OK, so last night's victory was among the best in Spartan football history. MSU just beat the defending national champions, a team on a 23 game winning streak, in their own stadium. That kind of victory says MSU is an elite program. Period. MSU is now the kind of program that can go into the stadium of another elite program and win. And they can beat that program 3 times in 5 years. All that is left to accomplish is to win a national championship, and that remains a real possibility this year.
Other impressions
The O-line stunned me. They let the OSU defensive ends beat them a few times, but otherwise, they dominated an elite defensive line. It was an astonishing performance that hopefully will continue all the way to a national championship.
Tyler O'Connor showed flashes of being a gunslinger. He flashed some Favre-like abilities: confidence, a good arm, and effective scrambling ability. He could be something special next year, though he has a lot of work to do. Damion Terry reminded me of Tyrod Taylor a bit, but he does need to improve his accuracy or develop better chemistry with the receivers.
The running backs were solid. I still think Holmes is the top back, but we did get to see flashes of Scott's high ceiling. Next year, the running game could be special. This year, they could still get on a roll and dominate, if the O-line continues to play like it did in this game.
The defense looked like a standard MSU defense: dominant. The weather helped. It eliminated OSU's passing game and it was amazing to see MSU's front seven dominate an offense full of 5-star recruits. But even the secondary looked outstanding most of the time, particularly with tackling (shout out to Montae Nicholson, who I hope proves my doubts about his ability to play safety completely wrong). We'll have to wait until MSU plays a good passing team to get a better sense of where the secondary is at. But I think they may have turned the corner. Which means, this defense could be about dominate games the way MSU defenses normally do.
It was great to see Michael Geiger hit the winning kick, but we can see that he has an issue with the ball hooking. He was able to adjust for it on the winning kick, in part because he missed his first kick, and perhaps in part because OSU called the timeout to try to freeze him -- basically, they let him have a practice kick (I hate the idea of "freezing the kicker"). But the hooking action shows there is something wrong with his technique, and it's something that will make him relatively inaccurate the rest of the season.
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