brady Pretzlaff and Cam Stodghill ran into blocks, safety Nikai Martinez missed as he dove at Joseph’s feet, and the Old Dominion transfer ran away as safety Devin Vaught tried to track him down with one final futile diving tackle attempt.
“We had zero awareness. … When we talked about the quarterback draw, it was looking just like this,” Fitzgerald said. “We’ve just gotta coach the guys better.”
The Spartans gave up 373 yards to the Badgers and have allowed an average of 379 yards to three opponents –Notre Dame, Nebraska and Wisconsin – during a three-game losing streak. Also contained in the streak: MSU also did not force a turnover or get a sack.
“Just gotta be better,” said defensive end Kenny Soares Jr., who saw Joseph’s first touchdown pass go through his hands – just out of his reach – before Harris caught it. “Just mistakes here and there that we gotta mitigate going down in the season.”
The next step
Equally reeling Illinois (2-3, 0-2) visits East Lansing on Saturday, Oct. 10 (3:30 p.m., FS1) after the Illini (and former MSU quarterback Katin Houser) gave Purdue its first Big Ten win in 2½ years on Saturday.
As for the Spartans' response to their loss in Madison?
The Spartans need to “flush it and just do better every week,” Soares said.
That, despite a locker room Fitzgerald said remains close, gets harder and harder with every missed assignment, every costly mistake and every loss.
“You get your ass kicked, there's nothing else,” Fitzgerald said. “Leave it here, walk out and get ready to go back to work on Monday.
“That’s it.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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Next up: Fighting Illini
Matchup: Michigan State (2-3, 0-2 Big Ten) vs. Illinois (2-3, 0-2).
Kickoff: 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10; Spartan Stadium, East Lansing.
TV/radio: FS1; WJR-AM (760).
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football doesn't need film to see 'they physically beat us'
