Locked On Spartans, Tuesday, Will Hunter, Shane Sheehan, and Shane is going to sound like that for the entire show so everybody get comfortable with it now.
It's from Saturday.
It's from Saturday.
It is a hundred percent from Saturday.
Your daughter's had a cold since the first of the month.
That's unrelated.
Sure. Forty-one thirteen. Two and oh. Here's the show. We're doing the football game properly, all of it, because Sunday I basically talked to myself for forty minutes and then Shane sent me four voice memos I could not understand a word of.
One of those was good.
One of them might have been good. And then the back half is Notre Dame, and I'll tell everybody right now, we do not agree about Notre Dame and I'm not going to sit here and pretend we're close.
We're not close.
We're not in the same area code.
Do the playcalling. That's what people want and you know it.
Alright. So here's the shape of the afternoon and I want to go slow through it, because I think it's the most interesting thing that's happened in either of these games. Opening drive. Eight plays. They do not hand the football off one single time. Not once. Touchdown. And then they go to run it and it's nothing. It's worse than nothing, it's negative. Cam Edwards gets twenty-one yards on his first eight carries.
It felt like forty carries.
It was eight. That's the thing. It felt enormous and it was eight carries. And every one of them puts you in second and eight, and now your redshirt freshman is throwing on second and eight against a defense that knows it.
And there was a reason.
There was a reason and the reason has a name. Warren-Stevens Tayou.
Say it slower.
Warren-Stevens Tayou. Defensive tackle, Eastern Michigan. He had four sacks Saturday.
Eastern Michigan had four sacks Saturday.
Eastern Michigan had four sacks Saturday. Two off Sharpe, one off Vincic, one off Rustin Young. He was in the backfield the entire first quarter and Michigan State kept running the ball directly at him.
Three times, right?
Three times. Same run, same direction, same guy standing in it. And Mansour said it himself yesterday, and I'm going to read it, because it is not a coach sentence and I want people to hear it in the actual words. Quote. We were running gap scheme directly at the best player on their defense, which is a stupid thing to do. So we went around him.
He said stupid.
He said stupid. About himself. And then he said it again about ten minutes later about the fourth down call, and then a third time about the protection.
Nobody says stupid.
Nobody says stupid. But that's the quote and the quote is not the part I care about. The part I care about is the twelve minutes of football where he actually did it. They go to two tight ends, sometimes three. Savoury's moving across before the snap. And they quit running it between the guards and start running it outside. Edwards has a hundred and thirty-seven yards on his last fourteen carries.
Say the two numbers together.
Twenty-one on the first eight. A hundred and thirty-seven on the last fourteen. Same running back, same offensive line, same afternoon, same football team on the other side.
Okay. I want to say the thing I've been trying to say since Sunday and keep losing halfway through. I have watched this program run the ball into the same guy for entire seasons. Whole years, Will. There were years where you could see it from the couch. You could see the guy lined up there before the snap, and we'd hand it off into him, and the whole place would make the noise, and then we'd come back out on the next drive and do it again. Same play. Same guy. Sometimes for a month. So the thing that got me on Saturday isn't that it worked. It's that somebody stopped.
That's fair and I want to put the boring numbers on top of it.
Put the boring numbers on it.
Eight of ten on third down. Twenty-seven first downs. Four hundred ninety-five yards, eight point three a play, and they did not punt. Rhys Dakin did not punt one time in a football game.
He warmed up for two hours.
He warmed up for two hours and went home. Now, I have to do the part where I read my own thing back, because I keep a list on my phone.
I hate the list.
You hate the list because you're on the list. Friday, on this show, and this is off my own notes app so it's word for word. Quote. If the run isn't working they don't have a second idea, because a guy who's twenty-eight and has never done this is not going to come up with one on a Saturday afternoon. End quote. That's me. Two days before.
And?
And he had a second idea by the middle of the second quarter.
You love this.
I love it. I've been doing this ten years and being that wrong that fast is the best week I've had.
You're a strange man.
Defense. And I'm going to let you do the first half because you were there and I was at a wedding.
You were at a wedding.
I was at a wedding in Toledo and I want everybody to know I watched it on my phone in a parking structure.
Alright, the first half. Braydon Bennett. Eighteen carries, a hundred and eleven yards, eight catches for fifty-five on top of that. And it wasn't the yardage, it was the how. He ran through people. Not past them, through them. There's one in the second quarter where I counted three Michigan State players get a hand on that kid and he goes another nine yards after the third one. And here's what I actually want to tell you about, which is the stadium. We were ahead. We were ahead nearly the whole first half and it was the quietest I have ever heard that place with a lead. Not booing. Nobody booed. Everybody just sat there. There's a guy two rows down from me who kept turning around and looking at his kid and not saying anything, and the kid's about nine, and after a while the kid started doing it back. And I want to be clear about what that was, because people who weren't there are going to read the score and think we're being dramatic. It wasn't nerves, and I know the difference. Nerves is loud, you can hear nerves. This was everybody going quiet and folding their arms up and waiting for it. My brother-in-law is in the row behind me and he did not say one word between the first quarter and halftime. Not one. He talks through everything. He talked through a funeral once.
That's what I got from everybody who was there. Nobody was angry. Everybody was braced.
Braced is the word. We were ahead by ten and forty thousand people were waiting for the thing.
And the numbers back the feeling up, which they don't always. Two hundred thirty-eight yards for Eastern in the first half. Seventy-eight in the second. They converted four of their first six third downs and then none of their last five.
So what happened at halftime.
Rossi got asked that yesterday and gave the least interesting answer available, which I think is why I believe it. He said they took some things out. Stopped disguising, lined up, played what they were playing. And then he said, and then we tackled better.
That's it?
That's it. Sometimes that's the answer and everybody hates it.
I want to do Tre Bell.
Do Tre Bell.
Seventy-one yards. Four minutes left, the game has been decided for an hour, everybody in there knows the game has been decided. And I have never heard that stadium make that noise. I've been going since ninety-eight. That was the loudest thing I've been inside of. And it did not matter. It did not matter one bit and everybody knew it didn't matter and that is exactly why it was that loud. That's where the voice went, by the way. That play. I stood up and made a sound I have never made before in my life. And the thing I keep coming back to is that it wasn't relief either, relief is what you get when the field goal goes through and everybody exhales. This was people who had been sitting there for two and a half hours with their arms crossed deciding all at once that they were allowed. That's why it was that loud. Everybody in there had been holding onto something since about ten past noon.
Your daughter texted me during it.
She texted you?
She sent me one word.
Don't.
The word was help.
She's grounded.
She is not grounded. Tre Bell also had two tackles for loss, and Jordan Hall had eleven tackles and an interception and nobody is going to say Jordan Hall's name once this week.
Nobody. Pretzlaff had nine and two for loss.
Nine and two for loss.
And Derrick Simmons had two for loss and a sack, which after last week is a real thing.
It is, and I'm not going to do the big comeback story with it, because Mansour specifically declined to do the big comeback story with it yesterday and I thought that was the right call. He said the kid's been fine both weeks and he put him in a bad spot in Week One. That's all it needs.
Alright. Charles Brantley. And I want to do this properly because a lot of what's happening online is not proper.
It's disgusting. Some of it is actually disgusting.
Some of it is. So here's the football, and it's three plays. One, the forty-four-yard touchdown to Devereaux in the second quarter. He's in man coverage with nobody behind him, he loses the receiver on an inside move, and the guy is standing by himself when the ball arrives. Walks in. Two, a missed tackle on Bennett in the flat that turns about a five-yard catch into twenty-five. Three, a twenty-two-yard completion on third and nine in the fourth quarter that keeps a drive alive, and they kick a field goal off it.
And last week.
And last week Grambling completed two passes the whole afternoon and both of them were on him. So it's two weeks. That's real and I'm not going to soften it.
Okay, and now I'm going to say the other half of it and I'm not apologizing for it. On the forty-four he is out there by himself. There is nobody in the middle of that field. And we know that because Mansour said so, Saturday night, in a wet shirt, twenty minutes after the football game, and then said it again yesterday with more detail than anybody asked for. He moved his safety out of the middle of the field to go deal with Bennett, because Bennett was killing him, and then a guy ran forty-four yards down the sideline. That's a decision a grown man made in a headset. And the twenty-year-old is the one getting it in the group chats. And I want to say the part that's going to get me mail. He is twenty. He's a kid in a class somewhere on that campus today, and he has to walk to it, and there are people in this state typing things about him that they would never say to another human being's face. I've seen the replies. It's a lot of grown men. And the same guys were doing it to Noah Kim in twenty twenty-three and half of them stood up last Saturday and clapped for him.
Both of those are true at the same time. I don't think either one erases the other one.
It should erase some of it.
Some. Not the missed tackle. Nobody called that.
No. Nobody called the missed tackle.
Here's where you and I actually come apart on this, and it's not about the kid. Kessler asked him straight out yesterday. He said, everybody in this room has watched the same tape, the read isn't ambiguous, and you're the only person in here who won't say a word about it. Is that a policy or is it this player. And Mansour said it's a policy, he doesn't grade players out loud, and then he told the writers to go do the tape read and do it well.
Which is the best answer anybody's given at that podium in ten years.
Maybe. It's also the third time in two weeks.
So?
So it's a habit now, and I don't know what a habit is yet. He takes a hundred percent of the blame, he gives away a hundred percent of the credit, and he's been doing it since December. I have watched a lot of people do a beautiful thing for two months.
You think he's building himself cover.
I think I don't know. I think if he's still doing it in November, when it's a guy who actually cost him a game he needed, then that's a real thing about a person and I'll say so on here. Right now it's two months and two wins over teams we were supposed to beat.
That's the most miserable sentence you've said all show.
It's Tuesday.
He's still the kick returner. Three returns, fifty-eight yards. Not benched, not moved, and he's playing corner in South Bend.
Which tells you something.
Tells me the coach believes in him.
Or tells you the next guy is a freshman.
Or that.
KK Smith. Seven catches, a hundred thirty-six, two touchdowns, long of forty-four, no drops. Through two games, fourteen catches, two hundred forty-one yards.
In August I could not have picked that man out of a lineup.
You said that last week.
It keeps being true, that's why I keep saying it.
Their corner is a kid named Caleb Dobbs and he had an afternoon he's going to remember. And I want to be fair to him, because the first touchdown is a back-shoulder throw in the end zone that is actually covered. Dobbs plays it about as well as it can be played and it goes in anyway.
And the third and one.
Third and one and they throw it forty-four yards, which the internet called a gamble and Mansour said flat out is not a gamble. Third and one against a defense that just walked eight guys up on the line. I think he's right about that.
You think.
I think. I'm not a football coach, I'm a guy with a microphone and a list on his phone.
The list again.
One more thing before Notre Dame. Zero penalties on Saturday. Zero. And one in two entire football games.
That is not normal.
It is not normal, and the reason I keep bringing it up is that he explained where it comes from yesterday and the explanation is unbelievably boring and I enjoyed it enormously. There is a person on that sideline whose entire job, every snap of every game, is to count the defense out loud. Just counts to eleven. Out loud. Every snap.
That's a job.
That's a job.
I want that job.
You'd lose count.
I'd lose count immediately.
Saturday. Michigan State at Notre Dame, three thirty. Shane, go, because you've been sitting on this since Sunday morning and it's making you strange.
We're going to win. I'm saying it out loud on the show. I've been thinking about it since Sunday and I'm not doing the careful voice this week. They lost forty-two to six to Miami. Then they lost thirty-eight to ten at home to Wisconsin, at home, to a Wisconsin team that nobody in America thinks is any good. They were third in the country in August. Third. And now they're getting a handful of votes and that's it. And then they went and beat Rice fifty-two to ten and half the country decided they're fixed.
It's Rice.
It's Rice, Will.
I agree with you about Rice. I said the same thing Sunday.
So say the rest of it.
I'm not picking.
You have to pick.
I don't have to pick.
It's a show. Picking is the show.
Alright. Here's what I have, in order, and then you can be mad at me. One. Everything that was true about that roster in August is still true. Not one player has transferred out of that place in three weeks. The guys who had them third in the country are the same guys. That's not me being clever, that's the point Mansour made yesterday and it's the correct point. Two. Their front. We just gave up four sacks to one defensive tackle from the MAC, all four of them, and our guards spent a half getting beat by that one guy. Notre Dame has three of him and one of them's a junior. Three. The stadium. Our head coach has never been in it. He volunteered that yesterday, nobody made him say it. Never set foot in the place, and neither have most of the guys on that plane.
None of that is a prediction.
No. It isn't.
That's my whole problem with you. You hand me four true things and then you go home.
Because I don't know, Shane. I've watched both Notre Dames now, I watched the Wisconsin game twice, and I could not tell you which one is the actual team. Neither could you. Neither could the head coach, and they asked him yesterday and he said he didn't know.
He's supposed to say that.
He's not supposed to say anything. He could have said whatever he wanted. He said those two look identical in September and they look identical for about six weeks.
Okay. Here's my thing, and I want to get it out. Everybody in this state is doing the careful voice this week. Everybody. The writers, the coaches, you. And I have been doing the careful voice for eleven years, and I'm tired of it, and the one time it looks like something good might be sitting there, I'm not going to be the guy on the radio saying well, they've got better players. They do have better players! They've had better players every year I've been alive and it never once stopped them from losing to us, and it hasn't helped them at all this year. And I'll tell you what I'm actually doing this week, since we're being honest on the radio. I've got the game on at my sister's. My daughter's coming. I bought a thing of the good dip. I'm going to sit there and I am going to enjoy the entire afternoon regardless of what happens in it, because I have spent about eleven years watching these games with my jaw clenched and it did not help one single time. Not once. It never made a tackle.
That's a feeling.
It's a feeling. I told you it was a feeling.
You said we're going to win.
That is the feeling.
Alright.
Don't do the alright.
I'm going to say one thing and then we're doing mail. The version of Saturday that scares me isn't Notre Dame being good. It's the first half of the Eastern Michigan game happening in that stadium. Bennett ran through us for a half, and Notre Dame's backs are better than Bennett, and their line is a lot better than Eastern's line. If that half happens at three thirty on Saturday, it doesn't stop at halftime, because they're not going to hand it back to you.
So you have picked.
I have not picked.
You picked, you just did it in a sad voice.
I described a thing that could happen on a football field.
Coward.
I'll give you one honest thing. If they win that game I'm going to be unbearable on this show for a month.
There it is. That's all I wanted.
Mail, and we're going quick. Andrea in Rockford, who is here every single week. She wants to know if we're worried about Cam Edwards carrying it twenty-two times.
No.
That's the whole answer?
He's a grown man and it's September.
Mansour said they'd be sensible with him Wednesday and then immediately asked everybody not to turn that into an injury story, so, consider it not turned. Devon in Southfield. Who do you trust more right now, the offense or the defense.
Offense. It isn't close and I don't want to talk about it.
Offense, and I'd say it's closer than people think, because that second half was the best half of defense they've played, and it's also the only half of defense they've played against a team that can actually move the ball. Eastern had three hundred and sixteen yards.
Against our first half.
Mostly against our first half, yeah.
Then it's not close.
Last one. This is from a guy named Pat who did not tell us where he lives. He wants to know what we'd need to see Saturday for it to be a good day even if they lose.
I'm not answering that.
Why not?
Because I'm not planning the loss. I did that for six straight years. I'm not doing it this week.
I'll answer it. Two things. One, they don't get moved off the ball up front, because that's the thing that would tell us something about October and November. Two, whatever happens, it doesn't look like the first hour of Saturday.
That's a careful answer.
It is. Locked On Spartans, we're back Thursday, Friday's the walk-up, and Saturday we're on early because of the travel.
How early.
Eight.
Eight in the morning.
Eight in the morning. Go Green.
Go Green. And it's from the game.
