Folks, the bye week gives us an opportunity to reflect on some interesting things about this season, and perhaps the next. One way to gauge where we're at is to consider how this team is doing in terms of surprises. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that before the season starts I like to anticipate surprises that could significantly affect how the team will perform throughout the season. You can find my preseason discussion of surprises here and here. So what significant surprises have we observed, up to this point in the season?
As far as the bad surprises go, it looks like the only one that really came to fruition was the one about Maxwell. He did struggle, but at least I was right that he could be replaced by an adequate quarterback -- and that's what Cook has been, up to this point. In the first few games it also looked like the receivers were set to give us another bad surprise. That is, it looked like they had not improved much from last year. As I wrote, I think that would have been a season-killing surprise, but thankfully, the receivers came around by the Iowa game and have continued to improve throughout the season.
As for good surprises, I think we've had many more of these, and that's why MSU is having such a great season. Starting with the defense, I expected it to be good, but did any of us expect it to be this good? Part of that dominance is thanks to the emergence of Shilique Calhoun, who I think has turned out to be more disruptive than Will Gholston. I said it would be a nice surprise to get 10 sacks out of him, and he currently has 6.5, along with 11 tackles for loss. So he may actually exceed what I thought were high expectations. In general, the d-line has turned out to be more disruptive than anticipated, and that has helped make this one of the best defenses in school history. I didn't say anything about Denicos Allen in my surprise discussions, but he may be the biggest surprise on defense. He leads the team with 57 tackles, 5 sacks, and 11 tackles for loss. That's just astonishing.
On offense, I can't really say there have been any big surprises. I guess we could call Cook a good surprise in that he stepped in when Maxwell struggled, but quarterback play is actually worse than I expected. As for other parts of the offense, the receivers, the o-line, the running backs are now performing about how I expected. Jeremy Langford is the big surprise among the running backs, but the running game overall is about what I expected. Perhaps the biggest positive surprise on offense has been the emergence of the tight ends in the last few games. I honestly did not expect much from that group, but they have started to make some key contributions. Hopefully they'll continue to progress as the season draws to a close.
The special teams have performed about as expected, except that Michael Geiger has exceeded expectations. I was hoping that he would at least match what Conroy did last year (hit approximately 75% of field goal attempts), and he has actually hit 9 of 10 field goal attempts.
So hopefully the good surprises stay in place and hopefully we see the emergence of a few more good surprises. I would most like to see Cook take a big step forward over the next few games, but I'm not really counting on it. If he can at least play the way he played against UM, The Spartans will still have a great year. Throughout the Dantonio era we have also seen the o-line gel by about this point in the season, so I'm kind of expecting/hoping that they really start to dominate. It would be a nice surprise if this "best o-line in the Dantonio era" ends up dominating in a way similar to Wisconsin o-lines, especially by the B10 championship game.
The season, thus, has been quite the success. Have you ever felt this kind of euphoria? Perhaps it's just best to say as "Da Bears" guys say: "why are we so blessed?"
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