Originally Posted by
Prediction? Pain.
Good point. In all this back and forth, people seem to forget that in 2021, the offense worked pretty well. In conference games, we were 4th in total offense and 5th in scoring offense. We've surpassed the total offense rank twice since 2009 and the scoring offense rank once. Likewise, even with his limitations, Will's passer rating rank against SEC teams in 2021 (5th in the SEC) was better than anyone since 2009 other than Dak in '14 and '15. And his passer rating rank in '21 vs. Top 25 teams (4th in the SEC) was actually better than anyone in Mullen's entire tenure. Even's Will's yards-per-attempt, which gets him lambasted regularly, were by MSU standards solid that year -- 9th vs. SEC teams, 7th vs. Top 25 teams, both of which are as good or better than any QB Mullen ever fielded save Dak in 2014 and 2015. (The closest previous year was '12, when as a team our yards-per-attempt ranks wwere 7th vs. SEC teams and 8th vs. Top 25 teams.)
The problem is that Will, though proven and demonstrably capable of operating in the offense, regressed last year, especially against good defenses. I'm not going to pretend that I know why. He'd already seen an entire season and a half of SEC teams' "Drop 8" defenses and had fared well against them overall in '21. Losing Polk from '21 probably hurt a lot. And then there was some OL change. Who knows. Bottom line, yeah, the '22 offense took a step back and that's unfortunately the last taste of Leach's offense that we go to see.
This year's offense has been up and down like last year's, and the stats are similar to maybe a little worse depending on the category. To be expected with a big transition, no doubt. I don't know why we were fed this stuff in the offseason about the "best 11" and retaining the air raid passing elements that we knew how to operate. But here we are. I don't know anything about Will's health, and I hope he's ok. I also don't know how well Wright can operate the current offensive system (whatever that is) compared to Will, but I'm fine with him steering the ship if he's capable.
The question I have is how we're going to fare against more competent defenses. We've faced one legit defense so far. The rest have been either bad or very, very bad. I mean, LSU's, S. Carolina's, and Western Michigan are among the worst in the entire country at giving up TDs per drive and yards-per-possession. (I mean like bottom 20% of the entire country. (Arizona's numbers aren't good either, but their schedule has also been worse so far, so who knows where they stack up.)) Auburn, A&M, and Kentucky are all substantially better on D, and even Arkansas and U. Miss. have better raw numbers than LSU and S. Carolina. I hope stuff starts clicking, whether it's with Rogers, Wright, or both. Because outside of USM, the defenses aren't getting any easiser.
A final thoughts to wrap this ramble up: In 2021 and 2022, Leach led the program to back-to-back .500 seasons in the SEC. That's happened three times at MSU since 2000. Once with best QB in program history at the helm, once with the best defense in the nation and the all-time leading QB rusher in SEC history, and once with Will Rogers, the air raid, and (at least in 2022) a pretty salty defense. I know this won't happen, but I feel like maybe we could just be cool with that, let it lie, and see where we go from here. If we improve, awesome. If we continue the hapless suckitude, hopefully the AD will do whatever it is that needs to be done.
P.S. The closest comparisons to our current defense are Sirmon's D in 2016 and Shoop's bizarrely terrible D in 2019. Those units were outliers among otherwise average-to-very-good-to-elite defenses that we've had since Mullen arrived in 2009. Neither Sirmon nor Shoop was back the next year and both replacements (Grantham and Arnett) improved things immediately. So yeah, if this continues, somethings got to give.
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