After close game vs. MSU unravels, Chris Creighton sees 'thin' margins, positives in EMU's performance

East Lansing — He’s surely not satisfied with the result, a lopsided loss at the hands of a hosting Big Ten foe, but Eastern Michigan head coach Chris Creighton is far from discouraged after his team fell to Michigan State on Saturday at Spartan Stadium. 

In fact, he might almost prefer it this way. Well, not really — he can do without the losing, that's for certain.

“I've been doing this for a while,” Creighton said. “You know, people — you don't play very well and people come up to you and just say, 'Hey, but you got the dub, 1-0, go get 'em next week.' And that's never made me feel good. You know, when we don't play well and win, right? You're glad that you win, but I'm just telling you, maybe it's the coach in me, I’ve been doing it for a long time, that I do not get satisfaction, you know, from not playing well.”

On Saturday, despite eventually falling 35-7 to Michigan State (2-0), Creighton felt that Eastern Michigan (1-2, 1-0 MAC) did play well in a number of key areas. And as he acknowledged that his team ultimately wore down in the second half as MSU benefitted from some bigger run lanes and a beneficial game script — via an EMU turnover — to score 21 unanswered, Creighton also suggested margins between his team scoring a few more points, or stopping MSU from rolling away with so many, were not massive.

And those relatively slim margins coupled with Creighton’s own impression of his team playing hard and fighting to the finish, even after things got out of hand, made for a head coach with a relatively rosy outlook coming off the heels of a 28-point loss. 

It was not an unsatisfied sitting on the podium after a loss on Saturday.

“And so we did not enough things, but we did a lot of things better today than we had done,” Creighton said about EMU’s path to winning. “And so it'll be 24 hours, you get a pillow and you can punch it a couple of times, but we'll get back together tomorrow, we'll watch the film, and, you know, we'll see whether or not we can fix those problems. But I guarantee you we can. And then we'll move forward from there.”

It really was a tale of two halves for the Eagles. 

After 30 minutes, EMU trailed just 14-7, had out-gained MSU 163-142 and held the ball for six-plus minutes more than the Spartans. 

The defense came up with a number of stops, though did allow the two touchdowns in the first half, one coming on a 24-yard drive for MSU after a bad rep of punt coverage for the Eagles. But the group hemmed in the MSU rushing attack for 60 yards on 17 carries and just one score while forcing the game on to the right arm of MSU quarterback Alessio Milivojevic. 

The defense would later come up with a fumble recovery inside its own 10 yard line as the Eagles grasped for possessions late and trailing by multiple scores. 

“It just showed us, you know — I mean, we're in the game 14-7 at halftime, and it showed we can play,” Marshall said. “Like, we have the guys, we have the scheme, we have the coaches, we have everything we need. And we just got to keep our foot on the pedal.”

And the EMU offense managed to move the ball. Its touchdown drive was particularly promising, with 67 of the 78 yards gained via nine rushes. 

The Eagles running game had been a disappointing aspect through two weeks. Suddenly it was chewing through a Big Ten defense on the road. It ended up stalling out in the second half as the Eagles needed to pass with the game script gone awry — EMU’s rushing net actually went down thanks to sacks, too — but Braydon Bennett carried nine times for 56 yards and Amareon Blue carried eight times for 40 yards. 

Noah Kim, playing against his former team, had some nice moments with his legs, scrambling on a third down to convert a series on the touchdown drive. He’d keep himself for the lone score in the game for EMU. 

“There will be some confidence, you know, that comes from what the guys were able to do on the ground today,” Creighton said.

And as Michigan State started to run the ball downhill with effect in the second half — after finishing the first half with 60 net rushing yards, MSU finished the day with 258 — Creighton suspects his defense was starting to wear down. 

“They had some nice runs and whatnot, but it was not just, you know, the pile moving forward, right?” Creighton said of EMU’s ability to defend the run Saturday. “And consistently, and just getting chunk yardage. Defense was hanging with them, you know, toe to toe. But I do, I think we wore down a little bit.”

It didn’t help that EMU got forced into a dis-favorable game script in just three drives to start the third quarter. 

MSU started with the ball to open the third quarter and marched down the field for a touchdown, with Cam Edwards scoring his second of the afternoon. But the Eagles nearly stopped the Spartans on 4th and short on the MSU side of the 50 early in the drive. 

Milivojevic was ruled to have gotten the line to gain on a sneak, but Creighton noted it was by a matter of inches. Had that play gone the other way, EMU takes over on the plus side of the 50 down 14-7 early in the third quarter. 

If the Eagles just finish more drives with points, too, the game goes differently. There were a number of close-but-no-cigar facets to this EMU performance, something Creighton took note of.

“It's pretty small. You know what I mean?” Creighton said of the gap between the game that happened and a much closer one playing out. “That's one of the things that I might, you know — I'm not discouraged. You know what I mean? I'm just not discouraged. And it's discouraging if you just can't stop them. And it's discouraging, right, if you just can't even move the ball. That's discouraging, right? Just trying to figure out how to do those things. That's not the feel that I had for this. We moved the ball. And we stopped them. So the margins were pretty thin. Maybe an inch or two, on a review and a non-review, you know what I mean? Those end up being pretty big deals. And there's a lot more to it than that. But that's the — the margins are pretty small.”

Instead, in the third quarter, EMU took over down 21-7 when Kim completed a deep in-breaker to Harold Mack for a conversion on third down.

But the receiver got decked as he was being slung down from the midriff, jarring the ball free. MSU DB Charles Brantley recovered the fumble. Officials quickly checked and determined there had been no targeting.

Three plays later, the EMU defense busted a coverage and Milivojevic lofted a 38-yard touchdown to a wide-open Charles Taplin. A 14-7 game rapidly became 28-7, and Eastern Michigan’s chances of getting back into the game were virtually zero. 

And while Creighton isn’t one to take moral victories, in practical matters he’s pleased with the bulk of what his team did on Saturday. A loss is a loss, but at least this one can be productive.

“I love my team more now than I did three-and-a-half hours ago, if that's possible,” Creighton said. “Proud of them, and I believe that we have what it takes to become a really good football team. I really do. And we're gonna we're gonna keep forging forward. I promise you that.”

The Eagles’ head coach isn’t pleased with the end result, either, but he’ll take an afternoon in Week 2 where his team flashed some real upside and offered a glimpse into the possibilities if it all coalesces.

And if the Eagles do bring it all together, the final scores should start to take care of themselves.  

“And so, like I said, I was jogging in February thinking about winning this game,” Creighton said. “And I mean that sincerely. And so it's not OK, right? You want to win, you have an opportunity to win a game. And so I don't know how long I have to pause… and then I'm also going to tell you that playing hard, playing well, and getting better is super important to me and to us. And so we took — we took some steps forward today despite not winning the game.”