Michigan State football: Offense has been a joke under Jay Johnson

Another week, another embarrassing offensive performance from Michigan State football. Sadly, that’s more of the norm rather than an outlier in East Lansing these days.

Michigan State’s offense scored the first six points of the game against Minnesota on Saturday afternoon, but we should really credit the defense and Jonathan Kim for those field goals. If not for some forced fumbles deep in Minnesota territory, the Spartans probably wouldn’t have gotten on the board until the fourth quarter.

Sam Leavitt took over under center for Katin Houser who really struggled, but a lot of that had to do with receivers not getting opened and the second-year quarterback rushing some throws to avoid sacks. He also didn’t utilize his legs as much as I thought he should have, but that is on Jay Johnson.

Just like the rest of the offense’s struggles.

Sure, the players still have to go out and execute, but they’re put in losing situations more often than not. Houser is getting happy feet in the pocket which is a bad habit that should have been corrected by Johnson by now. It hasn’t been. It’s astonishing the amount of regression we’ve seen from most of these offensive players under Johnson this season.

The end of the Michigan State football season can’t come soon enough

Fortunately for the Spartans, this is the last year with Johnson as offensive coordinator as he’ll be moving on after the season following the firing of Mel Tucker. I find it hard to believe that the next head coach would retain an underperforming offensive coordinator whose best season was 2021 thanks to Kenneth Walker III.

Since then, Michigan State has had one of the worst offenses in the Big Ten.

On Saturday, the Spartans faced an even worse offense and still got outclassed by the Gophers. It was a rather embarrassing showing from Johnson again.

December can’t come soon enough.