‘I Hate That I Care What This Looks Like’

Locked On Spartans, Thursday show, two days out from a Michigan State football game that actually counts. Will Hunter, Shane Sheehan, both of us in the room, which I want to say is the first time since June?

The June one shouldn't count. You had a bag.

I had a bag.

You did an entire episode with a suitcase on your lap. For the people who watch this on video, that was real. Anyway. Hi.

How you doing.

Bad. No, bad's too strong, I'm fine. It's more like, you know when you've got a dentist thing on Thursday and it's Monday, and you're not scared of it, it's just kind of parked there? That. All week. Except it's about Grambling. I've been doing that about Grambling. I woke up at four in the morning twice this week and I want to be clear there's no specific thing. There's no picture in my head. It's just sitting on me.

You've got specific things. You've got a whole list, you sent me the list.

I have a list, we'll get to the list, I'm saying at four in the morning there's no list. There's just a feeling and the ceiling.

Okay. So here's the show. Three things I'm watching Saturday, we'll do one mailbag at the end because there's a good one in there about the offensive line. And up top, so nobody has to email me about it, the question this week is not whether they win.

They're going to win.

They're going to win.

They better —

They're going to win. If they don't win we're not doing a podcast Sunday, we're doing something else, we're doing a service, and I'm going to have to call my mother. So set it down. What I care about is what it looks like.

And I hate that I care what it looks like. I really do, I hate it, because the second you start caring what it LOOKS like against Grambling you've kind of already agreed that it could look bad against Grambling, and nobody in Columbus is doing this show today. Nobody in Columbus woke up this week and went, boy, I hope we line up right. Their problem is their Heisman guy is a receiver and receivers don't win it. That's their problem. That's what a problem looks like when your program is fine.

They're worried about a wide receiver.

A RECEIVER, Will.

Alright, but I don't think it's pathetic to be watching for that, and here's why. Count up what's brand new on Saturday. Head coach who's never done it. Quarterback who's never done it. Defense that has never played a snap in a scheme nobody here has run. And a staff that has never coached one game together, anywhere, not one. All four of those get switched on at the same time at three-thirty in the afternoon. That's not a low bar. That's just the first thing that has to happen before any of the other stuff can.

If we'd hired a sixty-year-old you wouldn't bring any of that up. You'd just assume it.

...Yeah. That's fair. That's a better version of what I said.

Thank you.

Although openers are hard for the sixty-year-olds too. Every single year, first weekend, you watch a staff with four hundred combined years of experience take two timeouts in the first quarter because nobody's sure who's supposed to be on the field on third down.

Sure.

It happens all the time. It's not a story.

It'll be a story for us.

It'll be a story for us, yeah.

Thing one. Hannan. And I'm not doing the Alessio conversation today.

We're doing it at some point.

At some point. Not today. What I want out of Hannan Saturday is basically nothing. I don't need him to be great. I want him to look like he knows what's going on before the snap. Get everybody lined up, get the play, get rid of the ball.

The thing I'm going to be watching, and this sounds stupid, is his feet. Because with a young quarterback it's always the feet. There's nobody within six yards of him and he's still doing a little dance back there, and he's throwing it like somebody's about to hit him and nobody is about to hit him. And once you see it you can't stop seeing it, and then it's September and October and it's every week, and I don't want to be looking for it. I'm going to be looking for it on the first series.

You'd know in six snaps.

You'd know in four.

Thing two, and this is the one I've gotten the most texts about all week and it isn't close. Rustin Young at center.

Six foot seven.

Six-seven. Playing center.

Six! Foot! Seven!

Do you want to take this one or you want me to take it.

I want to take it and I've got nothing. I just want to say the number out loud. That's my whole contribution to this segment.

My honest read on it, and I've changed my mind three times this week —

Four. You texted me at eleven-thirty Tuesday night and then you texted the opposite thing at seven the next morning.

Four times. It's either the smartest thing on that depth chart or it's the tell that they didn't have five guys they liked, and I don't think Saturday tells us which.

The tall thing I've actually gotten bored of? Everybody's doing tall jokes. I've done four of them.

You did one Monday that was mean.

It was mean and I've apologized to nobody. The thing that actually gets me is the talking. He's the guy who has to do all the talking. He's got to look at what the defense is doing and tell four other guys who they've got, out loud, in about a second, every single play, and he's been doing that job since March.

He did it all spring.

Against our own defense. Guys he eats lunch with. Who aren't trying to make him look stupid on television.

That part's real. That's the part I'd worry about too.

And I want to say, this isn't me saying it won't work. It might be great. When somebody explains the case for it to me I go, okay, yeah, that makes sense. It's just that when I picture it, I picture a very tall man bent over in a pile, and my whole body goes ugh.

Thing three, and nobody is talking about this one, which makes me crazy. Grambling runs the option. Not as a change-up, not a package. That's the offense. It's the thing they're good at, it's why they win games, they're going to run it forty-something times.

And that's the exact —

It's the exact thing a defense that's never played together is worst at, yes.

That's what I was going to say and you took it.

Sorry.

No, it's fine, but that's the whole thing. Everybody this week is going cupcake, tune-up, whatever, and I keep going, out of every FCS team we could have drawn we drew the annoying one. If we'd drawn a team that wants to throw it forty times, great, our corners are fine, everybody's fine, we all go home. We drew the one that's going to run it at us four hundred times and dare one guy on our defense to look at the wrong thing for half a second.

Forty-something times. Not four hundred.

I know what I said.

The thing I'd hang onto there is the linebackers are the group I trust most on this team, and I've said that all summer. Hall, Pretzlaff, Stodghill, White. If any room on this roster is built for a Saturday like that, it's that one.

Crawford's an edge, by the way, everybody keeps —

Everybody keeps putting him at linebacker.

I did it Tuesday. On this show. So I'm part of the problem.

You are a big part of the problem.

And the Tre Bell thing, which I've decided I like. They took him off the outside and stuck him in the slot, the nickel, whatever we're calling it —

Fifth defensive back. He's supposed to cover, blitz, come up and tackle.

Right, and if that works, that's the one that makes me go, oh, okay, maybe there's something real underneath all of this. Because somebody watched that kid and went, you're not a corner, you're this. And if they're right about that once, maybe they're right about it again. Or he gets run over by a fullback on Saturday and I look like an idiot for saying any of this out loud.

Quick housekeeping and then Shane's going to talk about his daughter's soccer schedule, which he has been waiting to do for eleven minutes.

I am absolutely going to do that.

Locked On Spartans is part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Follow the show wherever you're getting this, leave us five stars if you get a second, it does actually help. Alright. Actually, hang on, one more football thing first, because I skipped it and it's the one I'm most curious about.

Go.

Cam Edwards should be the best player on that field by a wide margin. That's not a take, that's just what a Power Four running back against an FCS defense is. But I want to see it. I want him getting to the second level clean. And if he doesn't, I'm not going to be looking at him, I'm going to be looking at the five guys in front of him.

It's the guards. It's always going to be the guards with me. I said it in April, I'll say it in November. If the inside of that line can't move an FCS defensive tackle two yards, then what are we doing in South Bend in three weeks.

Two weeks.

Two weeks? ...It's two weeks. Eastern's in between. That's worse. Why did I think there were three.

I'd push back a hair though. There's going to be one guy on that defensive front who's a legitimate player and he's going to win some reps. That's not a crisis, that's football. Everybody acts like these guys are traffic cones and they're not.

If he's winning them all afternoon I'm going to have a physical reaction in my own home.

If it's all afternoon, sure.

Can I do the one thing I'm excited about. Am I allowed one thing.

You're allowed one.

Savoury. Because a redshirt freshman starting at, what are they even calling it —

H-back.

H-back. Fullback. They've said three different things in three weeks. Somebody in there called him a move piece.

They have said move piece.

Which means nothing! Which means they're going to stand him in four different places and see who follows him. And that's fun, that's the first actually interesting idea we've been allowed to look at all summer. Either he's a problem for people or he gets absolutely flattened by a linebacker in the second quarter and we never speak of it again. Could be both. Could be both on the same drive.

Could easily be both on the same drive.

Can I go somewhere completely else for one second, I need a break from my own chest.

Go.

The travel soccer schedule came out.

Oh no.

Eleven Saturdays. In the fall. Three of them in Ohio.

Which part of Ohio.

Does it matter? Is there a good part? And listen, she loves it, she's having the time of her life, she's got a left foot on her, I'm not going to be the dad who — I'm not doing that, I'm not that guy. But when I signed the thing in April they said some travel. Some. And then in July I get a PDF.

A PDF.

It's color-coded, Will. There's a key. There are four colors.

You'll watch the game on your phone in a lawn chair like every other father in this country.

In Ohio. Watching Michigan State. On a phone. Surrounded by people who will be able to tell.

They can't tell.

They can absolutely tell. Okay, I'm done, that's all I had, I just needed to say it to somebody who isn't my wife.

Here's the thing that sort of undercuts the entire show and I want to say it anyway. Take the best possible Saturday. It's clean, it's forty-five points, the quarterback's terrific, the defense is great. What do we know Sunday morning that we didn't know Friday night?

Nothing.

Close to nothing. Can the interior hold up against a real Big Ten defensive tackle, not asked. Can Hannan play from behind, not asked. Can this staff adjust at halftime against a good coordinator, not asked. Go down the list. None of it's available Saturday.

Right, but the bad stuff is available. That's the — okay. That's the actual answer to why I'm up at four. You can't learn anything good and you can learn something bad, so it's, like, one direction only. Yeah. That's the four in the morning thing.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't have a rebuttal to that.

Two weeks from Saturday we're in South Bend and I genuinely don't know what that team is.

Nobody does. Everybody on television is extremely confident about it and nobody does.

Miami hangs forty-two on them and the sport's been arguing about it for six days. They could be broken, they could be furious, two weeks is a long time. I'm not going to pretend I've got it figured out.

And they're still third in the poll, which is very funny to me. I've had it explained four separate times why that's normal. I understand it. I still think it's funny.

They don't vote off Week 0.

I said I understand it.

Last thing before the mailbag. The atmosphere. It's a home opener, it's the first one of whatever this is, and I think that building is going to be a strange place Saturday.

There's like three crowds coming. There's people who are curious in spite of themselves, there's people who are furious and came anyway because they always come, and then there's a big group who bought in March and have no idea what they walked into. So that's three. Four if you count students, and I don't know why I'm counting.

And they're going to cut to the band.

They are absolutely going to cut to the band, first ten minutes, it's a lock. And somebody on the broadcast is going to say and the head coach used to stand right there, and I don't know what that's going to do to me. I resent that I don't know.

I'll be fine.

You will not be fine.

I'll be a little bit fine.

Mailbag, one, because we're long. Kurt in Kalamazoo: if the offensive line looks bad Saturday, is that the whole season. Shane.

No. And also yes. No, because it's one game and everybody gets better between Week 1 and Week 5, that's just what happens, that's normal. Yes, because — okay, here's the part I don't love saying out loud. If it's bad against Grambling it's going to be bad in South Bend. That's not even a prediction, that's just... it's the same five guys.

I'd say the same thing with less panic in it. It's the group with the least margin, so a bad day there means more than a bad day somewhere else. That's all it is.

That's what I said. You said it nicer.

Alright, wrapping up. Three things Saturday. One, how fast they get lined up. Two, the inside of the offensive line. Three, whether the quarterback's throwing it on time. And try not to decide the whole season by halftime of a game against an FCS opponent.

You're going to decide the season by halftime.

I'm going to decide it in the first quarter, I'm aware, I'm telling everybody else not to. Locked On Spartans, back Saturday morning with a short one, and then Sunday.

Sunday's going to be a lot.

Sunday's going to be a lot. Go Green.