#13 Indiana @ Michigan State: Prediction and Preview

Does IU get to 9-0 this week in East Lansing?

HC Curt Cignetti and his bunch gutted out a win last weekend against Washington at home but this week they’ll be on the road again at a mercurial Michigan State team that can look like a 8+ win team in one game and a 4 win team in another…and, after digging into the match up, they can really look like that from play to play.

And, to be honest, that’s kind of how I expected IU to look this season given that both schools had a coaching change (MSU hiring Jonathan Smith from Oregon State), brought in a ton of new players and play in a conference dominated by defense. The difference is that MSU chose to go with uber talented, yet totally raw freshman QB Aidan Chiles and IU settled on QB Kurtis Rourke to ease the transition.

Which MSU team shows up? The won that put a hurting on Iowa at home or the one that couldn’t make the plays when it needed to on the road last week at Michigan?

The biggest lingering question that remains: Does Kurtis Rourke play this week? From everything that’s being said by the coaching staff, reporters and insiders, the outlook is good. But I suspect we won’t know until later in the week and might not even know until the team trots out on the field if Cignetti can keep it under wraps.

We’ll break it all down in this week’s IU Reactionary: Prediction and Preview!

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Below, I’ll do a my prediction for the game and a bit of a preview of what I want to see from IU this Saturday, but first I need to shill for a minute…Please subscribe if you haven’t. This is FREE. Tell a fellow IU football fanatic to subscribe as well. I’m humbled every time I get a new subscriber (we’re at 96 now!). This is just a cathartic release for me. I love this team and love IU.

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IU @ Michigan State / 330ET/230CT / Peacock

IU Reactionary Betting Record: 10-4

IU Reactionary Prediction: IU 35-27

My prediction is based on IU QB Kurtis Rourke playing in this game!

I’m 10-4 betting on IU this year. What a time to be alive. IU also has just one loss against the spread so me being bullish as hell on them from the outset really paid off. I’m just much worse at predicting scores than spreads.

The weather in East Lansing is always unpredictable, but as of this writing the temperature at kick off looks like it will be 56° and partly cloudy with a 7 mph wind…Basically, you couldn’t ask for better weather on November 2nd in the middle of Michigan, and the good conditions should help with scoring.

SP+ gives IU an 85% chance to win this game and projects a score of 32 to 15 in IU’s favor. ESPN FPI gives IU and 82.4% chance to win. I’m going to sound like I’m beating a dead horse for people that have read me this season but can MSU score enough to win this game? MSU has looked really good and really bad from week to week and play to play. IU’s defense is good and MSU is averaging just 21 ppg this year, has more INT’s than TD’s and will need to get good yardage out of the run game against a very good IU DL. I believe they need to get into the 30s to win and, as with Northwestern, I just don’t see that happening.

It boils down to this: Can Aidan Chiles put together four quarters to win? It’s absolutely possible because of the raw talent, but the inconsistency is enough for me to take IU and the points.

For this week, I’m taking IU -7.5 and the OVER.

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Overall:

I’m not ready to put IU in the Oregon and OSU category but MSU mustered just 17 total points in the two games they played against them this month. Combine that with the 17 points they scored at Michigan and they’ve scored just over 11 ppg in three of the last four weeks…That other week, however, was a 32-20 win at home over an Iowa team that seems to have a pulse. MSU averages just 21 ppg and gives up 21 ppg (reminds me of the pure mid meme). I really think that if IU scores in the 30s, they win.

PFF has MSU as the 87th overall offense and they’re 91st in total offense by yardage (365 ypg). The reason they’ve been so inept is simple: MSU’s OL has been awful. PFF has their OL run blocking grade at 91st overall and pass blocking at 133rd (!!). And when Aidan Chiles is under pressure, his PFF grade drops to a horrendous 31, including having a 14.7% turnover worthy play percentage. Advantage IU, right?

The biggest issues with the MSU offense isn’t really moving the ball. They’ve been fine moving out of their own territory for the most part, but they’re just not finishing drives with TD’s once they move into opponent territory (130th in red zone conversion — 70%). They’re not good very good on 3rd down (46th in the nation — 42.57%) or at creating explosive plays (69th in rushing plays of 10+ yards and 49th in passing plays of 10+ yards). Can IU’s defense continue this trend? They did a pretty good job of that, especially in the passing game, against Washington which was a better offense statistically.

I do want to point out that MSU has a real weapon in Jonathan Kim, their kicker. He’s 16-18 FG including going 6/7 with a long off 55 in their win over Iowa. The key, as it was with all the mediocre offenses IU has played is either turning them over inside IU territory or forcing FG’s.

I will be very interested to see how IU OC Mike Shanahan decides to attack this MSU defense. IU basically abandoned the pass last week in the second half (throwing just five times) as they tried to salt the game away but MSU has a much better rush defense than Washington. Can IU’s 18th graded run blocking OL create holes against the 35th graded run defense of MSU?

MSU isn’t a great defense overall and their total ineptitude in pass coverage drags their PFF grade for overall defense down to 108th despite being 23rd overall with just 316 ypg allowed. However that number jumps to 50th and 369 ypg in conference play. They’ve really struggled in pass coverage (126th overall coverage grade) and much of that seems to be because they’re 127th in pass rushing grade even though they’re only giving up 186 ypg through the air. I found this to be wild: per PFF, IU has 158 pressures to go along with their 28 sacks. MSU, in the same amount of games has just 79 pressures and 16 sacks. Will Rourke be healthy enough to exploit a bad secondary and pass rush?

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Offense:

I’m going into this game with the assumption that QB Kurtis Rourke is playing. I think this is a very good match up for him and this IU offense because IU is probably going to have to throw the ball and well to win the game. Is Rourke’s thumb healed enough after two weeks and surgery to play at a level to win a B1G road game? I don’t think he’d be out there if he couldn’t.

IU’s run blocking grade per PFF is 18th in the country (73.6) and their pass blocking grade ranks 11th (83.2). They way offenses have beaten MSU is by keeping their 38th ranked run defense (84.0) honest while forcing their 126th ranked secondary (57.1 — !!) to defend for longer stretches because their abysmal 127th ranked pass rush (60.5 — !!) can’t get home. Show them you’re willing to run and then light them up with the pass. Sounds easy enough, right? I would just like to caution people that this game is on the road and MSU has legit athletes on their defense. Don’t let those ranknigs fool you. While they haven’t graded out well, this is why I always look at the counting stats too…MSU is only giving up 186 ypg through the air and has 8 INT’s. Again, some of that is opponent based but this team probably isn’t going to give up 300 passing yards even if Rourke was fully healthy just because of how they slow the game down when they have the ball.

I do expect a big day from WR Elijah Sarratt after being held in check last week (even though Tayven Jackson over threw him on a wide open TD. I’m also interested to see how MSU defends him as they had issues with other top WR’s like Oregon’s Tez Johnson and OSU’s Emeka Egbuka and Jeremiah Smith. I put IU’s offense in those categories when they’re humming.

I also think this is a game where we see some heavy use of the TE Zach Horton and the RB’s in the screen game. TE’s have feasted on this MSU defense with guys like Maryland’s Dylan Wade, Oregon’s Terrance Ferguson, OSU’s Gee Scott and Michigan’s Colston Loveland all either having either a TD (or two) or 49+ yards. After watching Horton all year, he deserves to be listed in a group with those guys. MSU has also allowed at least 3 catches to every P5 RB group they’ve played so perhaps we see the screen game as an extension of the run game to get the Ninja Turtles out in space.

So, for IU to win, they’re going to need Rourke to play well but also get contributions in the passing game that are more than just the WR’s. They’re going to need to run the ball on a stout run defense. I think they can do all of that.

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Defense:

The key for me in this game will be how IU’s defense handles Aidan Chiles. I was worried about Washington QB Will Rogers last week. He’s an experienced passer who protects the football and has weapons at all the skill positions. IU managed to force him into 2 INT’s, one going to the house. Chiles is the opposite of Rogers. Chiles is a boom or bust guy at this point in his redshirt freshman year. I’ve already said multiple times how good I think he can be but the key word phrase is “can be”. He’s got all the talent to be an NFL QB. I’m also very confident in IU’s ability, especially along the DL with elite pass rusher Mikail Kamara (5th best overall EDGE grade and 9th best pass rushing grade per PFF) and others on the hunt, of making him uncomfortable and hopefully forcing bad throws. And as I mentioned above, when he’s pressured, he’s been down right awful. While he has a more than respectable aDOT (average depth of target) of 10.8, he’s also got 22 turnover worth plays (8.7% of throws — !!). Basically, he’s throwing downfield but he’s also taking chances when he shouldn’t. His receivers haven’t helped him out either as they’ve dropped 10 passes. Add to that that he’s got just 7 TD’s versus 10 INT’s and we’re talking about a guy who is the definition of a gunslinger.

Chiles does have weapons in the passing game. TE Jack Velling, WR’s Montorie Foster and Jack Marsh are all threats to catch a bunch of passes but they have just 4 combined TDs. The question remains: How long will Chiles have in the pocket to try to find them given how good IU’s pass rush is and when does he just pull it down and run?

The thing that gives me a little bit of pause in this match up is that Chiles can run. IU had a tough time with Northwestern’s QB Jack Lausch moving outside of the pocket until the offense got up enough where Lausch, essentially, had to throw to try to stay in the game and IU put the clamps down. Chiles is much more talented overall than Lausch and, having watched some MSU games, Chiles is the much better athlete. He’s ran 52 times for 269 yards, including 4.25 YCO/A (yards after contact per attempt) which is more than .75 yards better than each running back. The difference in that game is that IU played most of it with LB Jailin Walker, an elite athlete who’s big enough and fast enough to run with Chiles. IU’s going to need him to play well and the defense is going to have to tackle on first contact or gang tackle.

Speaking of their running game, even with two quality RBs (Nate Carter and Kay’ron Lynch-Adams) averaging over 50 yards per game and supreme athlete in Chiles, they’re just 85th in rushing yards this season. Neither of them are close to as talented to Washington RB Jonah Coleman, who, outside of an impressive 46 yard run, was held to 18 carriers for 58 yards (3.22 ypc) even while forcing 7 IU missed tackles. Some the MSU struggles are schedule based but MSU has just 36 runs of 10+ yards and 12 of 15+ yards (and that includes Chiles). For perspective, IU has 51 runs of 10+ yards and 19 of 15+ yards and, while IU hasn’t faced the defenses that MSU has, IU also doesn’t have a QB like Chiles adding to those totals. They’re just not an explosive running team.

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I thought this team would be good but I was sure they’d stumble a couple times at some point…Hell, I only picked them to be 7-5! But this is a game that I would consider a trap for almost every team. A road game just before a home game with Michigan and just after an emotional win with Game Day in town. I think this IU team is different and comes out ready to rock and roll…Doesn’t matter what it looks like at this point…Just win, baby! #PackTheRock