Couch: MSU shows itself to be a work in progress against Furman

EAST LANSING – Michigan State’s football team might be in trouble.

Or the Spartans might be fine. Tough to tell. Too early to tell. This we can tell: The Spartans weren’t dynamic Friday night — on either side of the ball — in a 28-13 season-opening pat-down of Furman.

The consensus from a row of judgmental jerks perched high above Spartan Stadium: Meh.

MSU looked OK. Sometimes. Had its moments. The numbers were decent. One can point to promising signs. And about as many reasons for concern. Some of them eye-opening.

Furman had life early in the fourth quarter. That shouldn’t happen for a team with 63 scholarships, in town for the primary purpose of collecting a $655,000 paycheck.

Let’s start with the bad — for you bloodthirsty souls who’ve waited eight months to be entertained by Mark Dantonio’s crew.

Eye-opener: MSU tops Furman, but it's close

Furman moved the ball with surprising regularity against MSU’s defense. Usually mid-major and lower-division teams have to try to win through the air, throwing over a line of scrimmage they can’t come close to winning. But the Paladins ran effectively up the gut, regularly reaching the second and third levels of MSU’s defense. It’s not the points surrendered or Furman’s rushing yards alone that tell this story. It’s the 11-play drive, mostly on the ground, which helped set up a 13-play touchdown drive, mostly through the air. If there should be one concern for MSU above all others, it’s the initial daylight Furman’s running backs found early on Friday night.

Some of it was the commendable work of a Furman offense that hit MSU with a new system and plenty of unexpected wrinkles.

“We weren’t expecting hardly any of that stuff that they threw at us,” MSU linebacker Riley Bullough said.

Some of it, too, was a result of a bland approach to defense by MSU, which was careful not to show anything overly aggressive or fancy to their next opponent, Notre Dame on Sept. 17. The Irish will, however, notice a defense that allowed 18 first downs, one fewer than the Spartans’ offense produced.

“It was pretty basic,” safety Demetrious Cox said of MSU’s limited game plan, chuckling. “We kept it straight.”

Same could be said about MSU’s offense, which put up fairly sharp numbers here and there, but, here and there, looked kinda sluggish.

The Spartans tallied a modest 361 yards and converted on 4 of 10 third downs — numbers made better by a strong finish. They had four touchdowns in four quarters of football against presumably their worst opponent of the season.

Quarterback Tyler O’Connor threw an interception in the fourth quarter that, for a moment, gave Furman a short field trailing by just one score. MSU lost a fumble, committed 10 penalties for 120 yards, the most in five seasons. Michael Geiger missed a 43-yard field goal. Mistakes that’ll cripple this team’s chances of winning in South Bend if this is indeed who the Spartans are.

But we don’t know that. All we know is it’s who the Spartans were Friday — a work in progress, which should have been somewhat expected.

There was plenty of good for MSU, too. O’Connor completed 11 of his first 13 passes, including a perfect back-shoulder touchdown pass to Felton Davis III. The offensive line moved the pile out of the gate for an opening-drive touchdown. LJ Scott looked better than solid at running back. He'll be the guy moving forward, co-offensive coordinator Dave Warner said. Monty Madaris looked sure-handed in hauling in five catches for 85 yards in his first game in any sort of prominent role.

“I think we’re close,” Warner said. “And I say that because I think we’ve got playmakers.”

We’ll know a lot more in two weeks.

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.