50 defining moments from the 2021 Michigan State football season: No. 44

Welcome back to day seven of the series. Today, I will highlight one of the stars of Michigan State football’s 2021 campaign, Jalen “Speedy” Nailor.

Welcome back to the series. Since I started writing this series, it is now one week closer to the start of the 2022 Michigan State football season. Today, I will highlight one of the stars of the 2021 campaign: Jalen “Speedy” Nailor.

For those of you who missed yesterday’s article, please click here. If you would like to look at previous articles of this series, feel free to scroll through my writing profile.

No. 44: Jalen Nailor’s 65-yard TD reception at Rutgers

In case you are confused, this was Nailor’s third touchdown on the day, the other two being a pair of 63-yard catch and runs.

Why No. 44?

Michigan State cruised into Rutgers on a tear, being undefeated and having won four of their first five contests of the 2021 campaign with relative ease. At the same time, there would be some trepidation for the green and white faithful, as the disastrous 2020 campaign started with a sloppy loss against Rutgers.

Rutgers proved that 2020 was not a fluke to start the game, stopping the Spartans on a gutsy fourth-down play and then driving down to draw first blood. After this, the game settled into a slugfest, with the Spartans scoring two long touchdowns to Nailor (which will get their own articles later) and the Scarlet Knights scoring a pair of field goals.

The keys to this game were to avoid turnovers and get the big play. As it turns out, all four of Michigan State’s touchdowns in this game were over 60 yards, so I would call this a relative success. This touchdown to Nailor was what ended the Scarlet Knights’ hopes of a victory, as the Spartans would do all the scoring after this play.

I cannot rate this any higher as the final margin of this game, 18 points, makes it hard to justify as a play that won the Spartans a game. This is also the lowest-rated Jalen Nailor touchdown from the game as it quickly turned one-sided from this moment. Additionally, this was the play with the least “wow” factor of Nailor’s three touchdowns, as it appears the corner guarding him just slept on the job and all he had to do was use his speed.

Rutgers once again gets grouped with Maryland, this time as Big Ten teams that got overmatched by the 2021 Spartans. Both today and yesterday’s plays wound up being the final “break” needed to tip the odds in the Spartans’ favor. I give this a slightly higher rating than the Harvey interception due to both the score of the game at the time of the play as well as the statistical mark of Nailor’s day.

Speaking of statistics, this was part of a breakout game for the Palmdale native, recording a SHI Stadium-record 208-yard first half, as mentioned on the broadcast. The corners learned that it helps to cover No. 8 in the second half, holding Nailor to one catch for 13 yards, leaving him with 221 yards on the day. This was a career day for Nailor and the fourth-best receiving game in Spartan football history.

Tomorrow, a familiar face will return as special teams will be included for the first time on this list while we count down until the 2022 campaign.