EAST LANSING – Minutes after Michigan State wrapped up its weekly “Toughness Tuesday” workout, Nate Carter walked into the Tom Izzo Football Building.
Still wearing his leg pads and practice pants, white tape remaining wrapped around both his wrists, Carter sure looked the part as the Spartans await their most demanding challenge of Jonathan Smith’s nascent tenure against Boston College’s physical defense.
“We’re getting ready to have a four-quarter fight,” the junior running back said, sweat still on his brow after the practice in the unseasonable mid-September midday heat.
The Spartans take their 3-0 record on the road to face the surprising and surging Eagles on Saturday. Kickoff is 8 p.m. at Alumni Stadium in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts (ACC Network). Boston College (2-1) shocked Florida State on the road to open their season, 28-13, on Sept. 2 and then Saturday went blow for blow at No. 8 Missouri before succumbing, 27-21.
“Their physicality jumps out, the first thing you see. And I think it’s gonna be fun,” center Tanner Miller said Tuesday of facing the Eagles’ stingy defense. “I think it’s gonna be a good test for us. I think they’re obviously a really good team. So if we think we’re the team that we think we are, then we got to go out there and prove it. And testing yourself against the best is what you want to do in those situations.”
Getting tougher in the run game has been a challenge early this season for MSU and an ongoing preaching point for Smith and his offensive coaching staff. Even though his team averages 162.7 yards rushing so far after posting a program-low 89.5 per game last season.
Carter and backfield mate Kay’Ron Lynch-Adams each have touchdown runs of 60-plus yards, and the Spartans have produced 16 carries of 10-or-more yards through three games. That is a big positive for a program that has had issues in the run game all the way back to the tail end of Mark Dantonio’s tenure, save for Kenneth Walker III’s magical 2021 Doak Walker Award-winning season.
However, those big plays in the run game – three last week against lower-division Prairie View A&M and six apiece against Florida Atlantic and Maryland – have accounted for 303 of MSU’s 488 yards on the ground so far this season. The other 86 rushing attempts have generated just 2.15 yards per carry, an ongoing issue that Smith has been imploring his offensive linemen, tight ends and running backs to produce more 4- to 6-yard runs.
“At our position, just in the game of football, that’s just how it is. Not every play is gonna be a touchdown play,” said Carter, who has combined with Lynch-Adams for 408 yards on 72 attempts. “Sometimes when you’re playing really, really good teams or really, really big guys on the defensive line, you’re gonna have to grind out those 2-, 3-, 4-yard plays. And that just how the game may be going. …
“We have to take every play as just a new play and kind of just take from there. Take advantage of the opportunities that we get – sometimes the opportunity is maybe 2, 3 yards; sometimes the opportunity is maybe 50 or 60 yards.”
It becomes even important to figure out now – especially after losing the top two right guards (Kristian Phillips and Gavin Broscious) to season-ending injuries – with the schedule and opponents increasing in difficulty over the next month and a half.
INJURY WOES: Michigan State football injuries: Offensive starter Gavin Broscious likely out for season
The Spartans resume Big Ten action with a five-game gauntlet of No. 3 Ohio State, No. 6 Oregon, Iowa, No. 17 Michigan and Indiana in succession. But first, they finish nonconference play against a Boston College defense that ranks 27th in the Football Bowl Subdivision in allowing opponents just 85.7 rushing yards. Missouri posted 176 yards on 43 carries Saturday against the Eagles, who held the Seminoles to just 21 rushing yards on 16 attempts in the opener and gave up 60 yards to Duquesne. BC’s opponents have just 16 rushing first downs and one TD on the ground this season.
“We just keep preaching to the guys that what we put on tape will get exposed, whether it’s the next week or three or four weeks down the road. And that for sure is going to be true this week,” Smith said Monday. “A big-time coaching staff where we’re headed, to a place that I’m sure it’s going to be full with some energy and things.”
Bill O’Brien, in his first year at Boston College in his return to a college head coaching position, put out a call Tuesday that “hopefully we get 9,000 students at this game” after he said BC had about 6,000 at its home-opening 56-0 blowout win over Duquesne of the Football Championship Subdivision between the FSU win and Mizzou loss.
O’Brien did not face MSU in his two seasons at Penn State in 2012 and 2013 before leaving for the NFL’s Houston Texans. But a lot of what he complimented Smith’s first team for being very well could have been said back then about Dantonio’s teams.
“They’re good. They’re tough – very, very tough, a physically tough football team,” O’Brien told reporters Tuesday outside of Boston. “Coached very well. They run the football on offense, they can throw the ball down the field. The quarterback’s really a good player. Defensively, very, very physical and tough.
“A big-time challenge. … It’s gonna be a physical ballgame, no question about it. And we’ve gotta be ready for that, because they are a very physical Big Ten team.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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Next up: Eagles
Matchup: Michigan State (3-0) at Boston College (2-1).
Kickoff: 8 p.m. Saturday; Alumni Stadium, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
TV/radio: ACC Network; WJR-AM (760).
Line: Eagles by 61/2.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football expects a ‘4-quarter fight’ at Boston College
