Fans and opponents had been used to seeing two different quarterbacks line up under center for the MSU football team this season. But both sophomores Kirk Cousins and Keith Nichol often split time during the same series Saturday against Michigan.
“They knew they were going to put me in there kind of randomly through plays and through series and I didn’t know when it was going to come and I was prepared at any time,” Nichol said.
The quarterbacks were switched in and out more often due to a tweaked ankle Cousins suffered when he attempted to dive into the end zone in the first quarter.
“The plan going into the game was for us to rotate in a way where it wasn’t series by series but it was just during a series, within a series,” Cousins said. “That was the plan all along, whether I was hurt or not, but we just were trying to do what we thought was best, as far as the ankle and as far as the team.”
The ankle injury was bad enough that Cousins pulled himself out as the game went into overtime.
“I said, ‘Coach, I’m not going to be 100 percent. I don’t want to jeopardize the team in this moment,’” Cousins said. “Obviously, I said, ‘We trust Keith’s abilities, so let’s let him go do this.’”
Nichol played the overtime session, completing his only pass — an 11-yarder to sophomore wide receiver B.J. Cunningham — to set up freshman running back Larry Caper’s 23-yard game-winning run on the next play.
Nichol finished 5-for-8 passing for 68 yards. Cousins finished 15-for-21 for 152 yards and two interceptions. But perhaps the most surprising statistic of the game was that he was the game’s leading rusher — 75 yards on seven carries, including a 41-yard burst in the fourth quarter.
Cousins said he would ice his ankle Saturday night and all day Sunday and see how it feels.
Power running
MSU head coach Mark Dantonio always has emphasized the importance of running the ball, although the Spartans haven’t been successful on the ground this season.
Dantonio’s desire for a power running game paid off Saturday in the form of Caper’s powerful surge through Michigan safety Troy Woolfolk on his game-winning run.
“One of our goals was to come into this game and run the football,” Treadwell said. “We were going to find a way, and if there’s such a thing as overdoing it, that’s OK because there were some of those down and distances we were going to run the football, challenge those guys up front, and have those backs run hard.”
Running backs coach Dan Enos said earlier in the week that they have had to tell sophomore running back Glenn Winston to make more cuts instead of always initiating contact with a defender.
“They do tell me (to tone it down),” Winston said. “Sometimes I do miss a couple holes because I am looking for a lot of contact, but that’s one thing I’ve got to work on.”
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