Michigan State football stock report vs. Florida Atlantic

Michigan State football handled their business (barely) on Friday night as it escaped with a 16-10 victory over Florida Atlantic. At the end of the day the win is what matters most, but I think most Spartan fans are waking up on Saturday morning very nervous for the season ahead.

But don’t let the team’s struggles cause you to ignore the positives that came from this game. Many players played extremely well with some doing much better than I thought possible.

So let’s go over the stock report for Michigan State football after their win over FAU and see whose stock improved and whose stock is declining.

Stock Up

Kay’Ron Lynch-Adams

Transfer running back Kay’Ron Lynch-Adams was by far the best player on the field Friday night. He averaged an impressive 11.2 yards per carry, going for 101 yards and one long touchdown run in the second quarter. He also should’ve had a second touchdown earlier in the game, but the play was incorrectly whistled dead from the officials.

Now I’m not going to compare Lynch-Adams to Kenneth Walker, but he showed us some things on Friday night we haven’t seen since Walker. KLA showed off his very quick feet and was able to change direction at an impressive rate and he also had elite open field speed that we saw on his touchdown run. KLA could be special this season, and I hope the staff sees that and gives him some more carries in the coming weeks.

Michigan State defense

The entire Michigan State defense deserves a lot of credit for how they played Friday night. Only giving up 10 points and 248 yards is good against any team especially when you consider the bad spots the offense kept putting them in.

But two guys on the defense impressed me the most. The first is Khris Bogle who finished with five tackles including 2.5 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks. Then you have Angelo Grose in the secondary who led the team with 12 tackles and one of two Michigan State interceptions.

For a defense that’s struggled for many years now, they showed a lot of life against FAU with these two shining the brightest in my eyes.

Stock Down

Offensive line

Michigan State’s offense struggled pretty much in every aspect of the game, but the offensive line was arguably the worst part of the offense.

They could barely get a push against FAU which really concerns me for the future games ahead. Especially when we needed them to step up most (like when MSU went for it on 4th & 1 in the fourth quarter) they missed all of their assignments and didn’t even give Nate Carter a chance.

The offensive line needs to improve fast because if they don’t then it will continue to be tough sledding the rest of the season.

Red zone offense

Michigan State’s red zone offense was also abysmal on Friday night. MSU had four trips to the red zone and only came away with seven points. That is horrible.

Two of those failed red zone trips ended in turnovers. One was a shocking fumble by Montorie Foster Jr. and the other being an ugly interception from Aidan Chiles that was almost returned for a touchdown.

Then you have the questionable decision to go for it on that already mentioned 4th & 1 when Jonathan Smith should have opted to kick the field goal to go up two possessions.

If the Spartans were just average in the red zone we’d probably feel a lot better about this game. But they struggled big time and left a lot of points on the board which is very concerning.

Discipline

Lastly we have to talk about how undisciplined Michigan State was, especially on defense. The only bad thing I can really say about the defense was all of the penalties they had, with many of them being major 15-yard penalties.

Penalties are going to happen in football, especially if your team is playing hard, so to me they aren’t the end of the world. But you have problems when Michigan State finishes with 12 of them for 140 yards.

That amount of penalties is another thing that will be hard to overcome against better competition, so Michigan State has to clean that up before they travel to Maryland next week.