Our Achilles Heel?

Something that concerned me going into the Iowa game was our struggling offense in the first quarter against Northwestern and Illinois. As I thought back throughout the year though I started to think this may not have been just a "Schools of Illinois" issue and just an "Spartans had better fix this issue." So in what I hope to establish as a theme of this blog, I went back and tried to do some homework on this. You know, instead of just plopping out the thought as it came into my head.

So I went back and grabbed the play-by-play of all the games this year, with the exception of Northen Colorado(I think we can all agree they should not be used to describe general trends). I was looking for two things, what's the score at the end of the first quarter and what's our 3rd down conversion percentage.

In the first quarter of play against FBS teams, we've been outscored 44-20. If you take out the Iowa and Northwestern games, that total drops to 20-20. In the eight games counted, we've been scoreless at the end of the first quarter in five of them, including 4 of 5 Big Ten games with the exception being Wisconsin. So in big ten play, we're on the wrong side of a 30-3 point differential at the end of one quarter.

I'd go on to submit that we can thank our defense for things not being worse. Our defense seems to be built around the idea that our offense can control the clock, so when we're struggling to move the ball in the first quarter, it would stand to reason our D is going to give up some points.

The second measure I was looking at was our first quarter 3rd down percentage. Through eight FBS games our offense is 8 of 23 for a whopping 34.78 percent. This would be bad, except our whole game total is 36.75 percent. Which honestly, is pretty damn terrible. Good for 86th in FBS overall. Add to that the fact that we are 63rd in allowing 3rd down conversion on defense and I think the larger issue may be illustrated for everyone. Michigan State is having trouble this year with it's third downs.

That being said, it's hard to write this as our "Achilles Heel". So far we've beaten the teams we should beat, beat one or two we maybe shouldn't have (I'm looking at you Wisconsin and Illinois). With three more wins and an Ohio State loss, we're going to the Rose Bowl. If I want perfection, I'd root for a pro team, like the Patriots, the Steelers or Alabama. I want to root for my team, and I think this may be their flaw.

It's hard to nitpick what might be my favorite season of MSU football since I became a fan.