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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