Nick Mansour after Michigan State 35, Eastern Michigan 13

I’m happy for the players. That’s where I want to start. They’re 2-0. They got to win in front of their own fans again, and they got to feel a locker room after a game where the scoreboard reflected a lot of the work they’ve been putting in.

That said, this was not a clean game. I don’t think anybody who watched it would say it was. We were choppy early offensively. We had a third quarter that I thought got away from us emotionally and operationally. We gave up a cheap explosive to start the half, we didn’t convert a fourth-and-short that I was fine going for, and then Leo throws a ball he’d like back. That’s how a game that felt controlled suddenly becomes a game where people in the stadium start looking at each other.

What I liked is that we didn’t stay there. The fourth quarter was probably our best quarter. Cam was decisive. The defense created takeaways. The sideline felt settled again. I thought that mattered.

You said the third quarter got away from you operationally. What does that mean, specifically?

It means I didn’t love the way I managed the offense coming out of halftime. Some of that is play selection. Some of that is rhythm. Some of that is making sure we don’t go from a pretty controlled first half to trying to solve every problem in one drive.

I thought we were doing a good job giving Leo answers in the second quarter. Then the game got a little jagged and we didn’t help him enough for a few possessions. That’s on me first. It’s on the offensive staff too, but if we’re going to talk publicly, you can put that on me.

Leo’s interception looked like one of those young quarterback mistakes, not seeing the underneath defender. How did you think he handled it after that?

That’s exactly what it was. He didn’t see the linebacker. The ball shouldn’t be thrown. He knows that. I knew it when it left his hand, he knew it about half a second later, and the stadium knew it when the defender caught it.

But I liked the response. The thing with young quarterbacks is not whether they can avoid every mistake. They can’t. Nobody can. The question is whether the mistake becomes the next mistake, and then the next one, and suddenly you’re not playing the game anymore, you’re playing your last throw. I didn’t think Leo did that.

He was pretty conservative otherwise. Was that by design?

Some of it was design and some of it was the way Eastern played us. They were not going to let everything happen over their head. So when a defense is giving you access throws, checkdowns, screens, glance windows, you have to be mature enough to take them.

People hear conservative and they think scared. I don’t think he played scared. I think he played like a point guard for a lot of the game. The throw to KK for the touchdown was not conservative. That was a big-boy throw, tight window, good route, good finish. So I don’t want to flatten the whole game into one word.

Cam Edwards had 202 yards from scrimmage, but a lot of the work came in the first and fourth quarters. Do you feel like you got away from him?

Yes. That’s probably the easiest answer I’ll give today.

Cam needs to be part of how we breathe offensively. That doesn’t mean 30 carries. It doesn’t mean force-feeding him into bad looks. But when a player is seeing it the way he saw it today, and when he can create in the screen game and the run game, I have to keep him more connected to the call sheet. We did that late. We should have done it earlier.

The defense held them to one rushing yard. How much of that was the plan you’ve talked about, stopping the run with smaller personnel?

It was a real point of emphasis. We want speed on the field, but speed doesn’t help you if you’re getting washed out of gaps. So I was proud of the discipline. Dion Crawford played a violent, responsible game. Kenny Soares was all over the place. Jordan had some really good downhill snaps. Ben Roberts showed up. Tre made the play everyone will remember, but there were a lot of boring fits that created that number.

And Joe Rossi deserves a lot of credit. That room was prepared. The defensive staff had those guys ready. I’m not interested in pretending one person’s fingerprints are on a good performance. That’s not how a staff works.

You also gave up 304 passing yards. How do you square those two things?

By being honest about both. The run defense was excellent. The pass defense was not clean enough. We pressured the quarterback a lot. He got rid of the ball, to his credit. But we gave them access to throws, and we missed on the 75-yarder. That can’t happen.

Charles Brantley is going to be fine. I know people will point to the touchdown because it’s the loud play. He also did some really good things against the run. We’re not going to reduce a player to one clip in public. We will coach the clip. We won’t turn the person into the clip.

Fredrick Moore had two drops on two targets. How do you handle that?

Privately.

And I don’t mean that to be rude. I mean that’s what he deserves. He had a hard day. Everybody in here has had a day where the first thing goes wrong and then the second thing feels like it’s about the first thing. He’s working. He’s talented. We need him. So we’ll coach him, and I’m not going to do that in a way that makes him a headline.

Do you feel like 2-0 changes anything about the public perception of this staff?

I don’t know. Probably for some people for 20 minutes, and then they’ll find the next thing to be mad about. That’s college football.

What matters to me is whether the players believe the work is connected to the result. We are not asking them to trust a slogan. We’re asking them to trust details. When the details show up on Saturday, that’s when belief gets a little more real.

You have a big road game next on the schedule. Do you start thinking about that tonight?

No. We’ll talk about the next opponent when it’s time to talk about them. Tonight is about the team that just played, the players in that locker room, and the things we have to correct from this game. I understand why everyone wants to turn the page. We don’t get better by skipping the page we’re on.