Have Eric Lee or Avery Anderson played at all, or are they redshirting? Both of those kids were excellent HS players... if Davie can't handle it, one of them could surely step in to fill the role. This may have been a case of Davie winning the starting position due to experience.
Both redshirting unless something changes.
I don't like what I'm seeing out there. We are playing A LOT of one-on-one coverage. Not that we've been totally beaten - Davie actually had about as good of coverage as you could ask for a couple times - but we're just not giving ourselves any margin for error. Obviously the deep passes get the most attention but we give up all kinds of easy 8-12 yard passes. We have to play off so as not to get beat deep but that makes it easy for the receiver to check up about 10 yards down the filed and be wide open for an easy throw.
I haven't watched the USA game again but our linebackers seem non-existent in pass coverage. I gave them a little pass against BYU as I thought they may have been staying home to spy on Hill but they seem to just be in no-man's land a lot - not creating a pass rush but not really helping in coverage either.
There was an article on ESPN last week where they talked to some opposing coaches who were questioning Michigan State's ability to continue to play Cover 4 without elite corners. I think we have some good talent at CB but probably not elite. After seeing how our concepts are playing out after a couple games, I don't see how this will work without a significant change in scheme.
We're currently #119 in the country in passing yards allowed per game. We're #94 in yards allowed per attempt. Per McKewon, we're #110 in passing plays of 20+ yards allowed. And we haven't played teams that have particularly good athletes at WR.
Perhaps we still have something in the bag of tricks but if we do it would have been nice to use it instead of getting beat by BYU.