Sparty Night Lights
A Friday face-off with some familiar foes.
In his young career, Dan Lanning has only lost to three head coaches.
Two of those coaches have either won or participated in a National Championship game.
And the other one is Jonathan Smith.
Just last year, Smith was the exalted savior of Corvallis, but then shit hit the fan and he hopped from one little brother program to another.
Now he’ll lead this week’s victim opponent into a rowdy, student-filled Autzen Stadium for an epic rematch of the 2018 Redbox Bowl.
It will be Oregon’s most-watched game of the season so far, and unlike last Saturday’s Pac-12 After Dark reunion, it will actually feel like Oregon’s initiation into the Big Ten.
Despite their status as a mid-Ten team, Michigan State is off to a better start than the pundits thought they’d be.
They currently sit at 3-2 (1-1), and they’ve shown a ton of spirit when you consider that just last year in they lost their head coach in a very Michigan State way (due to alleged sexual misconduct and abuse of power by a high-ranking man within the athletic department).
I don’t know about you, but that sure doesn’t sound like the Big Ten Conference that I know.
Sparty is led by a quarterback we’re pretty familiar with.
Sophomore transfer Aidan Chiles (#2) was once known as the best quarterback recruit in Oregon State history, but he also abandoned Corvallis after the Beavs got left behind in The Great Re-Conferencing of 2023.
Chiles is a 6-foot-3, 217-pound, natural-born athlete from Downey, California, and he turned down offers from both Oregon and Washington when he originally chose OSU.
He regularly played one or two full offensive series’ for the Beavs last season in between DJU—seemingly under some kind of agreement with Smith that he would stay there and get developed to become a future Oregon State Michigan State legend.
He’s had moderate success in his first few games as a full-time starter, and his dynamic play is definitely part of why Michigan State has over-performed. However, he’s still a young, mistake-prone quarterback that has thrown eight interceptions—five of those coming in road games.
He’s not exactly a running quarterback, seeing as how he’s only averaging about six carries per game, but he’s extremely athletic and rushed for nearly 1,000 yards and nine touchdowns his senior year of high school.
Oregon hasn’t faced an QB like Chiles yet, unless you compare him to OSU’s Gevani McCoy, but even McCoy ran semi-successfully against us and broke off a long thirty-seven-yarder (that would’ve been longer if it weren’t for a Beaver penalty on the play).
If Smith has been watching the tape and searching for his window of opportunity to test the Duck defense tonight, he’d be smart to run Chiles a little more—maybe twelve or thirteen times—just to see if that’s really a weakness we have.
Now, I have no clue if it’ll actually be effective for MSU, and they better hope that Chiles knows how to slide and avoid injury, but if I were Jonathan Smith, I would 1) wear hats that fit me, and 2) give the QB run some serious consideration.
Another familiar name for Oregon fans is tight end, Jack Velling (#12). He’s also a former Beav, and now he’s Michigan State’s third-leading receiver.
Velling’s best game of the year came in their close road loss to Boston College. He caught six passes for seventy-seven yards that day, and much like a warm snuggie, he was Chiles’ safety blanket in hostile territory.
If/when the Spartans get down early, those two might connect with each other a few times to try and ride the wave.
Or maybe they’ll just do what they do best and abandon a sinking ship.
But they’re not the only team with a turncoat or two on their sideline. Ex-Spartan, Derrick Harmon, has proven to be a pretty big offseason acquisition for Dan & Co.
Against UCLA, the big fella was a force to be reckoned with in both rush and pass defense, and he’s probably been Oregon’s most consistent player to this point (an accolade that Dillon Gabriel is but one play away from claiming for himself).
And it helped when Harmon has teammates like Jordan Burch getting back-to-back massive tackles for loss and generally doing his best Kayvon impression (even though Helf was on the call for FOX and he wouldn’t quite go so far as to compare JB to KT).
Burch continues to flash as an All-Big Ten-level edge rusher, but he’s been making his living on some pretty immobile QBs. Chiles is quick and has good escapability even when he doesn’t take off and run, so I’ll be interested to see Jordan have to hit a moving target.
And in the hopes that Burch and Matayo are constantly getting in the backfield—and seeing as how Chiles is supremely turnover-prone—I’m happy to bring back a classic prediction of mine from the halcyon days of Deommodore Lenoir…
For those of you who might be newer here, I used to do individual stat predictions for every game back in 2018-2020ish, and each week I would end with the prayer/guarantee that Dede would grab two interceptions that day.
Just check out this Cameo from Lenoir:
And I’m thinking tonight would be the perfect time for Jabbar Muhammad to have a two-interception game of his own, don’t you?
Everybody has been avoiding Jabbar like the plague, but I think he’ll be pretty unavoidable through all the chaos that we’ll be sending Chiles’ way.
So join me. Believe in the Jabbar two-pick game, and it will surely happen.
When it comes to the offense, I have two pet projects I’m keeping an eye on:
First, I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is for more of the A’Mauri Washington/Zach Grace jumbo goal line package.
I can’t think of a better way to welcome Michigan State to the new Big Ten than to run the ball down their throats behind a fullback and a 320-pound defensive lineman.
These midwest mittenheads don’t have a monopoly on big boy football and I’m tired of everyone pretending like the west coast teams should be worried about the bottom/middle of this flyover conference.
Heck, six years ago we beat Michigan State in a 7-6 rockfight as if we were Iowa.
Let’s push these guys around in front of the whole country (and then let’s do it all over again next week, please).
My other big prediction is that someone other than Dillon Gabriel is going to throw a touchdown pass.
Maybe it’ll be Dante Moore—or the real? QB2, Austin Novosad—in a relief effort, or maybe we’ll give Tez another chance to throw that one he missed against UCLA.
All that to say, Jonathan Smith better get used to his resume saying, “I beat Dan Lanning once,” because it’s going to stay that way.
45-20, Thunder Green.
Go Ducks.
And hopefully as you’re walking out of Autzen, they’ll let Dolly sing.
Good Work! Go Ducks!