Quick Thoughts on the OSU Game

First of all, this is a big victory for the Spartans.  It wasn't pretty on the offensive side of the ball, but the Spartans went to a tough place to play and pulled off a victory.  This is not the same OSU program of just a year ago, but we've seen the Spartans get spanked in lesser settings (do I need to bring up the Iowa game from last year?).  I see this win as signaling progress and it gives me more confidence about the rest of the year and the future of the program.

Onto the specifics
The defense looked awesome, but my excitement is tempered by OSU's ineptitude.  OSU is really bad on offense, especially at quarterback.  On the other hand, OSU has a good offensive line and the Spartans' defensive line looked dominant against them.  Jerel Worthy and William Gholston were beasts!  If we combine this performance with those of the first four games (especially their solid performance against Notre Dame), we can say that the Spartans now have a nearly elite defense (they are not quite LSU or Alabama) that will keep them in every game they play the rest of the season.

The offense is pretty good, but they make critical mistakes (particularly Cousins).  MSU put up a lot of yards on OSU's stout defense.  I thought that was impressive.  The o-line played well, the running backs were great, and the wide receivers were pretty good.  The one weakness, I hate to say it, was Kirk Cousins.  I went into this season thinking Cousins could play well enough to become a first-round draft pick in the NFL draft, but today he really played like a freshman.  He was inaccurate at inopportune times. He made critical mistakes at inopportune times.  On three scoring opportunities, he fumbled and threw two interceptions.  Cousins essentially cost the Spartans at least 9 points and allowed OSU to stay close enough to raise my anxiety levels in the last minute of the game.   As I said in my preview of this game, this was going to be a Tressel-ball kind of game.  Points were going to be hard to come by, so the Spartans needed to come away with points every time they had a real scoring opportunity.  Luckily, MSU's defense was better than I expected and OSU's offense was worse than I expected.

The Spartans should compete for the B1G title.  The bottom line is that MSU's defense should be able to considerably slow down every team they face the rest of the season.  I do wonder how they will do against running quarterbacks that can also pass at least a bit (e.g., Denard Robinson and Russell Wilson).  But I think they'll still do well in those games.  The success of the offense will depend on Cousins.  He seems to be struggling with his confidence right now.  If he can at least get to the point where he is not a liability, where he is not committing multiple costly mistakes per game, MSU should be able to win most of their games.  If he can't recover, we could be looking at losses in several Tressel-ball kind of games against teams with better offenses than OSU's (e.g., Wisconsin, Nebraska, and possibly Michigan--ugh!).