Hardly anything broke right for Michigan State in Madison on Saturday, and the film doesn’t make it look any prettier. The Spartans were outplayed in a 31-3 loss to Wisconsin, their third straight defeat, and a second look at the game turns up a few clear risers and a few players whose stock took a hit.
The brightest spot may have been defensive tackle Ben Roberts. He’s become one of MSU’s most reliable pieces over the last few weeks, and the jump he’s made this season is real.
Pat Fitzgerald put it plainly Monday: "I think Worm's playing at an all-Big Ten level. I really do," Pat Fitzgerald said Monday.
"I think Ben, of anybody on our team right now, is the most consistent player on our football team. Ben Roberts, without a doubt.
I think he's playing physical in the run game. He's producing in the pass rush."
Roberts was already a solid interior player last year, but this season he’s taken another step. He’s been Michigan State’s best run stopper at nose tackle or 2i-technique, and even when he isn’t finishing plays himself, he’s eating up double teams and helping create room for 3-technique Eli Coenen.
For a group that wasn’t expected to be a strength, the defensive tackle spot has turned into one of the better surprises on the roster. Depth remains thin, but Roberts and Coenen have done the heavy lifting up front.
Dion Crawford also came out of the game looking good. The linebacker group as a whole didn’t have its best day in its second outing this season without Jordan Hall, but Crawford stood out on the second level.
He led the team with eight total tackles, seven of them solo, and added a pass breakup. His PFF grade of 79.5 was the best on the Spartan defense for the day, and it lined up with what showed up on the field.
He’s now MSU’s highest-graded defender on the season at 86.0, even if calling him the defense’s best player would still be a stretch.
On the other side of the ledger, left tackle Ben Murawski had a rough afternoon. He gave up a team-high three pressures across 30 pass-blocking snaps, and his work in the run game wasn’t much better.
That part of his profile was supposed to translate after he graded well in run blocking at UConn last year, but the Big Ten has been a different test. Murawski has been serviceable, but the offensive line overall has been more merely okay than truly improved.
Brady Pretzlaff’s day also left plenty to be desired. His six tackles still look respectable in the box score, but the film shows several chances he had to make a play and didn’t.
One of the biggest came on Wisconsin quarterback Colton Joseph’s long touchdown run, when both Pretzlaff and Cam Stodghill had a shot. Stodghill simply missed the stop, while Pretzlaff drifted toward a fake WR screen before realizing too late that it was a run.
By then, Joseph was already gone and a lineman was there to seal it off.
The biggest offensive concern, though, remains the wide receiver room. Michigan State and offensive coordinator Nick Sheridan barely seemed interested in pushing the ball downfield Saturday, and the lack of explosiveness isn’t just on one position group.
The receivers are part of the problem, and the numbers back it up. The Spartans’ longest play that didn’t come with help from a Wisconsin penalty was only 13 yards, and Fredrick Moore led the team in receiving with four catches for 23 yards on 12 targets.
Right now, opposing secondaries don’t appear worried about any MSU playmaker, and there isn’t much evidence that changes are coming soon this fall.
In Other News...
Michigan State Fans Will Have Mixed Feelings About This Former Spartan
Justin Denson Jr. is making his new stop at Purdue worth watching for anyone who followed his time at Michigan State. The former Spartan has settled in as a defender and has been turning in a strong stretch through the first month of the season, giving Purdue another useful piece while reminding Michigan State fans what he brought to the table before the transfer.
Back in East Lansing, the programs offseason rhythm keeps rolling in other ways. Michigan State basketball has already announced its 2026-27 tipoff times, though a few games still need to be finalized, and the football team also had some familiar faces around practice when former Spartans Darqueze Dennard and Taybor Pepper stopped by to talk with the players. It is the kind of week that ties the present to the past, even as one former Spartan continues to make noise elsewhere. [Read more 🡒]
Michigan State Offense Has A Problem It Must Fix This Week
Michigan State left its recent game with a familiar kind of frustration for an offense that came in expecting to move the ball more effectively. The plan was cautious by design, built around short passes and protecting the football, but it never produced the kind of rhythm or chunk gains that can turn steady drives into points. Instead, the Spartans spent too much time settling for controlled possessions that went nowhere, a problem that quickly showed up on the scoreboard.
Now the focus shifts to fixing the parts of the attack that stalled when the game got tight. Pat Fitzgerald and Nick Sheridan have pointed to the need for more aggressive execution without losing balance, and that is where the next challenge lies for Michigan State. It is one thing to call for improvement in the abstract, but quite another to turn that into a more complete offensive performance this week. [Read more 🡒]
Michigan State's Biggest Rivalry Game Suddenly Feels Far More Winnable
Michigan States season has been defined by the grind of a rebuilding year under first-year coach Pat Fitzgerald, and the injuries have made that rebuild even steeper, especially on defense. The Spartans have been piecing things together for weeks with multiple players sidelined, some for a few games and others for the rest of the season, which has left little margin for error as the schedule has tightened.
Still, the outlook around the biggest rivalry game has shifted enough to make things interesting. Michigan entered the matchup with the skill-edge that was expected, but recent offensive struggles have opened a door for the Spartans to believe they can hang around and make it a real game. Plenty can change before kickoff, but for Michigan State, the path to competing suddenly looks a lot less distant than it did not long ago. [Read more 🡒]