Anemic Spartan Football Offense Exposed In Second Half: The Numbers Don't Lie!
East Lansing, MI
By Bob Tripi, Unofficial Spartan Football Historian
Second-half scoring on a downward trend for MSU
To understand why Michigan State does not score a lot of points each game you have to look no further than a troubling trend that started following the 2014 season – the lack of second-half scoring.
In 2014, the Spartans were averaging 17.23 points in the second half of each game, while their opponents averaged 12 yards. Each year since Michigan State’s totals have dropped from 14.86 in 2015 to 11.33 in 2016 to 10.85 in 2017 to 10.84 in 2018 and to 9.43 this season.
Barring a turnaround in the final five games this year, the Spartans are trending toward being outscored by its opponents in the second half of each game for the third time in the last four years.
To put this year’s 9.43 points average into perspective, MSU averages 2.71 points in the third quarter which is ranked 114th out of 130 FBS teams. Overall, it’s second-half production is ranked 99th in the FBS and 13th in the Big Ten, ahead of only Northwestern and Rutgers.
Over the last 10 years, MSU has had 44 losses. In 36 of those games, they have been outscored in the second half of the games by 633-273. That's an average of 17.6 to 7.6.
In the 44 losses mentioned, MSU held the lead in 28 of the games. As a matter of fact, in 22 of the 44 losses, MSU held a lead in the second half, including 15 games in the fourth quarter.
Over the last 10 years, MSU has outscored its opponent in the second half in 69 of its 95 wins. In 16 of those wins, opponents outscored MSU in the second half. There were 10 wins where it was even in the second half. This means that 83.2 percent of MSU's wins came when it was not outscored by opponents in the second half.
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