College Football Playoff 2017: Case for the Michigan State Spartans

Case against Michigan State

Two losses. Northwestern is not a bad football team, but they’re not that great either. Their only two conference losses on the year came against No. 10 Wisconsin and No. 4 Penn State. Outside of that they’ve dropped one other game, a road contest against Duke. That’s going to sting a bit when it comes to the Spartans’ resume.

A loss against Notre Dame can be forgiven. It came early in the season and the Irish did check in at No. 3 in the initial College Football Playoff rankings. However, there’s no such thing as a quality loss.

College Football Playoff caliber teams must have something they do incredibly well. For the Spartans they rely on defense, particularly their strength against opposing rushing attacks. While that’s been a strong suit it hasn’t been able to cover the woes of a Michigan State secondary that has been lacking. The Spartans rank 12th in the Big Ten in passing defense in conference play.

But most concerning for the Spartans is their offense which has more Jekyll and Hyde in them than they’d like to admit. When you strip out games against Bowling Green and Western Michigan, the Spartans are averaging just 21.2 points per game against Power 5 teams and Note Dame. That’s not going to get it done against the Penn State and Ohio State, and dropping either of those games will eliminate Michigan State from the College Football Playoff.