3 takeaways from Michigan State football’s scary 16-10 win over FAU

3. Coaching staff’s game management worries me

There are a few things that worry me about the decisions from Smith and his staff throughout this game. The biggest and most obvious was going for it on fourth down on the FAU 9-yard-line in the fourth quarter when MSU was up six. How do you not kick the field goal to take a two-possession lead and essentially ice the game?

Then certain aspects made me wonder if the staff had the team fully ready to play or not. The penalties were atrocious for Michigan State, especially on defense. Penalties happen and some of them aren’t detrimental to the team, but Michigan State had more careless penalties than I could count. That does fall mostly on the players, but the staff needs to emphasize discipline a little more.

The last thing that left me scratching my head was the mismanagement of the run game. First off, it was clear that running between the tackles was not effective, so I don’t understand why they didn’t throw in more outside runs throughout the game. Then you have the fact that Lynch-Adams was clearly the better running back tonight compared to Nate Carter. I’m not saying Carter should’ve been benched, but he had 19 carries to Lynch-Adams’ nine, I would’ve liked to see those a little more even based on how the game was going.

There’s a lot for everyone to clean up, but it’s only the first game so it’s important not to overreact. But it’s the coaching staff in my opinion that has the most work to do to better prepare the team and adjust in-game to how things are going.