MSU Defense: The Fountain of Youth

There's a second part coming to this post. When, you ask, well I guess you'll just have to wonder about that. Probably next week.

As I was driving home from Saturday's game, I got Chris Vannini's tweet saying that the D-Line two games into the conference season has sacked the opponent's QB a total of 16 times. That's more than most of the NCAA has for the whole season in case you're keeping track at home. They held another strong offense 200 yards below their season average and had a pick six. Simply put, they are good. Like the first time you saw Jurassic Park good.

What was absolutely kicks me in the junk about this defense is how young they are. As Jamie Mac of the Just Cover Blog pointed out, seven of our defensive starters this year are from the class of 2010. (I would argue that Pickelman is more of a starter than Rashad White, but that doesn't really detract from the point.) The point is our defense is stupid young.

After a seasonal defensive performance the likes of which I haven't ever seen, at the end of 2011 we will definitely lose Trenton Robinson, Kevin Pickelman and more than likely lose Jerel Worthy. At the end of 2012 we'll get dinged some more when we lose Johnny Adams, Rashad White and Chris Norman. Here's the amazing thing folks, in 2013, the following players will still be at the positions they're playing today: Marcus Rush, Will Gholston, Denicos Allen, Max Bullough, Darqueze Dennard and Isaiah Lewis. Gholston may go pro, but eh, he's has to settle down some first.

In the class of 2010 we have a few other players who are seeing significant minutes. Kurtis Drummond has been seeing lots of time as our nickel back in our third down package. Tony Lippett has been tabbed as the next two-way player at MSU. Jeremy Langford seems to have found a home at corner grabbing a pick-six against FAU and looks to try and move up the depth chart from there.

We have managed to redshirt the entire class of 2011 save one, Taiwan Jones. Taiwan Jones is a manchild at 6'3" and 234 and has spent his freshman year so far destroying people on kick returns. So in 2011, we're redshirting three LB's, two CB's, 3-4 DT's depending on what position Brandon Clemons ends up at and 2 DE's. It's difficult to expound on how GOOD they'll all be because we haven't seen any of them play. However, ratings, we got 'em. All three and four star kids. I really thought coming into this season that redshirting all but one member of the 2011 class meant that our class needed seasoning, but what's obvious only now is that why bother burning eligibility when you can sit everyone and have them gain more experience?

It's beyond difficult to look at this current defense and not start thinking about if Dantonio has finally got his pieces into place to build the Championship Defense Dantonio has wanted since he came to town in 2006. We are young, we are kicking ass and with redshirting almost our entire defensive class we are going to be as good or better next year. If in 2012 we find ourselves in a position to ask ourselves if our defense is any good or not, it should be a pretty simple question to answer. We can just ask any of the nine returning starters from 2011.