Couch: For MSU football, these collapses are part of who the Spartans have become over the last half-dozen years
PISCATAWAY, N.J. – Part of the problem with this Michigan State football season is that MSU fans have seen this stuff too many times in recent years. They’re tired. They’ve got no stomach for it. An epic collapse, like in Saturday’s 27-24 loss at Rutgers, isn't all that remarkable.
Other than a brief respite in 2021, this sort of football is the story of MSU’s last six seasons.
In the fourth quarter Saturday, with the Spartans leading 24-6, Yahoo Sports projected that MSU had better than a 98% chance to win. Not a single MSU fan within 2,000 miles of the Peanut Barrel would believe victory was so certain.
Because they’ve seen this team — just two weeks earlier, unable to finish a game at Iowa. And they’ve seen this program in recent years — just last season, blowing a 31-14 third-quarter lead to Indiana, and in 2018, when MSU had Arizona State in its grasp, ahead 13-3 in the fourth quarter, and a year later when MSU led Illinois 28-3 before the Illini completed the largest comeback in program history.
Just as Rutgers did Saturday.
This isn’t just an issue for a beaten-down team playing for an interim head coach. This goes beyond Harlon Barnett and Co. This was a Mel Tucker issue, too. And, before that, a Mark Dantonio program trait in his final seasons. This is who the Spartans are.
“We still have six games to play,” Barnett said after Saturday’s 27-24 loss, somehow putting on an optimistic face. “I told (the team), ‘Adversity happens in life.’ I said, ‘20, 30 years from now, you may be telling somebody, Let me tell you about the 2023 Michigan State football team. And how that story ends is still still to be determined.’ Hopefully they're going to show them how we overcame.
“It's going be a story to tell … and it's going to be a good story.”
I fear for the grandchildren of MSU’s players and the nightmares they might have after hearing the story of this season. Who the Spartans are is too baked in at this point. It’s going to take a rise in talent and change in focus and discipline late in games. It’s going to take the program learning to value 18-point leads like it’s a three-point lead.
That’s not something that’s going to set in midseason for a group that’s already having its spirit and confidence tested. MSU is going to lose at least one more game this way this season — a game it’ll control to some degree against Minnesota, Nebraska and/or Indiana.
The other three games left — against Michigan (this week), Ohio State and Penn State — maybe leave those pages out of the story altogether. It’s hard to imagine any of those three games going well. In part because of how Saturday’s game ended.
If MSU had gone on to win 24-6 or 24-13 — with a fresh look at quarterback, some more punch to its offense, a defense that kept Rutgers out of the end zone — you might be able to argue that the Spartans could put a scare into at least one of the three top-tier opponents still on their schedule.
But you could sense Saturday this collapse is going to make it tougher to keep the wheels on. And once the Wolverines storm through East Lansing, with one of their better teams in modern times, and the losing streak reaches five …
How much more will these guys be willing and able to take?
It already looked Saturday, at the end, like MSU’s defense had run out of mettle.
RELATED: Couch's grades for MSU's performance in defeat at Rutgers
Senior linebacker Aaron Brule, who played well, described the locker room Saturday as being in a “sense of shock,” wondering how they lost the game.
“But there's not a doubt we clearly see we can play with anybody at any time,” Brule said. “We just have to finish those games and we will do that.”
That’s the right thing to say. I’m not sure they really believe it anymore.
I’ve been impressed with how this team has largely stuck together, how few players have entered the transfer portal in the face of a lot of BS. Their head coach created a mess and left them an uncertain future with 10 games to play. Their NIL collective bailed on them. They’ve played hard. And, Saturday, for three quarters, well.
Special teams two weeks in a row has been their undoing as much anything. But they also don’t quite have the talent to overcome momentum when it turns against them late in games.
“We couldn't stop them, keep them from rolling downhill,” Barnett said, describing it as an “avalanche.”
“There’s frustration all across the locker room,” senior receiver Tre Mosley said, “from players to coaches to support staff, because we all know we're a better team than that. It just comes down to finishing the game.”
Right. Just that. That thing that separates a lot of teams in every sport throughout time.
“I do believe that guys are still bought in,” Mosley said.
We’ll find out in the coming days and weeks.
It’s a tough spot, because even the bright spots are ruined by the uncertainty of the future. In a different year, at least fans could get excited about what they saw from redshirt freshman quarterback Katin Houser on Saturday. But now, it’s hard to be enthusiastic about any young player, because we simply don’t know if they’ll be around next year.
The better Houser plays, the more interest there will be from other programs who’d like to see this West Coast kid in the transfer portal.
It’s an exhausting situation. I can’t imagine being emotionally invested in this program right now. Especially after the last half-dozen years.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: MSU football: These collapses are part of who the Spartans have become
