Cam Edwards took 12 carries for 38 yards in the rain in South Bend, and after halftime Michigan State did not gain a single rushing yard. The Spartans finished with 27 carries for 44 net yards and 40 total yards in the second half of a 27-10 loss at Notre Dame, and Edwards had walked into that game leading the Big Ten in rushing. Michigan State trailed only 17-10 at the break, a 32-yard field goal and Cam Fancher's 15-yard touchdown run got them there, and then scored nothing at all.
That is the whole story of Week 3 for a team whose first two games were built on the opposite. In the opener Michigan State held the ball for 43 minutes and 16 seconds, with Edwards taking eight of the 13 snaps on the first drive. A week later the Spartans ran for 258 yards against Eastern Michigan, 152 of them from Edwards on 21 carries with two touchdowns and a 40-yard long run. Pat Fitzgerald sold possession football in September and Michigan State delivered it twice. Notre Dame took it away in one half.
Fitzgerald did not soften it. "I'm pissed," he said. "We came down here to win a game and we didn't execute cleanly." He pointed at pass protection and one-on-one losses up front, and at press-coverage technique on the back end, and he waved off any moral-victory framing. He is treating it as blocking and technique. Nebraska will tell you whether he's right.
Saturday, 5 p.m. ET, BTN
Michigan State hosts Nebraska at Spartan Stadium in the Big Ten opener, and the Spartans are home underdogs, Nebraska opened around a 4.5-point favorite. The simulation gives Michigan State a 37% chance to win.
The Huskers arrive 3-0 having outscored three nonconference opponents by a combined 104 points, ranking top-12 nationally in scoring, rushing and total offense and top-16 in scoring and pass defense. Freshman back Jamal Rule is averaging 109.7 rushing yards per game with six total touchdowns, the most by a Husker through three games since 2011. None of that came against a Big Ten front, and Michigan State's defensive line gets the first crack at finding out whether it holds up.
Spartan Stadium is the other reason to be hopeful. Michigan State has won the last two meetings in East Lansing by three points each, the 2021 overtime game and 2023, and Nebraska's only win here in the series came back in 2012. The Huskers did win the most recent meeting, 38-27 in Lincoln last October, and the shape of that night is worth remembering. Nebraska led 14-0, Michigan State clawed all the way back to 21-21 through three quarters, and Nebraska closed on a 17-6 fourth-quarter run. Michigan State has already lost one fourth quarter this season to a team that got to its quarterback late.
Where the game is won
Watch the line of scrimmage on Michigan State's first two possessions. If Edwards is getting four yards before contact the way he did in the first two weeks, everything else in this offense works, including quarterback Alessio Milivojevic. If he isn't, you will see the same sequence as South Bend, because Milivojevic has not yet had to win a game without the run game underneath him. He went 9-of-17 for 123 yards at Notre Dame with two interceptions, the first of his season, on his first road trip against a ranked defense. His 53-yard throw to Rodney Bullard Jr. set up the only touchdown. Nothing else in that stat line was good, and protection broke down for four sacks, three of them in the fourth quarter. A quarterback in his first full season does not need to be protected from pressure forever, but he does need it Saturday.
On defense, the anchor is in place and the depth behind him isn't settled. Jordan Hall came back from the right-arm injury that cost him Week 2 and led the team with 13 tackles at Notre Dame while wearing a bulky brace, his third career double-digit game, and the reason Fitzgerald called him "an All-Big Ten level player... he's a war daddy." But Brady Pretzlaff, the linebacker who wore the defensive communication helmet while Hall was out, left in the second quarter and did not return, and tight end Jay Coyne and defensive lineman Cal Thrush were hurt on kickoffs. Edwards himself needed help from the training staff late, though Fitzgerald said he was not on the postgame injury report and appeared fine.
You will get real information on Pretzlaff before kickoff for once. Fitzgerald declined to give an injury or a timeline, but the Big Ten's expanded availability report applies only to conference games, so Michigan State has to disclose player statuses for the first time this season this week, starting Wednesday. Check it. If Pretzlaff is out, Hall carries the middle in a brace against a top-12 rushing offense and a freshman back who has run through everyone he's seen.
What Saturday actually settles
This is the first Big Ten sample of the season, and six wins is still the thing the year is measured against. A win over Nebraska would be one of those six, and the four games after it (at Wisconsin, home for Illinois and Northwestern, at UCLA) are the stretch where a bowl season is either built or quietly lost.
So the win would be worth a lot more than a 37% game usually is. But the thing to actually watch, win or lose, is whether Michigan State is still running the ball in the fourth quarter. Two home wins in September said the Spartans could impose a game. One half in South Bend said they couldn't do it against a real defense. Nebraska's front is the tiebreaker.
Full numbers are in the interactive guide, and the methodology explains how the projections are built.