Michigan Football: Michigan State Numbers to Know

Defense

Defensively, the Spartans surrender just 18.7 points per game on the season, ranked t-19th nationally, including just 17.3 points per game in conference play.

Michigan State struggles to stop the passing attack as they are giving up an average of 285.4 yards per game, good enough for the 121st ranked pass defense in the country.

However, their 31st ranked rush defense is much better as they give up just 121 yards per contest on the ground.

Needless to say, if Michigan football can establish its running game with Blake Corum and Hassan Haskins, the Spartan defense is exploitable, especially in the secondary.

On the whole, Michigan State gives up a total of 406.4 yards per game which sits at 89th in the nation through the first eight weeks.

As we did on offense, next we’ll take a dive into the defensive red zone numbers.

The Spartans give up a red zone score on 21 out of 26 chances or 80.8% of their opponent’s drives that get inside their 20-yard line, a slightly above average number slotting in at t-55th in the country.

As far as conversions on third and fourth downs, the Spartans post slightly above average rankings when defending these situations.

On third down, the Spartans allow conversions 38.9% of the time, although they have faced 131 third downs this season, and only two teams have more than that — more on what this might indicate in a bit.

In a rather large sample size (23 attempts), Michigan State has not been very effective in stopping their opponents on fourth down.

They have allowed 16 conversions on those attempts, a 69.6% conversion rate placing them at 114th nationally.

The Spartan defensive line could be the position group I’ll be paying the most attention to on Saturday.

They generate the 24th most tackles for loss per game (6.3) and sack the quarterback an astounding 3.71 times per game, good enough for 5th(!) nationally.

Hopefully, sophomores Zak Zinter and Trevor Keegan return and play well as they have all season, or else sophomore quarterback Cade McNamara could be under duress for a good portion of the afternoon in East Lansing.

As I stated above, these numbers point to a potentially significant stat that could well tell the story of this game when all is said and done.

That is the number of plays the Spartan defense remains on the field.

Their defense has been on the field for a staggering 584 plays this season — for context, only five FBS teams have had more defensive plays this year.

So what does this mean for Saturday?

My takeaway from looking at these numbers is that MSU will be worn down by the Michigan rushing attack by the middle of the third quarter if they can’t get off the field on third down as they haven’t thus far in 2021.

Because of this trend, I believe the Wolverines will come out on top in a game that should be close through the first half, but as Michigan has time and again this season, will pull away late and win by at least two scores.