Two years ago they had a decent offense that we totally shut down (187 total yards). Their only three points came after an INT where they had a 7 play, 17 yard "drive" and kicked a FG. They held our offense in check pretty well be we kept feeding Burkhead enough to get a fairly easy win.
Last year they had a totally one-dimensional offense but we still couldn't stop Bell running the ball (188 yds). Fortunately for us, Martinez totally took over the game. He ran for 205 yards - against a defense giving up fewer than 100 yards total per game - and eeked out a victory.
This year they really don't have much offense of any kind. They are 100th in the country in passing. They are 86th in the country in total offense. They are 60th in the country in scoring but if you take away their defensive scores they'd probably be closer to 100th. I didn't think they'd score a lot against our defense even when we weren't playing very well and if we keep playing like we have the last seven quarters, they won't have much success.
The problem is our own offense is suddenly in neutral. We haven't been doing the little things to keep drives alive. And, while we have a couple guys with big-play potential, we don't have anyone who's stepped up and made an explosive play with any regularly (excepting the Hail Mary, but that's in a somewhat different category). This is the biggest place where we miss Martinez - someone who can go the distance any time they touch it and can instantly ignite an offense. We also haven't been very good at putting long drives together - the only time against Michigan that we crossed our own 40 yard line and scored was the game-winner. We had three such drives against Northwestern but the third one took everything we had.
And we've been terrible at protecting the ball. We've turned the ball over 11 times in the last four games. Michigan St. feasts on that. The are T-14 in the country in fewest turnovers. We are T-81. They play ball control offense, field position and wait for you to make a mistake. Their defense is likely to return the turnover for a TD and even if they don't their offense can get some cheap points.
If we can avoid giving them easy scores, we'll have a good chance. But with what I've seen from our offense the last three games, I'm not really sure how we're going to score on them. Their defense might have been helped by playing some bad offenses but we're in that boat too at the moment. And they've done it for several years in a row now so it's not a fluke. I haven't seen an Over/Under line on this game yet but even if it's 20 points, I'd probably take the under.
