Noah Kim took his first trip back to East Lansing since transferring on Saturday in search of an upset, but Michigan State had its way with the former Spartan quarterback and the rest of the Eagles, 35-7.
Early on, things were not looking good for Pat Fitzgerald’s team and you could tell by his halftime interview with the Big Ten Network that he was about to rip into his guys in the locker room.
It worked as the Spartans turned a 14-7 halftime lead into a 35-7 blowout win to improve to 2-0.
Let’s check out the report card from a Week 2 win.
Quarterbacks: B
Alessio Milivojevic would admit that he didn’t have the best game on Saturday even though he did finish by completing 60 percent of his passes (12-of-20) for 170 yards and two touchdowns. He really struggled in the second quarter and looked rattled a bit. Alessio bounced back nicely in the second half and threw a long touchdown pass to a freshman wideout that we’ll talk about shortly.
Cam Fancher also showed that he can be a more-than-capable backup. He was a perfect 6-for-6 for 44 yards and he introduced a fresh look as a running quarterback option.
Running Backs: A
This was one of the best rushing performances by a Michigan State team in years and it was led by a 150-yard rusher. Cam Edwards had his first breakout game as a Spartan, carrying the ball 21 times for 152 yards and two touchdowns. He had some explosive plays that were missing in Week 1 and he now leads the Big Ten in rushing.
Brandon Tullis was really solid in garbage time, rushing for 37 yards on just four carries, Jaziun Patterson had three carries for 23 yards and a touchdown, but Marvis Parrish struggled a bit with just 11 yards on four carries. Still 258 rushing yards as a team and over 5.0 yards per carry is good enough for an A in my book.
Receivers/Tight Ends: B-
While Charles Taplin had his first real breakout game with 65 yards and a touchdown and Jayden Savoury had his second good performance in a row, the receivers left a little to be desired, although some of the deficiencies were quarterback issues, too.
Rodney Bullard and Chrishon McCray were quiet with five catches for 36 yards combined which just isn’t going to cut it for the top two receivers. Fredrick Moore did have a nice touchdown catch early but didn’t have another reception. We saw Braylon Collier for the first time and he had two catches for 23 yards which isn’t too shabby for a debut performance.
Offensive Line: B+
The offensive line was really struggling early and then whatever message was relayed to them in the locker room at halftime really sparked them to a dominant second-half performance.
Trent Fraley was impressive throughout, taking out multiple defenders on certain plays and just putting his body on the line for a few extra yards here and there. The group got better throughout the game which is encouraging and the backups even came in and continued that dominance late in the fourth quarter, paving the way for 37 Tullis yards.
Defensive Line: A-
Kenny Soares Jr. was as good as advertised in Week 2, finishing with five tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss, and a sack. He was one of the more impressive players on the field and he was making Noah Kim uncomfortable from the opening snap. He was complemented nicely by Eli Coenen who dominated on the interior and had four tackles and two sacks. He’s now up to three sacks through the first two games. Ben Roberts also impressed me as well as Anelu Lafaele again.
Keahnist Thompson got his first start and had a half-sack and I liked what I saw from Derrick Simmons in limited action.
Linebackers: B
Honestly, if the game ended at halftime, the linebackers would have gotten somewhere in the C range. They were making the wrong reads and there were far too many missed tackles (yes, I know that’s not all on them) but it did feel like the 4-2-5 look struggled mightily in the second quarter as EMU got back into it.
Brady Pretzlaff and Dion Crawford responded nicely in the second half and helped lead the defense to a shutout in the final 30 minutes as well as negative rushing yards. Pretzlaff and Crawford combined for 15 tackles and Caleb Wheatland had four of his own off the bench. We also had a DiMari Malone sighting.
It’s safe to say that this unit sorely missed Jordan Hall.
Secondary: B+
While there were way too many missed tackles by this group in the first half and some really, really poor routes to the ball, I came away really impressed with how the secondary locked down Eastern Michigan receivers all game.
In fact, Eastern Michigan’s wideouts combined for just 12 catches for 87 yards against the Spartans’ defensive backfield.
Tre Bell, Nikai Martinez, and Devin Vaught were all impressive while Charles Brantley had a decent bounce-back game despite missing a few tackles.
Special Teams: A-
It’s hard to give special teams an A when we didn’t really see much of them, but Chrishon McCray had a nice 31-yard punt return early that gave Michigan State great field position on a scoring drive and Rhys Dakin pinned Eastern Michigan deep on one of his two punts. Liam Boyd followed up a 4-for-5 debut by not attempting a single field goal. He was 5-for-5 on extra point attempts.
Overall, solid day for the limited special teams plays.
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