Thoughts on the Notre Dame Game

This was a tough loss. Pretty painful to watch. Here's a few thoughts.

- This loss was made more painful by the fact that MSU looked more talented than Notre Dame. Well, they at least looked more athletic -- talent also involves being more accurate throwing the ball and catching the ball and hitting your field goal attempts. But Notre Dame clearly needed the help of the refs in this one.

- The offense just broke down too often. Too many inaccurate throws, too many inopportune drops, too many penalties.This offense is not good enough to overcome mistakes, or perhaps it's not good because it makes too many mistakes.

- Parts of the offense look good at times, but they can't put it all together. The receivers looked excellent at times, but then had key drops. The offensive line was pretty solid, but had a couple of key penalties and poor blocks. The running backs ran pretty well, but they did lose yards on several key plays. The quarterbacks may be the only ones that actually looked worse more often than they looked good.

- The defense is clearly elite, considering that even Notre Dame had to resort to a crazy strategy like just throwing deep every time. Too bad the refs rewarded ND for their offensive incompetence. Just a disgusting performance by the refs.

- The special teams is still a liability. What a problem to have alongside a struggling offense.

- The coaching was good on defense, OK on offense. But when I see teams like Iowa and Minnesota racking up points on offense, it makes me wonder about MSU's offensive coaches. At the very least, I can say that the coaches don't seem to learn much from one year to the next. How can you end up with the same outcome against Notre Dame for 3 straight years?

- Finally, I am stung by this loss, but I did see that MSU has what it takes to win their division and play in the B10 championship game. But the offense must get better every week. Last year, I saw signs MSU had what it took, only to watch the offense actually regress over the course of the season. So there is reason to be hopeful, and reason to worry. So next week I'll be watching for the offense to make progress. If it doesn't, then we are looking at a repeat of 2012.