I was watching some highlights from the 2015 Big Ten Championship today, and something dawned on me. Maybe the offensive problems go all the way to the top, nothing was ever fixed, and Connor Cook just covered up a lot of issues.
The 2012 MSU team was the 7-6 team that wasted a top 5 S&P+ defense with a garbage offense. 2013 started, and it looked like more of the same. I think MSU had more defensive scores than offensive through 3 games. They insert Cook, and after a shaky first start against Notre Dame, he finds his legs, and the offense starts rolling with that trip to Iowa City (with a couple bumps). Offense continues to be good through 2014 and 2015, until Cook gets knocked out of the Maryland game with an injury...
MSU struggles in that one to score 24, with 7 coming on a defensive score, and 7 prior to Cook's injury. They then pull off the nuts 17-14 win in Columbus without Cook, and largely without offense. Have one good game against Penn State with Cook back, then apparently he reinjured the shoulder in the Championship Game against Iowa. Can't throw the ball mroe than 10-15 yards per some reports. MSU wins, but by scoring 16 points. He tries to play through the injury again in the Cotton Bowl, and they get shut out by Bama. We all know the disaster that was 2016. While 2017 "seemed" to fix some things, really the only difference between 2017 and 2018 for MSU was that MSU won a bunch of low scoring games in 2017 that they lost in 2018. They won 4 games (Iowa, Michigan, Indiana and Maryland) where they score 17 points or less. Really this offense has been a compete mess since 2012 without a HEALTHY Connor Cook.
