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EAST LANSING – Jonathan Smith gave his Michigan State players most of its bye week away from football, save for one practice.
The reason?
“If you’ve gone through a rough stretch, to be able to take a deep breath, get a little bit of recovery,” the first-year coach said Monday. “That can be a pro for a bye week. … I do think for us, where we’re at currently, at this time of year, it came at a good time.”
The Spartans hit the season’s midpoint having won their first three games under Smith before entering their ongoing three-game losing streak. MSU (3-3, 1-2 Big Ten) returns from the week off Saturday when it hosts Iowa (4-2, 2-1), hoping to fix some of the issues that proved problematic in losses to Boston College, No. 5 Ohio State and No. 2 Oregon.
Michigan State’s head coach Jonathan Smith looks on during the fourth quarter in the game against Ohio State on Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024, at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing.
While he gave the Spartans a chance to rest, Smith said he and his staff didn’t. They took a holistic approach to the first half of their first season to evaluate film from the first three games and plan for this middle portion of the schedule. After facing the Hawkeyes, MSU travels to No. 22 Michigan on Oct. 26 then hosts No. 18 Indiana on Nov. 2 before a second bye week heading into the final three games of the season.
“We played six games and took a thorough look at, really, every play of those six games and analyzed a bunch of different ways, looking for some tendencies, where we gotta improve on, some things we’ve done well that we got to be able to build off of,” Smith said. “I thought the coaching staff and players did a nice job of kind of doing that.”
One of the biggest areas of focus remains on resuscitating a dormant run game, particularly with Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz’s…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/jonathan-smith-michigan-state-footballs-100923325.html
Author : Detroit Free Press
Publish date : 2024-10-15 10:09:23
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