| When the division reshuffling was discussed, the Michigan State athletic department stressed their desire to maintain playing Northwestern to appease the strong Chicago alumni base. They may want to reconsider that. Over the past three seasons the Spartans are 0-3 against the Wildcats. Not only that but Northwestern, whose offense has been nothing special, has had the #1, #2, and #1 most points scored in a game against the Michigan State defense in each of those years (54, 39, 29). They've done it by getting the ball out quickly and accurately, and negating the Spartan pass rush. Michigan State substantially outgained Northwestern in each of the previous two, but Clayton Thorson sliced them up, with his second highest yardage total in each season, coming against Michigan State, but while completely abandoning the run game, having a COMBINED 72 rushing yards on 48 attempts (1.5 ypc). The problem for Northwestern is that Clayton Thorson is gone, and Hunter Johnson has been bad. His Total QBR of 15.0 is second worst among the 130 qualified FBS quarterbacks. His lousy performance against Stanford looks even worse after seeing how bad Stanford's defense is, and even against UNLV last week, he failed to complete 50% of his passes. So the typical Northwestern game plan may have to be thrown out the window, if it's based on quarterback accuracy. The one positive is that they may have found another running back, which failed to emerge after Isaiah Bowser's injury during the Stanford game. Drake Anderson, son of Damien Anderson, Northwestern star running back of the Gary Walker era, had 26 carries for 141 yards against UNLV. Prior to that, the redshirt freshman had only appeared in 3 games, with a total of 14 carries. Oddly he was Northwestern's leading rusher last year against Michigan State...with 12 yards on 5 carries. Bowser is listed as the starter this week, with Anderson passing Jesse Brown for #2, but Bowser was also expected to play last week. My guess is Bowser could have played last week, if it wasn't UNLV, and will go this week. Anderson's emergence means he can have a slightly reduced workload, and the Cats have a solid 1-2 punch. But if you are planning on beating MSU with the run game, that seems like a doomed strategy, unless you have Ohio State, Michigan or Wisconsin type talent. Unless Johnson is able to get get that completion percentage up 10%+, and maybe more, the recipe Thorson used to beat MSU, won't work. |