I picked up some overtime Friday night into Saturday morning patrolling the Stadium. It had been awhile since I had done overnights at the Stadium: Kinnick Stadium the night before game day remains one of my favorite places to be. It's empty, it's quiet, it's oddly beautiful at 2 AM on a Saturday morning. You marvel at the emptiness of the place, not quite believing that 60-70,000 people are going to show up once it becomes daylight and watch a football game.
I got home at 6 AM, crashed and awoke just in time for kickoff. I remained trapped in that odd state where you're not really asleep but neither are you entirely awake either which lent this game a certain air of ethereal unreality- as if the whole thing was like the season of Dallas which turned out to be a dream. (And given the result, I don't know if I'd be happy or sad to wake up to find Patrick Duffy in my shower. It would certainly be odd, I know that.)
So we lost. It's Michigan State though... of late, these games have been scrappy, hard hitting affairs, trench warfare of the football kind that hearkens back to the glory days of B1G Ten Football- you know, when we actually had ten teams and not twelve. It's been the kind of football that lends itself to World War One metaphors, a game of attrition, inches and feet instead of yards and points. And you know what? I think, secretly, both Ferentz and Dantonio love it. If there was a way for these two teams to have a game with a score of 3-2, I think they'd both ascend to a higher football plane of nirvana and maybe stay there permanently.
The take away of the day: venite ad paginam aperire fabularum libri duo- let us open our playbooks to page 2! While the defense is to be commended for doing solid work all day and yes, the offense did manage to bite them twice to give us a lead at the half, they bottled us up all day. You could sense the trouble in the first quarter: while it would have been silly to expect an offensive eruption early in the game, we had to, had to, had to establish that we could move the ball early and often. We didn't do that. You know how everyone says that Offensive Coordinator Greg Davis had a seventy five page playbook? Today was the day to dig into that hardcore. When you're going up against of the best defenses in the country, running it up the gut just won't do. You have to surprise them, catch them off guard, show them something we- and they- hopefully haven't seen before.
We were woefully one dimensional on offense and Sparty took full advantage.* They shut down the run game and then they proved equally as adept as shutting down our passing game as well. Problem is, the general equation seemed to be that taking some successful shots downfield would loosen them up enough to get us traction on the running game. We couldn't manage that and remained unable to do much of anything on the offensive side of the ball. To be fair, we tried going to hurry-up but Sparty did what Sparty does and started taking more dives than an Italian soccer team so that petered out in a hurry.
So now: a bye-week. Then (gasp) Ohio State. Followed by (shudder) Northwestern. We remain one win away from statistical improvement from last year and two away from Bowl eligibility. I have to think, given what this team has shown on both sides of the ball thus far, that they have the ability to get to the magical two victories we need- and while this wasn't a do or die, must win kind of game, I think people would be a lot more comfortable had we pulled out a win. Statistical improvement would be cold comfort to hang your hats on if it means missing a Bowl game by the skin of our teeth but it'd beat the alternative. I remain convinced we have two victories out there. We just have go get them- though given our upcoming schedule, it could be a long and spooky October.
*No, I don't want to talk about that fake punt. I'm glad I didn't see that.
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