FSU football made a good hire with defensive coordinator Harlon Barnett. We look at 3 losses from last year while he was at Michigan State.
FSU football fans have been anticipating who was going to replace Charles Kelly as defensive coordinator for at least two years.
They learned of the news a week ago that Michigan State’s Harlon Barnett would be the guy and learned he had one of the top defenses in the country in 2017.
Michigan State finished with the No. 4 defense according to S&P advanced metrics, allowing 20 points per game and 4.87 ypp.
They were particularly stout against the run, allowing 3.27 ypa and only allowed third down conversions 32.76 percent of the time.
However, there were a few games that rival fans pointed to that would make it seem as though his defenses got shelled by looking at the final score.
Of course, you get much more than surface analysis at Chop Chat so I wanted to delve into those three games to see why so many points were given up.
Notre Dame defeated Michigan State 38-18
Notre Dame finished the 2017 season with the No. 24 offense according to S&P stats. They scored 31 points against Harlon Barnett’s defense, so let’s get into what happened.
One of the first thing I noticed is Michigan State had THREE turnovers on offense with one of them being an interception returned for a touchdown. Another was a fumble on Michigan State’s own 26 yard line that was converted into a touchdown.
The other turnover was a fumble with Michigan State in Notre Dame’s red zone, but Notre Dame did march 80 yards for a touchdown off that turnover.
The Lowdown
Notre Dame had 355 total yards on 60 plays for 5.91 ypp which was below their season average 6.39 ypp.
One thing that stands out is Notre Dame converted 8 of 14 third downs which gives FSU fans instant reminders of Charles Kelly. However, those conversions were for 5, 1, 5, 6, 10, 2, 7 and 8 yards. So just one third and Kelly converted for Notre Dame.
So essentially one could say Michigan State’s defense was responsible for 24 points in this game.
Northwestern defeated Michigan State 39-31 (3 OT’s)
Northwestern finished the 2017 season with the No. 82 offense according to S&P stats. They scored 17 points against Harlon Barnett’s defense in regulation, so let’s get into what happened.
Well, the game went into overtime three times and seeing Northwestern scoring 17 points in regulation should make you feel better as a FSU football fan.
The fact college offenses get the ball basically in the red zone in overtime skews things a lot. You’d hope Michigan State could at least hold them to field goals in those scenario’s but that wasn’t the case.
Very few games go into triple overtime, so I want to simply stick with stats from regulation in this one.
The Lowdown
However, for the entire game Northwestern ran 78 plays for 432 yards which equates to 5.53 ypp. They averaged 5.31 ypp on the season, but when you go back to regulation stats Michigan State held them to 5.17 ypp.
Northwestern converted 7 of 15 third downs on the game, but only one of those conversions was 10 yards or more.
This loss was all on the Michigan State offense who turned the ball over twice and missed two field goals in regulation.
Ohio State defeated Michigan State 48-3
Ohio State finished the 2017 season with the No. 7 offense according to S&P stats. They scored points 48 points against Harlon Barnett’s defense, so let’s get into what happened.
Ohio State finished the game with 524 yards on 65 plays to average 8.06 ypp. That’s quite a bit above their 6.88 ypp average for the season and aided by explosive scoring plays.
Ohio State scored on runs of 47, 82, and a 48 yard pass play. The Michigan State defense did force two turnovers in the game but allowed Ohio State to convert 7 of 12 third downs. However, the majority of those were of the third and very short variety.
Barnett has historically done well against Urban Meyer’s offense, but this game simply was overmatched by Ohio State’s talent.
It didn’t help the Michigan State offense was anemic and turned the ball over three times which was a common theme in their losses last season.
Conclusion
So looking back at these three losses it’s easy to see the Michigan State defense carried this team to 10 wins in 2017. The offense was actually worse than FSU’s offense in 2017, checking in at No. 92 according to S&P stats.
If we were to add the stats up from all three losses it would look like this. Barnett’s defenses would have given up 1,236 yards on 194 plays which equates to 6.37 ypp.
Third down conversions were an issue, but again mostly of the third and short variety. That meant Michigan State wasn’t able to win in the trenches on first and second downs.
I’d blame that on the talent gap between Michigan State and Notre Dame/Ohio State. Not to mention Notre Dame had a good offense and Ohio State was a great offense.
Going Forward
Those talent gaps will vanish at FSU. The ‘Noles will feature the most talented roster in the ACC, yes even more talented than Clemson overall.
FSU has had the more talented team the past three years in fact. The problem is Clemson had a generational QB two of those years and FSU was playing a true freshman in the third year.
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I expect Barnett to make an impact in year one and have FSU football on its way to looking like those defensive machines from prime Mickey Andrews years.