Eye-opener: MSU tops Furman, but it's close
EAST LANSING – Frustration mounted on the sidelines as quickly as the yellow flags were piling up on the field.
“We were not happy,” said Josiah Price, one of the main culprits. “Guys were getting on each other. ‘Hey, we gotta pick this up. These penalties are unacceptable.’”
One thing was clear in 12th-ranked Michigan State’s opening-game escape against Furman on Friday night. The Spartans are in drastic need of improvement during their bye week if they want to repeat as Big Ten champions. In a lot of areas.
The glaring problem for MSU in its 28-13 win were 10 penalties for 120 yards against their Football Championship Subdivision opponent, a problem coach Mark Dantonio has worked to eliminate over his first nine seasons.
Pick a player, pick a coach. After the lackluster win, the Spartans’ phrase of the night was “we shot ourselves in the foot.” Some penalties, Dantonio said, MSU overcame. Some, it didn’t.
“Penalties really hurt us,” said Dantonio, who improved to 10-0 in home openers as MSU won its 18th straight to begin a season at Spartan Stadium. “We had numerous times when we were gonna get off the field and there’s a penalty or there’s a first down. And they were big penalties … penalties that changed the nature of the down and the distance and sort of put us behind the 8-ball a little bit.”
New starting quarterback Tyler O’Connor showed flashes of his abilities, throwing for 190 yards and three touchdowns while completing 13 of 18 passes. He also threw an interception – with MSU clinging to a 21-13 lead early in the fourth quarter – that appeared to swing momentum in Furman’s favor.
However, linebacker Andrew Dowell picked off a pass on the Paladins’ next play. O’Connor then marched MSU 60 yards in 12 plays, capping the drive with a 12-yard touchdown to tight end Jamal Lyles on a slant pass.
“A win’s a win. We’re OK with it,” O’Connor said. “But there’s a lot of things we gotta fix up. We stopped ourselves more than they stopped us, I think.”
Couch: MSU shows itself to be a work in progress against Furman
MSU’s running game struggled to generate traction for long stretches and didn’t overwhelm the Paladins, who went just 4-7 a year ago and offer 22 fewer scholarships than Football Bowl Subdivision teams. Time of possession was virtually equal. The Spartans eventually ran for 171 yards, getting 87 of them in the final quarter and 105 on 20 carries from sophomore LJ Scott.
Furman won the opening kickoff, deferred, and then suffered. MSU’s offense opened with a scalpel-sharp drive that showed six runs and a pass. Scott got 33 yards on four carries, including his 1-yard run around left end for the first touchdown of the season.
From there, the Spartans sputtered.
Four straight possessions stalled, including a short-field setup that ended without points when Michael Geiger’s 43-yard field-goal attempt fluttered wide left. A pair of penalties from senior tight end Price – one a 15-yard personal foul, the other a 10-yard holding penalty – helped thwart two other drives.
“The second drive was slow. I think it was one of our two or three three-and-outs,” left guard Brian Allen said. “We just didn’t really get going and kind of lost energy after the first (drive). We didn’t keep pressing the gas pedal. … That’s the penalties.”
The Spartans finally found a rhythm late in the second quarter, this time with O’Connor as the director. He hit all three of his passes on the drive, including the first of Donnie Corley’s career – a 12-yard quick out that resulted in a first down.
Facing a third-and-7, O’Connor threw a perfect over-the-shoulder pass to Felton Davis III in the right corner of the end zone for a 13-yard TD pass. It was sophomore Davis’ first touchdown of his career and the fifth of fifth-year senior O’Connor’s.
Meantime, the Spartans’ defense looked sharp for the game’s first five drives, then had significant lapses in coverage that allowed Furman to convert five third- and fourth-down attempts.
Furman quarterback P.J. Blazejowski marched the Paladins 72 yards in 13 plays over the final 3:19 of the half, converting a pair of third downs that led to Jon Croft Hollingsworth’s field goal with 15 seconds that cut the Spartans’ lead to 14-3 at half.
“We weren’t expecting any of that stuff that they threw at us, but that’s football and you have to adjust,” linebacker Riley Bullough said. “We bent a little bit tonight, but we didn’t break.”
Furman opened the second half with a long drive that ended with a missed 50-yard field-goal attempt, but MSU coughed the ball up on the next play. Redshirt freshman Darrell Stewart Jr. bobbled a handoff from O’Connor, and Paladins cornerback Aaquil Annoor flopped on it. Croft Hollingsworth didn’t miss his second kick, a 23-yarder.
O’Connor responded with perhaps his best drive of the game, a 5-play, 58-yarder to make it 21-6. His 31-yard quick out to Monty Madaris pulled the Spartans deep into Furman territory, and O’Connor found Price near the front left pylon for a 21-yard touchdown to cap.
But the Paladins made it interesting, marching 73 yards in 11 plays between the end of the third and start of the fourth quarter. Antonio Wilcox outraced the MSU defenders on a 6-yard option pitch for the touchdown, capping a 5:42 drive to make it 21-13.
“I’m really proud of our guys,” Furman coach Bruce Fowler said. “If you would have told me before the game that Michigan State was going to have 19 first downs and we were going to have 18, and time of possession would be fairly even, I would have thought that we'd be right in this game. And we were.”
The Spartans get next week off before traveling to Notre Dame on Sept. 17. That means they will be spending more time on honing the chemistry that was off-kilter Friday night.
“That’s 15 days away,” O’Connor said. “There’s not a whole lot of time for us to figure all that out.”