Michigan State Football: 5 overreactions from victory over Rutgers

Michigan State football took down a hapless Rutgers team on Saturday night. Here are some of the biggest overreactions from the game.

Rutgers was no match for Michigan State on Saturday as Mark Dantonio and the Spartans pulled off the unthinkable and officially reversed their record from 2016. No one thought it would be possible with such a young team, but these Spartans have exceeded expectations, going from 3-9 last year to 9-3 in 2017.

Michigan State handled an improved Rutgers team on the road, 40-7. It wasn’t pretty for three quarters, but Michigan State scored 21 points in the fourth to really put the Scarlet Knights away.

The overreactions from Saturday night’s win over Rutgers were pretty extraordinary.

5. Defense underachieved in the weeks before Rutgers

After holding Rutgers to a season-low for total yardage (112) and allowing just one touchdown on a broken coverage play, fans were wondering what had gone wrong against Northwestern, Penn State and Ohio State in the weeks leading up to this one.

Those thoughts can be shut down as Rutgers had one of the worst offenses in the Big Ten coming in, so it’s not like Michigan State’s defense proved itself as the best in the conference with the dominating win. Sure, it was a good sign to see this unit come together for arguably its best showing of the year outside of the Michigan game, but thinking this should have happened against some of the best offenses in the league is silly.

Moreover, the defense is young and everyone knew it would go through growing pains this season. It had to replace two starting linebackers, most of the defensive line and a majority of the defensive backfield. No one expected it to be this effective this early on.

The future is bright for this young defense, so don’t think it underachieved because of a couple of bad games.