The Season

Can a 28-year-old hold a Power Four locker room?

The closest thing to evidence so far arrived in the first half against Eastern Michigan, and it is still not much. A full house that had come in on the strength of a 56-point opener went quiet while its team was ahead, watching a MAC running back go through people, and the sideline did not come apart. The defense fixed it at halftime in about four minutes, nobody yelled, and Michigan State gave up three points the rest of the way. Players remain plainly comfortable saying the head coach was wrong, and he keeps beating them to it: he opened his Tuesday press conference by correcting two things he had said about his own team on Saturday night.

One of the anonymous players said Saturday still did not count, because Michigan State led the entire game, and asked to be asked again if it is 14-10 in South Bend with a long one just given up. He said he intends to spend that drive watching his own bench. That is the right instinct and it is the reason this thread stays open.

Nick Mansour, playcaller

The first Saturday where the calling was the story. Eastern Michigan put an extra body in the box on first down, which is the correct thing to do to a run team with a redshirt freshman quarterback, so the entire opening drive was passes and all of it was written down on Thursday. Then Mansour tried to run it and, by his own accounting, ran inside zone three times in the first half straight at Warren-Stevens Tayou, who is the best player on that defense and who finished with all four of Eastern Michigan’s sacks. He quit, threw it instead, and once the Eagles took a body out of the box to deal with the receivers, he rebuilt the run around the edges with pulling linemen and both tight ends. Michigan State finished with 209 rushing yards on 39 carries, 8.3 a play, 27 first downs, eight of ten on third down, and no punts.

He also lost four sacks on a protection decision he described in detail: both tight ends running routes, no chip on Tayou, not once all day, a trade he says he made about a dozen times and only made on purpose the first eight. And he handed credit for two of the second-half calls to Nick Sheridan without being asked. Notre Dame has three interior players he thinks are the same problem, and he has said that if he walks in there Saturday with the plan he opened with against Eastern Michigan, the game is over early and it will be his fault.

The cornerback nobody in the building will discuss

Charles Brantley has been beaten badly two Saturdays running. Against Eastern Michigan it was a 44-yard walk-in touchdown, a missed tackle in the flat, and a 22-yard completion on third-and-9 in the fourth quarter. Everybody with tape has said so. MLive listed it. The stock report took it apart play by play. The radio callers were cruel about it for two straight segments. Mansour has now been asked five times in public and has never once graded him — every answer routes to a coverage he called, help he did not provide, or a decision he made, and on Tuesday he explained the coverage in more detail than anybody had asked for.

Ben Kessler put it to him straight this week: everybody has watched the same tape, the read is not ambiguous, and the head coach is the only person in the building who will not say a word. Mansour said it is a policy, that it is not about this player, that it is not new, and that Kessler should write the tape read and should write it well. Nine of twelve anonymous players brought Brantley up unprompted and all nine said the same thing, which is that he has had two bad games, everybody knows it, and nobody is worried. He is playing corner in South Bend and returning kicks in South Bend.

Hannan over Milivojevic

Hannan went 19-of-23 for 250 and two touchdowns with no interceptions in the first start of his life, and added 24 yards on the ground with three runs that moved the chains. The operation around him was clean: no delay of game, no wasted timeouts, one team penalty all afternoon. It is exactly the version of the decision Mansour argued for, and it came against Grambling State, which is the entire caveat.

Then Milivojevic came in with the backups on the field, went 4-of-5 for 100 and two scores, and spoke publicly for the first time since August. He said Leo is playing well, said he wants to play like everyone in the room wants to play, and left it there. There is no controversy. There is also no version of this where the argument is settled, because Hannan has not yet taken a snap in a second half that mattered.

Week 3. Hannan went 16-of-21 for 286 with two touchdowns and a passer rating of 222, plus a rushing touchdown, and nearly all of it was gone by halftime. He threw fifteen times in the first half and six in the second, because Michigan State was up three scores and running it. Asked whether he would rather throw it more he said yes, and then said every quarterback in the country would tell you that, and that it was not what the game called for. In the third quarter, with the ball being taken out of his hands, he walked over to Mansour on the bench and asked a question about a coverage. Milivojevic did not play.

The interior offensive line

The best possible first day, with an asterisk you can see from the parking lot. Zero sacks allowed and one penalty in the whole game, against an FCS front. Nick Sharpe was moving people at the first and second level. Rustin Young, the 6-foot-7 tackle playing center, was up and down in the run game and mostly up, and got off blocks into space, which was always the athletic case for the move. The exchanges were clean.

What did not happen: a nose tackle playing under Young, any meaningful short yardage, or a single rep that would test the four specific objections to the experiment. And Luka Vincic gave up several pressures at right guard, which is the one statistic on this list that reliably gets worse against better opponents rather than staying flat. Nothing here is resolved and this staff has not pretended otherwise.

Week 3, and the evidence got worse. Eastern Michigan’s Warren-Stevens Tayou had all four sacks by himself, all of them through the interior, starting on the first series. Nick Sharpe gave up two, Vincic one plus pressures, Young one to a looping edge that he owned publicly on Thursday. Mansour has taken the whole thing into the protection plan rather than the players, and the numbers behind that are his: on every drop-back where Tayou got home, both tight ends were out in routes and nobody chipped him. Michigan State still has not run a meaningful short-yardage play with a real nose tackle over its center. Notre Dame’s front is the first one that will ask all of these questions at once.

Trust repair with Michigan high schools

The first genuine movement of the era, and it is not the in-state part. Michigan State is now the leader for James Thomas, the quarterback from Flushing, and has three officials scheduled with out-of-state names. In-state coaches have said nothing new, which is the correct amount of nothing for two weeks in.

The quiet version of this thread showed up on the other sideline. Four of Eastern Michigan’s skill players are from Michigan: Hartland, Portage, Howell, and a corner from Trenton. Mansour’s answer when it was put to him was that there are Michigan kids on every roster in the MAC and half the rosters in the Big Ten, and if this staff does the job for a few years, some of them pick Michigan State instead. That is the whole thread, stated plainly, and it is years from being gradeable.

Week 3. James Thomas named three finalists — Michigan State, Indiana, TCU — with the Spartans in front. He is a quarterback from Flushing, forty minutes up the road, and he is the one recruitment on this board that would change how high schools in this state talk about the program. Roosevelt Edwards of Walled Lake has narrowed to a straight fight between Michigan State and Michigan with nobody else close, and the Spartans are gaining. Jamal Bowser of Cass Tech, no news.

Whether the staff holds

It ran live for three hours and nothing broke. Mansour called both sides, Sheridan was in the box owning the quarterback, Rossi owned the front, and Michigan State substituted cleanly all day on both units, including on possessions that changed fast. The success case for this structure is invisible, and it was invisible, which is the point.

The one visible moment went the right way. The first-drive fix took about four minutes on the bench, and Mansour said publicly that Joe Rossi had most of it before he got over there. He also put the fourth-and-goal sequence entirely on himself and routed none of it toward a coordinator. What this does not tell you is what any of it looks like in a losing October, which remains the actual question.

Week 3, and the division of labour got visible. Halftime against Eastern Michigan belonged entirely to Rossi: stop disguising on third down, line up and play what you are playing, delivered in about nine words. Eastern Michigan gained 238 yards in the first half and 78 in the second. Mansour, who spent halftime with the offense, said all of that out loud and took none of it. He also volunteered that two of the second-half offensive calls were Sheridan’s, one of which went for twenty, and asked that anybody writing about the playcalling include it. Then he spent a long answer naming the people responsible for one accepted penalty in two games, down to the staff member whose entire job is to count the defense out loud, eleven, every snap of every game.

Does the sport keep watching?

Two home wins over teams nobody respected have produced no national award and no conclusion, which is the correct amount of both. No Spartan won anything in either week. The novelty coverage is thinning out on schedule.

What changed is the shape of the next look. Notre Dame lost 42-6 to Miami, lost 38-10 at home to an unranked Wisconsin team, fell out of a poll it entered at No. 3, and then beat Rice 52-10 and turned back up in others receiving votes. Michigan State drives there Saturday at 3:30, and nobody — not the desk at FOX, not the twelve players who were asked about it, not the head coach, who has watched both losses twice — has produced a convincing account of which of those three results is the real Notre Dame. It is the first game this season that tells anybody outside Michigan anything at all.

The recruiting board’s new altitude

This stopped being a posture this week. Carson Coakley, the No. 1 player in the country, named Michigan State in his top group with an official visit scheduled, and has them in his top three alongside Alabama and Indiana. Jake Landing did the same with an official scheduled, where Michigan State is a long shot. Marquise Southerland made them a finalist with an official scheduled. Michigan State is now the leader for Sateki Vaeao, Devin Jennings, George Dickinson and James Thomas, and Diego Fajardo has them in his top five.

The other half arrived in the same week, which is the useful part. Patrick Paul cut them loose and thanked them on the way out. Josh Ingold is going the other direction after Minnesota came out of nowhere. And Michigan State dropped Jeremiah Stick rather than keep spending on a recruitment it did not believe in. A board that only ever gains is a board that is lying. None of this is a commitment and none of it can be graded before December.

Week 3, and the number got strange. Michigan State is now leading six recruitments on its own board and two weeks ago it was leading none of them. Sateki Vaeao, Devin Jennings and Tyreke Carter all named five-team groups with the Spartans on top; James Thomas named three finalists with the Spartans on top; Jalen Peacock is dead even with his hometown Ole Miss; Diego Fajardo now leans Michigan State. Jake Landing is drifting toward Ole Miss, Indiana and LSU with his official still on the calendar. Patrick Paul released a top ten without Michigan State on it. And the Spartans quietly stopped calling Marvin Officer III, a top-55 safety, which is the second name they have taken off their own board in three weeks and the item on the whole page that says the most about how this staff spends.

Robby Fenner, who covers it, said plainly that he cannot tell whether this is the front edge of something or what a very persuasive September looks like from the inside, and that he asked eleven people who also could not tell. A high school coach with two prospects on the board said the Michigan State call is about his kid rather than about Michigan State, then said he has heard four other coaches do exactly that and two of them are selling insurance now.

What this defense actually is

Everyone spent eight months discussing a 4-2-5 that barely played. Against an option team Michigan State lined up in three-man fronts, four-man fronts and a five-man front, started a walk-on linebacker over Cam Stodghill because he was heavier and lower, and finished with 18 tackles for loss and no first downs allowed after the opening possession.

The opening possession is the other half. Michigan State loaded the line, the second level was empty, and the misdirection to the fullback went straight through it for a 30-yard touchdown. The staff fixed the alignment in four minutes. It also got physically moved up front, which is not an alignment and did not get fixed on the bench. Whose defense this is has become a question people ask out loud, which it was not in August.

Week 3 answered part of it and complicated the rest. Eastern Michigan was fine on first and second down and converted four of its first six third downs with somebody standing wide open on every one of them, and Braydon Bennett ran through arm tackles for a half. Mansour also took a safety out of the deep middle to help the run fit, which is the entire reason there was one man back on the 44-yard touchdown, and he said so twice. Then Rossi took the disguises out at halftime, went back to what he has been running for twenty years, and Eastern Michigan gained 78 yards and three points the rest of the way with two sacks and an interception returned 71 yards against it. Michigan State also just tackled better, which Mansour said flatly he has no scheme explanation for.