PFF Grades for Michigan State's Loss at Nebraska

The Michigan State Spartans enjoyed an extra week to rest and prepare for last weekend's road game at Nebraska. It was a wild game, filled with big plays and huge momentum swings. But in the end, the Nebraska Cornhuskers prevailed, 38-27.

While there were some bright spots, there are also several areas of concern. As always, it can be helpful to consult external data to better understand what went well and what went poorly.

As we have done over the past three weeks, let's take a quick look at the grades for each player as compiled by Pro Football Focus (PFF), starting with the offense.

Table 1: Pro Football Focus snap counts and grades for the offense Michigan State in the Week Six loss at Nebraska

Unsurprisingly, very few Spartans received a strong grade on offense.

The highest graded player was backup quarterback Alessio Milivojevic with a grade of 86.5. That makes sense, as Milivojevic led the offense to two touchdowns in only 12 snaps. The final drive was essentially in garbage time with Nebraska playing a prevent defense. Even so, Milivojevic played well when he was given the opportunity.

The next two highest offensive players were center Matt Gulbin (69.3) and backup receiver Evan Boyd (69.2). That said, Boyd only played a total of nine snaps.

On the offensive line, Table 1 shows that both Gulbin and right tackle Conner Moore (57.6) played all 72 snaps on offense. At left tackle, Ashton Lepo (41.9) played 66 snaps while Rustin Young (62.1) played the other six snaps with a notably higher grade.

At the guard position, Michigan State utilized a fairly even rotation of Gavin Broscious (62.0 grade on 50 snaps), Kristian Phillips (61.8 on 58 snaps), and Caleb Carter (52.6 on 36 snaps).

In pass blocking, the PFF grades show that Phillips (82.0), Gulbin (81.7) and Young (78.1) all had strong performances in this phase of the game, as did the Spartan tight ends.