Michigan State Football: 3 takeaways from high-scoring win over Western Kentucky

If you were hoping to see some good defense on Saturday night, I hope you tuned into a different game because there was none of that between Michigan State football and Western Kentucky.

Payton Thorne had a solid game and Kenneth Walker III went over 100 yards again, but the Spartans couldn’t seem to slow down Bailey Zappe and that Western Kentucky passing offense as he went for nearly 500 yards and a few touchdowns in an ugly defensive effort.

A couple of years ago, Michigan State would never win a high-scoring game like this, but times have changed under Mel Tucker.

What did we learn from Michigan State’s shootout win over Western Kentucky?

3. To put it bluntly, the defense was awful

The phrase “bend but don’t break” has been used to describe this defense all season long and it was especially relevant on Saturday night as they couldn’t get a ton of stops against Western Kentucky.

We knew Bailey Zappe was going to throw the ball a ton, but we didn’t expect the Hilltoppers to throw for about 500 yards and they had some nice chunk runs as well.

Scottie Hazelton has a lot of work to do if his side of the ball is going to be ready to face quarterbacks like CJ Stroud or Sean Clifford in Big Ten play. This defensive effort was really poor on Saturday night and you know Mel Tucker is less than pleased (we saw that in the fourth quarter).

Sure, the Spartans were still able to hold on for a win, but man, giving up that many yards and over 30 points is just not ideal.