way<\/em> off in my three for the Ohio State game and I truly just need a good bounce-back.<\/p>\nLet’s start by saying this matchup against Oregon is not ideal. The Spartans have a turnover problem and Oregon’s defense scares me a bit, especially in that back-end. Moreover, the offense put up just seven points on Ohio State so what makes us think that it’ll hang with Oregon’s trio of Dillon Gabriel, Tez Johnson, and Jordan James?<\/p>\n
This one’s going to be tough.<\/p>\n
So without further ado, let’s try to get back on track (with predictions and on-field play) on Friday night.<\/p>\n
1. Nate Carter and Kay’Ron Lynch-Adams rush for over 150 yards<\/h3>\n
This isn’t the craziest prediction but it might seem like that to the average fan. How the heck can a run game that has generated next to no results against defenses with a pulse rush for over 150 yards? Well, Oregon has struggled a bit against the run this year, ranking 55th in the country (yes, a lot of the yards surrendered came from Heisman favorite Ashton Jeanty). I think this front-seven is solid, but it can be gashed every now and then and we will see Jonathan Smith run to open up the pass.<\/p>\n
And it will work early on.<\/p>\n
We’ll see Nate Carter break off a 30-yard run and Kay’Ron Lynch-Adams will have some solid, hard-nosed rushes. The Spartans will finish with over 150 yards on the ground and really make a statement. I think we’ll also see Chiles run more.<\/p>\n
2. Nick Marsh has bounce-back game<\/h3>\n
Nick Marsh has been relatively silent since his massive eight-catch, 194-yard game against Maryland in Week 2. But that will all change on Friday night in Eugene. He has just four total catches for 57 yards since Week 2 but he’s going to nearly double that on Friday with seven catches for 87 yards and a touchdown even though he’ll draw some tough matchups against Oregon’s secondary. He may see a lot of Jabbar Muhammad, but that could also be Montorie Foster Jr.’s problem. When Muhammad switches off, I think Marsh will go off.<\/p>\n
This is the connection that Chiles and Michigan State football need.<\/p>\n
3. Third-quarter turnover leads to unraveling<\/h3>\n
I see Michigan State keeping things close for a half and then entering the second half with some momentum and a 17-10 deficit, but a turnover early in the third quarter will lead to an unraveling much like the Ohio State game.<\/p>\n
The Spartans will have a chance to make things scarily close with the Ducks but the turnover bug will bite again and it’ll lead to three straight Oregon scores to make it 38-10 before Michigan State scores in garbage time to make it 38-17.<\/p>\n
It’ll feel closer than the score indicates, but there are no moral victories here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Time to get back on track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19434,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[59,191,189,535,504],"class_list":["post-19433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-featured","tag-michigan-state-football","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-nate-carter","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}