GREEN & WHITE FOOTBALL

MSU mapping trips to brainstorm defensive tweaks

Joe Rexrode
Detroit Free Press
MSU’s Harlon Barnett, left, and Mike Tressel will take over as co-defensive coordinators this year.

EAST LANSING – Harlon Barnett and Mike Tressel are in “research mode” as they try to navigate a course for the side of the ball that will have to lead the way for Michigan State next season.

The Spartans’ co-defensive coordinators wrapped up the 2016 recruiting season with the rest of the staff this week, an effort that culminated with signing day Wednesday. But on Monday, their big board consisted of a pair of top-10 lists – the top 10 defenses in college football and the NFL in the 2015 season.

“Now we’re in the process of having our (grad assistants) look at, ‘Who’s a 4-3 like us? Who’s a 4-man front?’ So that’s where we are,” Barnett said. “You first have to go with the front part, then you can work the coverage. Because at least they’ve got the same front, now you can fit everything else.”

And then they will decide where to take their offseason visits, where they will go for new ideas while sticking with the base defense they have helped run since joining Mark Dantonio’s staff at Cincinnati in 2004. The Spartans’ 4-3 defense with a base coverage of “quarters,” or Cover 4, isn’t changing, not after a 12-2 Big Ten championship season that ended with a No. 6 final ranking.

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That doesn’t mean all is well. MSU was the only team in the nation to rank in the top 10 in total defense every season from 2011-14, including a No. 2 finish in 2013. But the 2015 defense fell off statistically, finishing No. 26 in the nation and No. 8 in the Big Ten at 349.9 yards allowed per game.

MSU continued to stop the run – ranking No. 11 in the nation at 116.0 yards per game – but finished 76th in passing defense (233.9) and 72nd in passing efficiency defense (130.3 rating).

“That’s what we’re really gonna get into,” said Tressel, who was promoted along with Barnett before last season to replace former coordinator Pat Narduzzi. “We’re gonna take a couple visits. We’ve been so consistently good against the run, but our pass defense numbers have been, ‘Eh.’ It’s again trying to find the balance. Because you don’t want to make all these adjustments to the back end to where people can start running the ball on you. That’s the easiest way, if they can do that. This is the time for figuring those things out.”

MSU coaches are keeping adversity in mind here. The preseason loss of senior linebacker Ed Davis to a knee injury, the early-season loss of breakout cornerback Vayante Copeland to a fractured vertebra and the most-of-the-season loss of senior safety RJ Williamson to a torn biceps didn’t help.

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They also have analyzed the season in segments and have concluded that in the four games after an ugly 39-38 loss at Nebraska on Nov. 7 “we were as good as we’ve ever been, we played fantastic,” Tressel said.

That stretch included a 24-7 win over Maryland, a 17-14 win at Ohio State, a 55-16 win over Penn State and a 16-13 win over Iowa in the Big Ten title game. Even in what became a humiliating 38-0 loss to Alabama in the Cotton Bowl national semifinal, MSU’s defense held the Crimson Tide scoreless in the first 25 minutes.

So there was in-season progress, and the expected returns of Davis and Copeland should bolster a defense that also brings back defensive tackle Malik McDowell, linebackers Riley Bullough and Jon Reschke, and safeties Demetrious Cox and Montae Nicholson.

Now the MSU coaches will try to bring back some ideas. And they’ll welcome some other staffs to East Lansing, though the demand isn’t quite what it was two years ago after a 13-1 season and an MSU defense considered one of the best in school history.

“That was crazy,” Barnett said.