GREEN & WHITE FOOTBALL

Inside the Spartans: Michigan State looks to 'take responsibility' for blowout loss

Chris Solari
Lansing State Journal

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Mark Dantonio started listing everything that went wrong for Michigan State. And in Saturday’s 48-3 blowout loss to Ohio State, there was plenty.

It didn’t require the tired coaching cliché of “checking the tape” to dissect the problems, either.

Nothing good on offense. Nothing good on defense. Nothing good from the coaches.

“Consequently,” Dantonio said Saturday, “you see what happens. … Too many things going on in that football game to win the football game.”

Nov 11, 2017; Columbus, OH, USA; Michigan State Spartans head coach Mark Dantonio reacts during the second quarter against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Ohio Stadium.

He’s completely correct. It was fundamentally flawed all the way around, from preparation to execution, or lack thereof. It was as much on Brian Lewerke and his teammates as it was Dantonio and his coaches failing to adjust to minor wrinkles the Buckeyes were throwing at them that became major problems.

“We’re a better football team than that, but it’s in the books,” Dantonio recounted Sunday on his teleconference. “We’ve got to be able to also take responsibly for coaching, take responsibly for how we played.”

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There’s more to it, though, beyond Dantonio’s instant analysis. And it’s where the reality of what is ahead in the coming years should overtake the sting of losing to a quality opponent on the road – even if it was in blowout fashion.

• There’s the 12 starters and 25 other Spartans who played Saturday and are sophomores or younger. Only eight of the 64 who played will graduate after their bowl game, and the 19 juniors who played will provide a bigger leadership foundation next season.

• There’s the 12 true freshmen who saw action in front of 107,000-plus at Ohio Stadium, including three of the starters, who were on a high school field a year ago.

• There’s the first time truly playing in a high-stakes, winner-takes-all game of national importance.

• There’s the stretch of eight straight games since MSU’s bye week, which has included victories over Michigan and Penn State and no cupcakes along the way.

• There’s the physical toll of the upset over the Nittany Lions, and the accompanying taste of success that for the first time this season paralyzed the Spartans on Saturday.

Yes, Saturday at Ohio Stadium was about as ugly of a loss as a team could suffer. It goes down as one of the worst in Dantonio’s 11 seasons. It already has in terms of margin of defeat and rushing yards allowed.

Yet, take stock of what has transpired since early September. Because as much as coaches and players will say their goals never wavered from competing for a Big Ten and national championship, setting goals and actualizing them takes time.

This was never supposed to be a team that could get back to a championship level so quickly, even with the improved recruiting that came along with the big-time bowl wins and conference championships in the last eight years. It always was meant to be a building block season.

And there’s no question it has been, with one home game left against Maryland next Saturday (4 p.m./Fox) and one road trip to Rutgers before finding out what bowl game will follow.

“We’re not going to Indy, but there’s other great things to do,” junior safety Khari Willis said Saturday. “There’s still more to accomplish, there’s more to add to our resume, there’s more games to play for guys to try and continue on.”

Did the 37-6 loss at Iowa in 2010 destroy that season? No – MSU earned a share of a Big Ten title.

Did everything implode after the 49-7 loss to Alabama in the Capital One Bowl two months later that year? No, the Spartans returned the next fall with a second straight 11-win season and Dantonio’s first bowl win at MSU.

Only one loss in 2012, to Notre Dame, came by more than one score. The next year, there was only one loss, again to the Irish, in a magical 13-1 year that ended with a Big Ten title and a Rose Bowl victory.

Three more wins this season, and MSU will have its sixth 10-win season in the last eight years. That only happened twice in the program’s first 110 years before Dantonio arrived.

Two more wins, and Dantonio will have his seventh season of nine-or-more victories. That’s more than Biggie Munn and Duffy Daugherty had between them, each getting three in their 26 combined seasons.

“We’ve always responded,” Dantonio said Sunday. “We’ve always looked at things. How do you play after a tough game? How do you play after a great game in a big environment, a game that had this kind of magnitude? So we look for reaction. We’ll take the next step, but we’ll look for reaction, see how we play this week.

“But I anticipate our guys will come to play.”

In other words, even as bad as it was, don’t overreact to one game.

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Download our Spartans Xtra app for free on Apple and Android devices!