Michigan State Football: 3 hot takes from disappointing Rutgers loss

Michigan State football did the unthinkable on Saturday afternoon, losing to Rutgers in the season opener. Time for some hot takes.

Hot takes have been flying after Michigan State’s first-ever loss to Rutgers since the Scarlet Knights became members of the Big Ten.

The Scarlet Knights took advantage of seven Michigan State turnovers, turning them into a couple of touchdowns and stealing a 38-27 win in East Lansing. This was the first taste Mel Tucker had of the Big Ten and you can bet he didn’t expect to be 0-1 heading into Michigan week after that matchup.

Here are three of my biggest hot takes after Michigan State’s season-opening loss.

3. Jay Johnson looks like Dave Warner 2.0

OK, I know we’ve only witnessed just under 30 minutes of Jay Johnson’s offense (based on time of possession), but the Spartans didn’t do a ton to impress on the offensive side of the ball.

I will give it to the new offensive coordinator: he has done a solid job with Rocky Lombardi, making him a serviceable quarterback for the Spartans. The junior quarterback had over 300 yards and three touchdowns through the air and made just a couple of severe mistakes while missing a couple of wide open guys for potential big gains.

Outside of Lombardi looking decent, he still made some serious gaffes as a play-caller, giving the ball to Connor Heyward just a little too much in the run game when he should be used primarily as a pass-catcher out of the backfield. And running up the middle on every first down and third-and-short play.

And what the heck were those fourth-down play-calls? Terrible.

Hopefully this hot take is proven wrong, but Johnson doesn’t look much better than Dave Warner after one game.