Postgame Presser Notes: Michigan State

Tae Odoms may have a broken foot. "I don't know what's up with Mike" Martin. James Rogers cramped severely. [I saw Rogers leaving the stadium, and he seemed to be walking fine, for what it's worth].

"I don't look at margin of defeat. I'm just disapointed we didn't play better. Our guys played hard, but we didn't play well." Too many mistakes to win against a good team. A little off in both the pass and run game on offense. Dropped passes, missed protections. "I don't want to say it wasn't our best effort, but it certainly wasn't our best technique-wise and the things we needed to do."

Need to make big plays to counter the opponents' big plays "None of those things occurred today." Can't diagnose what went wrong on the big plays until watching film. "We didn't tackle well." Maybe accountable to going after the ball a bit too much.

Ineffectiveness in the red zone made a difference. Denard needs to "live for another play" or take off and run instead of making bad passes which can turn into turnovers.

Denard not as sharp as he has been. He's still young, but he's competitive and going through the film they'll see what happened. "This is just his sixth game. I'm told everybody all along that he's a first-year starter." Denard hesitant at times, but there weren't a lot of creases. "We had some more things planned."

Guys were close to making some plays, but didn't close the gap on defense.

"They just played well, got off blocks. And we didn't play as well I don't think" containing Denard.

Low kick led to the blocked field goal - there wasn't penetration up front that caused it.

Punting with 6 minutes left was the wrong decision. RR was trying to get the players' attention and change the call. He wouldn't punt it again in the same situation.

Iowa has had an open week to get ready, and Michigan has a big game against them next week.

Mood in the locker room was what you'd expect from losing the game.

MSU had a couple blitzes, stunts. That wasn't the main issue on offense though, MICH just made a couple bad reads. "We made bad mistakes, and we've gotta capitalize on a few things." Made bad reads, bad plays, some mistakes.

MSU didn't try to take Denard specifically out of the offense: "Not really. We've got weapons everywhere. I'm not the only weapon on offense." Denard hesitated a lot, which prevented him making the long runs. "Just bad reads, bad reads."

Rivalry games are always exciting, maybe Denard played a little too excited. Got too excited on the bad throw to Hemingway.

MSU is fast - "they're a big ten team." MSU more physical? "It's just like the rest of those games." Dirty play at all? "It's Michigan State vs. Michigan. That's all I've got to say."

Greg Jones wasn't the reason Denard made mistakes today. "I didn't pay attention to one player. I paid attention to everybody."

Team wasn't worried when they went down 2 scores. With a high-powered offense, they should be able to come back from that. Knew they could come back, just needed to keep playing hard and keep focused.

No one person is to blame for the poor performance, time to move on. "Refocus and get back in there. It's mid-season now. Time to crank it back up."

"Yeaaah, I just lost focus" on the first drop. Got into the endzone and realized he didn't have the ball (jokingly).

"I felt like it was a lot of mistakes in the redzone." Have to score when you get down there, and not doing so hurt the team.

Denard "he was keeping poised all through the game." Not getting frustrated by throwing interceptions, and was pumping the team up.

MSU always plays physical, just like everyone else in the Big Ten will against Michigan. MSU isn't necessarily the best defense M has played, there were a lot of mistakes on the Michigan side that helped them.

"This is a tough loss, you know. We just have to go in there Monday and learn from our mistakes and prepare for Iowa."

MSU better than other teams played? "They have some better players at some positions than teams we've seen." They took care of the ball, moved it with the run, and smart passes. "They executed better than we did."

A couple miscommunications on gap responsibility led to the long runs. "We weren't in the right one twice. Same play." Will figure that out. "I thought we were prepared for it. Unfortunately they just gashed us on a couple plays."

"I think they got called for an illegal chop on Mike. I think he'll be fine." He wants to get it evaluated before risking further injury.

"If I'm going to be a leader on the defense, I have to set an example. Obviously we didn't win today, I didn't play well enough." Everybody has to push, we haven't seen Michigan play as well as they can yet.

Cousins' bootleg wasn't that effective - the defense against that was improved. "It was kind of easy getting back there to him."

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