Michigan State blocked a Nebraska punt on fourth-and-6 Saturday, and safety Evan Young was flagged for holding on the play. Nebraska kept the ball and scored on a 44-yard touchdown pass three plays later. That sequence, plus a late hit by Charles Brantley that set up a Nebraska touchdown run and an unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty on edge rusher Kenny Soares Jr. that handed Nebraska an automatic first down on another scoring drive, is most of the story of a 31-13 home loss in the Big Ten opener. Only five penalties went against the Spartans, and three of them bought Nebraska points.
Pat Fitzgerald did not blame the roster. He said, “Just a lack of focus and discipline, and that’s on me,” and added that if the same players keep making the same mistakes, jobs are on the line. For a team this thin, those three flags were the cheapest points it gave away all day. Michigan State travels to Wisconsin at 12:30 p.m. ET Saturday on BTN, and the simulations give the Spartans about a 27% chance to win.
The giveaways travel worse than the penalties
The running game will not bail them out the way it was supposed to. Cam Edwards, the team's leading rusher, was carted off with a knee injury in the first quarter, and Fitzgerald said afterward that Edwards is "likely to be out for a while", with linebacker Jordan Hall's ankle timeline still unconfirmed. Backup Jaziun Patterson took over and ran 16 times for 54 yards and a 2-yard touchdown, Michigan State's only touchdown of the game. That is a real answer at the position and a modest one. Three and a half yards a carry as the primary back is survivable, not an identity. The passing game did not cover for it either. Alessio Milivojevic went 18-of-26 for 208 yards with an interception, Cam Fancher threw another on his designed change-of-pace series, and the line gave up five sacks on the two of them. Wisconsin's front will get the same chances in Madison.
Watch the linebackers and the front
Hall's leg injury on the first defensive snap of the third quarter matters more than the box score suggests. He led Michigan State with 88 tackles in 2025, is a captain, and is in his third season in Joe Rossi's defense. The closest thing this rebuilt unit has to an on-field coordinator. Brady Pretzlaff, a starting linebacker, was already ruled out against Nebraska, along with cornerback Tyran Chappell.
What held up anyway is the part worth watching Saturday. Post-game grading credited Michigan State's defensive line with playing the run well even while the offense struggled, and Caleb Wheatland led the team with nine tackles filling in at linebacker. Wisconsin will test exactly that. If the Spartans' front keeps the Badgers off schedule on first down, this stays a game into the second half regardless of what the offense manages.
Familiar faces on the other sideline
Fitzgerald built this staff partly out of Wisconsin. Running backs coach Devon Spalding spent three years coaching the Badgers' running backs, and cornerbacks coach Hank Poteat coached Wisconsin's cornerbacks before three seasons at Iowa State. Assistant defensive line coach Jake Chaney played linebacker at Camp Randall for four years, 80 tackles in 2023, before going undrafted and briefly signing with the Colts. Edge rusher Anelu Lafaele, a four-star signee who spent his true freshman season at Wisconsin, transferred to East Lansing and has worked into the pass-rush rotation. Four people on Michigan State's sideline know that building intimately, which is a nice thing to think about and not worth a point of spread.
The market has moved hard the other way. Wisconsin is a 10 to 10.5-point favorite after the Badgers' comeback win over Penn State landed the same weekend as Michigan State's mistake-filled loss. The last time the Spartans played in Madison, in October 2019, Wisconsin shut them out 38-0 and held them to 149 total yards.
Michigan State is 2-2 overall and 0-1 in the Big Ten, and a second conference loss would put a bowl push almost entirely on the November stretch. A win in Madison would be the best day of Fitzgerald's tenure. Short of that, the honest benchmark is whether Jaziun Patterson can carry the load Edwards was supposed to and whether the defensive line holds up for four quarters against a Wisconsin running game, so this trip to Madison does not finish the way the last one did. Full matchup details are in the interactive guide, and the forecasting approach is explained in the methodology.