a pride of lions: Use What You've Got

So here I sit on Wednesday night and I still don’t know what to say about the loss to Ohio State. I really thought we were going to win given the way the Lions were starting to pull things together in the past few games. Heck, I even wished we could play Iowa again because I thought the next time around we would be victorious. Unfortunately, a win was not in the forecast for us. Even though it looked like we made positive strides recently, this week we took a big step backwards. And on November 7, 2009, the better team won.
Not because they have better athletes, but because they use their talent more effectively than we use ours. They also controlled the ball offensively by getting 15 first downs to our 9 and getting the ball into the end zone for 24 points to our lone touchdown.

Every part of Ohio State’s game was carefully planned and executed. They were patient and played to their own strengths while exposing our weaknesses. One of those weaknesses was really revealed at Northwestern. Even though we won there, I remember not feeling all that great about our performance. We won, but offensively we scored points on a few big plays and never seemed to get a balanced attack going. Ohio State was able to take away our big plays and put us in a position to have to play with a more balanced approach that obviously we didn’t have. And as the score reflected, we didn’t total enough points to win the game.

Hopefully, this week against Indiana we will play a much more balanced game utilizing the two tight -ends that are a strength on our offense, so that we can get first downs when we need them instead of forcing the ball down field in an effort to make a big play every down. By definition the tight- end’s job in blocking is to help his fellow linemen develop a stronger pocket during passing plays. It seems like a no- brainer to me to keep one tight- end on the line to help protect the QB, and let the other one run a pass pattern to create a miss match with the secondary, or keep them both on the line to help the sometimes- struggling offensive line. That keeps the defense on their toes and certainly opens up the possibilities of pounding out a few yards at a time on the ground for a first down, or allowing the QB time to find the most open receiver to pass the ball to. First downs are what we need, not big plays all the time.

I’m sure I am a bit prejudice wanting my ‘favorite player’ on the field, but when you have two experienced, senior tight-ends, that have proven their abilities, they both should be on the field contributing to this offense. Last week, like our losses to Iowa and USC last year, we didn’t utilize our player personal effectively and therefore… WE LOST!

Let’s play with ‘our strengths’ this week against Indiana, and send our seniors out with a great win at Beaver Stadium and then kick some Spartan butts next week! There is still hope for a decent bowl game as long as we take care of business the next two weeks. If we win out and a few other teams help us, we could still get an at- large BCS Bowl bid, possibly the Orange or Fiesta Bowl.

Let’s Go State, use all your weapons, get those first downs and… WIN!

Pictures from Penn State-Ohio State game

The '82 crew'