East Lansing — Back when Mark Dantonio was the defensive backs coach for Nick Saban at Michigan State in the late 1990s, they developed a way for tracking defensive production.
Simple statistics certainly gave an indication, but these numbers gave more of an idea of how much of an impact a player was having. The result had a simple title — production points.
Ever since then, Dantonio and his staff have tracked production points. There have been some eye-popping numbers over the years as Dantonio has led his share of dominant defenses. But until Saturday when Michigan State beat Northwestern, 31-10, to make Dantonio the winningest coach in Michigan State history, no player had reached the point Joe Bachie did.