Michigan State Football: 3 takeaways from overtime win over Nebraska

2. Special teams was the difference

We hear it all the time: special teams can make the difference between winning and losing and we saw that on Saturday night with Michigan State beating Nebraska because of that.

Bryce Baringer had a fantastic night punting the ball, pinning the Cornhuskers deep on multiple occasions and he looked like the team’s MVP before the Jayden Reed touchdown in the fourth quarter. He kept flipping the field position and he was a big reason Nebraska was held to just 20 points and he deserves a ton of credit.

But it was Reed’s punt return touchdown that really won the game for the Spartans because without that, we may be talking about a loss right now. The punt return touchdown came with some trickery as two returners were deep and Jalen Nailor acted like he was about to make the catch but Reed returned it with almost no defenders in front of him.

On top of that, some kick coverage was solid all game and helped with field position as well as a big field goal to win it from Matt Coghlin.

This made up for the botched snap on the field goal at the end of the first half.