Michigan State football priority on defense: Get to QB more, improve dismal sack totals

EAST LANSING — The atrocious sack numbers are well-documented.

More than six games. Two months and a day. Nearly 386 minutes of action last season passed without Michigan State football’s defense bringing down a quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. Only five of the Spartans’ 15 total sacks came against Big Ten competition – and none against a team with a league record above .500.

“Man, that was just frustrating,” defensive end Quindarius Dunningan said after practice Tuesday, Aug. 5. “In the simplest way.”

Only time – and game experience – will tell how much MSU’s pass rush improved in the offseason. Though the Aug. 29 opener against Western Michigan (7 p.m., FS1) and two more nonconference games are important, the Spartans realize they must put far more pressure on Big Ten quarterbacks to push for a postseason bowl.

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“It’s a huge emphasis,” defensive coordinator Joe Rossi said after Tuesday’s workout. “When you look back on last season, we feel like for the most part on first and second downs, we had some success. We got into some obvious passing situations, and we need to do better. …

“We’re working on it being better.”

Rossi’s defense finished tied for 111th in the Football Bowl Subdivision with 19 sacks – 15 in the first four games and four in the final two, with three of those coming in a win over 1-11 Purdue. It was the second fewest for the Spartans in a full season since Mark Dantonio took over in 2007, trailing only MSU's 11 during the dismal 2016 campaign. (In seven games during the 2020 season, which was shortened by the coronavirus pandemic, MSU had 12 sacks, all against Big Ten teams.)

Last season, the Spartans did not get to an opposing quarterback for a stretch lasting from the third quarter at Boston College in Game 4 to the first drive by Purdue in Game 11. In total, MSU’s defensive drought spanned two months and a day – along with 385 minutes and 55 seconds of game play – between sacks. The Spartans lost five of their six games in that stretch.

It was a major falloff from 2021, when MSU had 43 sacks in going 11-2. It even regressed from the two previous years, as the Spartans registered 29 in both 2022 and 2023. They went 5-7 last season and missed a bowl for the third straight year.

“We felt like that was somewhere we needed to pick it up,” junior defensive end Jalen Thompson, who didn’t have a sack last season after getting two as a true freshman in 2023. “And as a defense, we’ve been holding onto that and focusing on how we can get better.”

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The Spartans added transfers David Santiago (Air Force) and Anelu Lafaele (Wisconsin) in the spring and brought in Isaac Smith (Texas Tech) and Cam Williams (Georgia State) to help generate more rush from the edge. They join a core corps that includes Dunningan, Thompson and no other returnees beyond them with experience at defensive end.

“A big part of our job is getting to the quarterback. And we want to harass the quarterback,” said Dunnigan, who had just one sack among his 17 tackles in his first season as a Spartan after transferring from Middle Tennessee State. “That’s a big focus for our defense this year. It was a focus for our defense last year. And when you can’t make it happen, yeah, it gets frustrating.”

Since 1995, MSU defenses have registered fewer than 20 sacks in a season just seven times (including 2020) – though two of Dantonio’s best units in 2010 and 2012 had just 20 apiece while smothering other areas of opposing offenses, particularly with a dominant defensive backfield that squelched opposing passing attacks.

Rossi and his staff also loaded up on talent in the back end for more depth and competition in the secondary, with hopes that it increases pressure up front. He pointed to three areas of improvement – development of players already on MSU’s roster, through recruiting and with better coaching schematics – that can help the rush and cover coexist and thrive.

The Spartans, Rossi believes, addressed all three areas in the offseason.

“We need to rush better, and we need to cover better,” Rossi said. “The message kind of to the defense has been it’s a combination of the two. The rush helps the coverage (and) the coverage helps the rush.”

Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him @chrissolari.

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Sack-sy stats

Here’s a look at MSU’s year-by-year sack totals since 1995, when Nick Saban took over the program after George Perles’ final team in 1994 dropped opposing QBs only 10 times.

* MSU played just seven games, all against Big Ten opponents.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football addressing 'frustrating' sack deficiency