Michigan State Won't Survive Alabama Unless They Get a Little Crazy

The question wasn't fraught with much peril—unless you really wanted to view it that way, which Mark Dantonio apparently did. The question, posed to the Michigan State head coach at a press conference in Dallas the other day, was about the differences between his own philosophy and those of the coaches he learned from, including Ohio State's Jim Tressel and most notably Nick Saban, who will coach the Alabama team that Michigan State faces in a College Football Playoff game on New Year's Eve.

"I'll defer on that one question," Dantonio said, citing the fact that it dealt in "abstractions" and that it might take hours to properly parse. I suppose I understand why he did defer; I suppose Dantonio felt that by detailing the ways he's diverged from his mentors, he might somehow inadvertently insult them. This is Dantonio: over the years, he has learned to be publicly boring and play it close to the vest, in the same way Saban has. There is nothing glamorous or thrilling about the way either man's team plays; at the very least, Dantonio would appear to have inherited an overarching dynamic of conservatism from both Tressel and Saban, whom he coached under at Michigan State for five years in the late 1990s.

And yet, on Thursday, when Dantonio coaches in the biggest game of his career, he's going to have to figure out a way to crystallize those differences into physical form. He's going to have to find a way to separate himself from Saban whether he wants to or not, because here's the thing: if you try to replicate Alabama while playing Alabama, it almost never works. Five times since 2010, the Crimson Tide have played against a former member of Saban's staff, including in 2011, when Dantonio and Michigan State lost to Alabama in the Capital One Bowl. The combined score of those games is 311-88; the final score of that Capital One Bowl was 49-7, Alabama.

And so this is Dantonio's conundrum. How does he stay true to the philosophy that got him here, while also tweaking that philosophy to keep the Crimson Tide off balance? Also: Is that even possible? Fundamentally, Michigan State is not really built like a team that beats Alabama.

Here is a list of Alabama's losses over the past four seasons:

2015: Ole Miss
2014: Ole Miss, Ohio State
2013: Auburn, Oklahoma
2012: Texas A&M

What do all those teams have in common? Each one plays some variation of a spread offense, and each relied on a dynamic quarterback who could stretch the limits of the Alabama defense. Johnny Manziel's quarterback rating against the Crimson Tide in 2012 was 167.3 (note: that's pretty good); of the victorious quarterbacks in those six games, only Ohio State's Cardale Jones had a rating under 150. With the exception of Auburn's Nick Marshall, each of the opposing quarterbacks in those games threw the ball at least 30 times. If there's any sort of formula to defeating Alabama, it's one that appears to involve a certain amount of risk-taking, of creating some Saban-flummoxing, odds-defying chaos. The last team to challenge the Crimson Tide physically and win was LSU in 2011, when the Tigers ground out a stultifying 9-6 victory that Alabama avenged in the national championship game. The question is whether any coach who was heeled under Saban's system is willing and able to take those kinds of risks—particularly Dantonio, who has largely succeeded at Michigan State because he prefers to play a low-risk brand of football that showcases his defense.

This is not to say that Dantonio is incapable of taking chances: one of the signature wins of his career at Michigan State came when he faked a field goal to defeat Notre Dame. Dantonio is anything but stupid; I'm sure he recognizes that going toe-to-toe with an Alabama defense that is on the verge of historical greatness might not get him anywhere. But this is a different kind of game for Michigan State. Part of the reason the Spartans' conservatism has worked so well within the confines of the Big Ten is because weather is a constant consideration, particularly late in the season. Now they find themselves playing in a dome.

"The difference about this game, there's no weather factor," said Michigan State offensive coordinator Jim Bollman. "And you can get in some situations where like in the Ohio State game [which Michigan State won 17-14, in the midst of a driving rainstorm]–-that was difficult for both teams to throw the ball because of the weather. Well, you don't have that situation here. But, certainly, with Alabama's defensive line, they're going to affect both aspects of the game, too…. And, again, you put it in perspective of if you're going to sit there and throw it all the time and those guys are going to rush every single time. Putting it another way, you're going to run every single time, they're going to bring more guys in the box. So we have to keep doing things to counteract the other."

The good news for Michigan State is that the Spartans have one of the most capable quarterbacks in the country in Connor Cook. In four consecutive Big Ten games from October through early November, Cook threw for more than 300 yards. The problem is that Cook is largely a pocket passer (he never ran the ball more than 10 times in a single game), and Alabama often finds a way to neutralize or devour pocket passers. Which means the Spartans may have to try something new; they may have to step outside of their comfort zone, and they may have to confront the abstractions that differentiate their coach from the man he once coached under. The only way to beat Alabama is to somehow upend the natural order of things; occasionally, it even takes a miracle. But then, given the fact that the Spartans wouldn't be here if the universe hadn't tilted in their favor in Ann Arbor, Mark Dantonio is no longer a stranger to miracles, either.