Michigan State Football: Early preview of 2023 games 4 through 6

I will continue to preview Michigan State football’s 2023 season without lowered expectations despite the recent transfer losses of Payton Thorne, Keon Coleman, and Charles Brantley.

With zero context, this is a horrible look and just feeds the fire of the haters, with jeers of Mel Tucker’s contract and two bad seasons.

In the cases of Thorne and Brantley, it could have been an issue of playing time. It’s widely known that Thorne did not have a stellar season in 2022 and Tucker blatantly said there’s an open competition at quarterback. If it’s true that he wants to go to Auburn, best of luck to him but I just find it hard that the fifth-best quarterback in the Big Ten can go into an SEC environment and thrive, but that’s my opinion.

But the Coleman news flat-out stinks. The clear favorite to be the highest-drafted Spartan is no longer on this team. Another optimistic opinion I have is that the run game should be better this year, and maybe it’s a good thing that we don’t have the 50/50 deep ball to lean back on (although last year felt like a 30/70 ball).

Perhaps Jay Johnson has a meeting with Ben Johnson of the Detroit Lions and uses the strategy of running the ball to insulate an average quarterback who thrives off medium routes. But the reality is that this team hasn’t played a snap and they’re already being buried. It’s just like basketball’s loss to OSU in the Big Ten Tournament where everyone left this team for dead with another year of Tom Izzo not making the second weekend and we all saw how that turned out.

So, after much digression, here’s my outlook for games four, five, and six.

vs. Maryland (Sept. 23)

This was a decently competitive first half last year, and MSU would have been down only one or perhaps tied at halftime if it had competent special teams, missing field goals of 33 and 45 yards, and a botched snap on an extra point (please stop me if you’ve heard that before).

The Spartans had success running the ball and had a few receivers running open when Payton Thorne actually had time to throw. Taulia Tagovailoa did carve up the secondary but not nearly as bad as we all thought (wow, what a sad sentence) and the Terps’ biggest running plays came when their running backs were able to break out to the sidelines. I expect this year’s defense to be better at setting the edges with the addition of Tunmise Adeleye.

Michigan State had a legitimate chance to win this game with just average offensive play but being shut out in the second half put those hopes to bed.

The main factor that plays into this game is how much MSU offensive line can create gaps for running backs and protect the quarterback. The Spartans’ main issue in last year’s second half was way too many third-and-longs and just too much pressure, mentally and from defenders, on Thorne.

Maryland lost five players to the draft including first-rounder Deonte Banks. But, like the Spartans, the Terrapins have had a lot of movement in the portal, and they still have one of returning quarterbacks in the nation in Tagovailoa.

I think the Spartans win a close one, the main factor is playing this game in Spartan Stadium.

Prediction: Michigan State 24, Maryland 21