Michigan State football position group breakdown: Defensive line

What we know and don’t know about Michigan State’s defensive front heading into the 2020 season.

The point of this series of blog posts is pretty straight forward; to examine what we do and don’t know about each position group on the Michigan State football team.

It may seem hard to believe, but the college football season is–currently–scheduled to kick off in less than three months. Time flies when you’re stuck inside. Whether or not Michigan State and the rest of the country play football this fall, or what that football looks like, is a conversation for another day. Today I want to start taking a deeper look at each position group on the team, broken down by what we know and what we don’t know. These will continue throughout the next couple of weeks until all of the positions are covered. Today: The defensive line.

What we know

MSU lost a ton of production and experience on its front four. Raequan Williams, Mike Panasiuk, and Kenny Willekes had been mainstays on the defensive line for the Spartans over the last three seasons. All three are gone and that obviously leaves a gaping hole up front. It’s fair to assume the Spartans run defense will take a step back in 2020. It’d be unfair to assume it wouldn’t. Replacing one player of the caliber of those three is hard enough. Replacing three will be incredibly difficult.

Naquan Jones, Jacob Slade, and Jacub Panasiuk are going to be starters. Jones and Slade were the second unit behind Mike Panasiuk and Raequan Williams. Jones has proven to be an effective reserve throughout the past three seasons. Slade did well in his first year as a primary backup in 2019. Both interior players have shown Big Ten starter ability, but this will be the first time they are tasked with being the top guys. Panasiuk returns as the lone starter on the front. He is one of the highest-graded returning defensive ends from a pass rush standpoint according to Pro Football Focus, so that’s a plus. If the MSU defense is going to be good, Panasiuk has to take another step and become an all-conference caliber player.

There are exciting young players on the front. Michigan State has always done well to have depth at defensive tackle and that’s not changing. Deshaun Mallory and Jalen Hunt are most likely to be the primary reserves on the interior. Mallory did well in limited time last season and Hunt was a sought-after recruit that MSU got aboard late in the recruiting process in 2019. He redshirted but good things have been said about him. On the outside MSU has struggled at times to establish quality opposite of the star pass rusher. Willekes never truly had a great running mate on the edge with the exception of Panasiuk’s emergence in 2019. Drew Beesly had some nice flashes in 2019 and Jack Camper is a name we keep hearing good things about. Perhaps the most promising name to remember is Mike Fletcher. Fletcher played sparingly as a true freshman, but was a fringe four-star recruit in 2019. Ron Burton has said he expects big things from him starting this season.

Ron Burton is still around and that is a good thing. Burton is considered one of the top defensive line coaches in the country and is back to coaching the entire unit after coaching just the tackles towards the end of Mark Dantonio’s time. After Dantonio stepped down it was reported that Burton was leaving to coach at Indiana, which would have been a huge loss for MSU. Fortunately Mel Tucker was able to meet with Burton and convince him to stay in East Lansing. Losing Burton in addition to replacing all of that experience might have been too much to overcome.

What we don’t know

Who is going to play the other defensive end. Right now it’s probably between Fletcher, Camper, and Beesly to earn the second starting defensive end spot. I’d lean Beesly at this point, but the staff might go with the upside of the younger Fletcher. Any way you shake it, the second defensive end spot is again a question mark for MSU.

How does the depth sort out? There are a handful of good depth options that I mentioned above, but there will be a bunch of young players in this group. MSU has five defensive linemen in their 2020 recruiting class and Zach Slade didn’t play during his redshirt freshman season due to a torn ACL. Maverick Hansen is another redshirt freshman on the front to go with Hunt. So that’s eight defensive linemen with no college football experience. I feel good about the top five or six guys on the front, but behind that it gets young very fast.

How does the new defense impact the rotation? Under Dantonio the roles of the defensive front were pretty straightforward. That’s going to change will Mel Tucker’s hybrid 3-4 scheme. As it stands MSU only has one person–Jones–who is suited to play a traditional nose tackle in the 3-4. However with the spread of the spread offense, the base 3-4 that Tucker will play will often get deployed as a 4-2-5 defense. With that comes the need for positional flexibility, hence the “hybrid” nomenclature. In this defense there will need to be multiple players that can play multiple positions depending on what the offense does. Tackles will need to be able to kick out to the edge. Safeties will have to be able to play linebacker. There will probably be a handful of players that are either switching positions or swinging between multiple spots and that will level the playing field in terms of experience. Three years in Dantonio’s system isn’t going to be as beneficial as it would have been had he returned. That could open the door for younger players to step in. Also, does the new staff immediately jump all the way in to Tucker’s new scheme or do they maintain some of Dantonio’s? Three of the defensive staff members–Burton, Mike Tressel, and Harlon Barnett–are from the Dantonio era. There are concepts that are going to be similar regardless, but does Tucker ease into his stuff given the lack of practice time with COVID and the fact that he has a roster of defensive linemen recruited for a very specific job? That will be something to watch as the season grows nearer.

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MSU DE Jacub Panasiuk second highest-graded returning pass-rusher per PFF

Michigan State football DE Jacub Panasiuk received the second-highest pass-rushing grade among returning edge defenders, per PFF.

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Michigan State football saw the departure of multiple key defensive players to the NFL including Joe Bachie, Raequan Williams, Kenny Willekes, and Mike Panasiuk. Luckily, one returning defensive player is receiving high praise. According to Pro Football Focus College’s grades, returning DE Jacub Panasiuk boasts the second-best pass-rushing grade among returning edge defenders. He is only second to Duke DE Chris Rumph.

In the 2019 season, Panasiuk racked up 18 solo tackles, five sacks, and three forced fumbles. According to PFF, Panasiuk will produce plenty on defense for the Spartans next year. This is a necessity due to the aforementioned departures on the defensive side of the ball.

Panasiuk took to Twitter and boy he was hype. Check out his response below:

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2021 NFL Draft early preview: Which MSU Football players could be drafted next?

With the 2020 NFL Draft in the books, we take a look at who might be the next Spartans drafted in the 2021 NFL Draft.

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While the Michigan State Football program only had two players selected in the 2020 NFL draft, that was enough to extend the school’s NFL Draft streak to 80 years. With two players leaving school early for the pros in 2020 (Josiah Scott, Cody White), MSU is a little short of NFL Draft talent for the 2021 Draft.

That being said, there are eight Spartans who I feel are in the position to at least earn their way into the draft conversation, with at least one of those players being a lock in my eyes.

Click through the slideshow to see our thoughts on the eight MSU players who are in the best position to work towards a selection on draft day next year.

Michigan players comment on ‘dirty’ Panasiuk brothers at MSU

Wolverines players react to the late hit by Jacub Panasiuk and why they feel both MSU brothers are ‘dirty.’

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — With it being a bitter, in-state rivalry game, you knew that Michigan vs. MSU would be a chippy affair, despite the disparity in records.

The Wolverines and Spartans were two teams heading in different directions, with MSU coming to Ann Arbor with just 4 wins to 5 losses, while Michigan was in search of its 8th win of the year.

The game was called closely by the officials, but even then, some bridges were crossed.

Take the play of Michigan State defensive end Jacub Panasiuk, who got himself ejected after two personal foul/unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, the final one being a very late hit on Michigan QB Shea Patterson, well after he released the ball.

Naturally, the Michigan players didn’t take too kindly to the hit, but, as senior left tackle Jon Runyan Jr. says, it was par for the course from either of the Panasiuk brothers who play for the Spartans.

“I didn’t see it at the time — I always knew No. 96 was a kind of dirty player, him and his brother,” Runyan said. “I really don’t care too much for them. I made clear of that. You can go back and watch the film — I have a play where I cleaned up 96, took him 20 yards up the field. Not really a big fan of him.

“I don’t really wanna talk trash about him, but I don’t like that guy. I don’t like how he plays the game of football. That was disgusting what he did. Completely unnecessary. You could tell he was frustrated, because he couldn’t do anything against me or Jalen (Mayfield) all game. He had to come up with a different way to affect the game and ended up taking himself out.”

“I kinda wanted to fight him,” Michigan tight end Sean McKeon answered when asked about the late hit by Jacub Panasiuk. “But obviously can’t! A lot of refs right there. Try not to make the situation worse. They did the right thing by getting him out of the game.”

The MSU players, according to the Michigan players, did their share of trash talk, extracurricular activities, and the like to try to get into the Wolverines’ heads.

After the game, senior safety Josh Metellus praised his team for playing clean and between the whistles, noting that the Wolverines try to play football the right way — “They try to take it to a level that isn’t playing football. We play football over here – I don’t know what they do over there, but we play football, and it showed today.”

As for the Michigan side, at least as Runyan can attest for himself, he wasn’t about to start engaging with MSU at the same level.

For him, he wanted to let his play do the talking.

“I really don’t like talking trash,” Runyan said. “Sometimes my emotions can get the best of me at the end of a game. I kinda let my game do the talking. No. 48 over there (Kenny Willekes) — he’s a good pass rusher. He actually talks a lot of trash — not as much this year, he did last year. Again, couldn’t really do much against me and Jalen. That’s a credit to our preparation and the kind of game plan we had going in there.”

And with a 44-10 victory, the Wolverines certainly did let their play make the ultimate statement.

Up next, Michigan travels to Bloomington to take on an insurgent Indiana squad that’s currently 7-3 on the season. Kickoff is slated for 3:30PM EST.

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