EAST LANSING – Sure, it wasn’t the exclamation point Nick Sheridan had hoped for from Michigan State football’s offense.
Yet even with the Spartans’ stalled drives that left points on the field, there were far more periods than question marks coming out of Friday night’s program-opening 30-20 win over Toledo.
The two offensive penalties were costly holding calls, but MSU did not have any presnap flags or turnovers. The substitution issues, misalignments and assignment mistakes were at a minimum, and the offensive line showed plenty of signs of improvement from recent years.
One game, of course, does not make a season. And for the first-year offensive coordinator, the Spartans’ good outweighed the bad in their debut. Even if Sheridan admitted “we
were not perfect” and felt some of those mistakes “really took points off the board.”
“I was proud of some of the down-in, down-out execution and our ability to possess the football,” Sheridan said Tuesday, Sept. 8. “But ultimately, time of possession isn’t what scores points. You could have the ball, but we’re trying to score the points to help our team win.
“Whether you want to say disappointment, frustration – whatever word you want to use – certainly we’re well aware of us stalling out on some drives where we were really in a position to kind of take control of the game.”
The Spartans generated 397 yards, with quarterback Alessio Milivojevic throwing for 247 and running back Cam Edwards getting 98 on the ground. In doing so, MSU controlled the clock on offense for an overwhelming 43:16.
However, after a 7-plus-minute opening touchdown drive that Edwards capped with a 2-yard touchdown run, the Spartans then settled for field goals on four straight possessions the rest of the first half. Holding penalties on left guard Conner Moore and right tackle Rakeem Johnson stunted two of those drives.
“I think the best thing is we played with effort and we were moving people, especially in the first half,” center Trent Fraley said Tuesday. “I think at the end, we weren’t all playing on the same page. One guy here messes up something and it just ruins the whole play. We can’t just have 4-for-5, we need 5-for-5.”
MSU opened the second half with another stalled trip that resulted in a blocked field goal, punted from near midfield on the next turn and got stuffed on fourth-and-short for a turnover on downs on their third second half possession.
Milivojevic guided a touchdown drive after that by throwing a rollout 5-yard touchdown pass to Rodney Bullard Jr. on fourth-and-short early in the fourth quarter, then got a fifth Liam Boyd field goal from 51 yards out to add insurance with 1:55 to play. And after getting sacked three times through three quarters, Milivojevic and his blockers up front shored things for the final stretch.
Even with four new starters in front of him, Milivojevic felt the offensive line “played great.”
“I felt perfect in that pocket,” said Milivojevic, who completed 26 of 34 passes. “I don’t know if you watched the film, but I was sitting in there 99.9% of the time. So I was very proud of them, very proud of the way they fought the entire game, proud of guys who came in and had to take some snaps when maybe they weren’t starting the game of.
“So I’m just proud of that group, and I think they’re gonna continue to just get better.”
Bullard, who had 90 receiving yards on seven catches, said the Spartans’ first-game discipline and precision, despite some of the mistakes and missteps, became more evident over the weekend and during the first week of games before that as they got a chance to watch other college football openers.
“Credit that to Coach Sheridan,” Bullard said. “He’s on us a lot about that if we eliminate presnap penalties, it just puts us in a positive advantage. … We were just working hard to make sure that wasn’t us. Our goal is to not have any presnap penalties. So if we do, it’s not perfect.”
Edwards, despite being in and out with apparent cramping issues, looked the part of a lead back with his 27 carries (along with two catches out of the backfield) and helped MSU run for 150 yards. Still, the Spartans understand the 30 points they scored could have been closer to 50 had they closed out drives.
They hope to build upon the discipline showed against the Rockets when they host another Mid-American Conference foe in Eastern Michigan on Saturday at Spartan Stadium (3:30 p.m./BTN). The Eagles (1-1, 1-0) are coming off a 27-21 nonconference loss to San Jose State on Friday. EMU, under 13th-year coach Chris Creighton, has committed just eight penalties in its first two games but is allowing 362 yards and 22 points a game that included a 28-17 conference win over Sacramento State to open the season Aug. 29.
The last time the Spartans played the Eagles, back in 2014, they rolled to a 73-14 victory and scored the third-most points in the school’s modern era (1946). MSU is 10-0 all-time against EMU and has won its seven modern-era games by an average of 39 points.
Sheridan would just settle for turning more of those field goals from Week 1 into touchdowns while building on the discipline the Spartans showed as their “base level to play winning football.”
“We certainly had opportunities to score more points in the game than we did,” Sheridan said, “and so we’re working hard to address that.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MSU's offense knows newfound discipline key to going from good to great
