Michigan State Football: 3 takeaways from disappointing loss at Purdue

Well, we knew it was about to come sometime, but Michigan State football fans weren’t quite prepared for the first disappointing loss of the season to come on Saturday night against Purdue, the week after taking down rival Michigan.

The Spartans were dropped by the “Spoilermakers” 40-29 in West Lafayette, giving Purdue its second top-five win of the year.

The defense had its worst game of the year by a mile and the offense just looked out of sync for the most part.

What’d we learn from this tough loss at Purdue?

3. The defense was atrocious

I think I’ve said all the bad things possible about this defense during the game, but Scottie Hazelton had one of his worst games as defensive coordinator for Michigan State.

Aidan O’Connell did basically whatever he wanted against the Spartan secondary, passing for over 500 yards and three touchdowns. He and David Bell torched this secondary and there were seemingly no adjustments made at halftime after watching him go off for about 250 yards in the first half.

On top of that, the third-down defense was a joke. The Spartans were gashed multiple times on third downs and it just didn’t feel like a team fighting for a playoff spot and Big Ten title.

Disappointing doesn’t even begin to describe the defense’s performance and if the secondary doesn’t figure something out moving forward, it’s going to be a long month of November.

Purdue was averaging under 30 points per game before this one and they went off for 40 and almost 600 yards of total offense. Pathetic showing.