Pro Football Focus Grades for Michigan State's loss to Penn State
Find out which Spartans earned a passing grade and which ones are in detension
The Michigan State Spartans played a tough game against the Penn State Nittany Lions for 55 minutes, but in the end the talent of the visitors from State College was just a little too much. The Spartans lost 28-10 to fall to 3-7 for the season.
As we have done since the beginning of the season, let's take a quick look at the grades for each player as compiled by Pro Football Focus (PFF) to better understand what went well and what went poorly in in the loss to the Nittany Lions, starting with the offense.
Table 1: Pro Football Focus snap counts and grades for the offense for Michigan State in the Week 12 loss versus Penn State
The Spartan offense took just 49 snaps on Saturday, a season low by over 10 snaps. The entire offensive line took all 49 snaps, along with quarterback Alessio Milivojevic and wide receiver Omari Kelly.
Only two offensive players graded out over 70.0: tight end Michael Masunas (90.2) and running back Elijah Tau-Tolliver (75.4). That said, both Masunas and Tau-Tolliver had poor grades in pass blocking of 54.4 and 0.0, respectively, but on only four total plays.
Running backs Makhi Frazier (69.5) and Brandon Tullis (63.2) were also both in the top five of overall grades on offense, but also on fairly low volume (12 snaps and six snaps, respectively).
At the other skill positions, Milivojevic (58.4), wide receiver Nick Marsh (50.8), and tight end Jack Velling (48.3) are graded out under 60.0, which helps to explain some of the struggles on offense.
On the offensive line, tackle Conner Moore had the best grade of the lineman at 64.8. His run blocking (72.8) was the highest grade on the line, but his pass blocking (47.8) was subpar.
Center Matt Gulbin (63.1) was second overall, but oddly Gulbin had a team-high grade of 80.0 in pass blocking and a solid grade of 62.8 in run blocking.
The remaining three lineman struggled across the board. Guard Caleb Carter had the third-highest grade (56.5). Carter had a relatively poor grade in run blocking (57.6) but an even worse grade in pass blocking (44.8).
The pair of redshirt freshmen on the o-line, Rakeem Johnson (50.0) and Rustin Young (34.7) struggled. Johnson graded out in the 40s for both pass blocking (46.1) and run blocking (47.5). Young got a slightly better job of run blocking (55.7) but shockingly earned a grade of 0.0 in pass blocking.
Now let's turn to the defense:
