With Michigan and Michigan State playing this weekend in a historic rivalry, it is time to look back on one of, if not the best, game of the entire series.
Michigan State and Michigan have gone back-and-forth playing each other since 1898. Of course, that was when Michigan State was known as Michigan Agricultural College, and Michigan had been playing football for longer than State had. Since then, there have been plenty of great games in this series’ history.
One of the most recent ones came in 2021, when Kenneth Walker III ran for 197 yards and five touchdowns to beat Michigan 37-33. That guy seems to be pretty good. I wonder what he is up to now? Or back in 2001, when Spartan Bob and Clockgate became a thing, with an extra second on the clock for Michigan State to find T.J. Duckett for a Spartans victory. More about that game can be read here.
The game we will revisit today happened 11 years ago, when MSU went into The Big House and stunned Michigan on the last play of the game.
October 17, 2015, was the date as Connor Cook took the undefeated Spartans into Ann Arbor to play the Michigan Wolverines. The Wolverines were led by Jake Rudock at quarterback, and it was Jim Harbaugh’s first season as the coach at Michigan. Harbaugh’s first game against the Spartans went as smooth as it could for 99% of the game.
The Wolverines actually controlled this matchup and led for a majority of the time until the very end. Rudock was efficient, throwing 168 yards, no touchdowns, and no interceptions. Neither team got anything out of their run games, while they both averaged less than two yards per carry.
This game was all on the shoulders of Connor Cook and the blunder at the end of the game for Michigan. Cook threw for 328 yards and one touchdown. Receiving for the Spartans was led by Aaron Burbridge, who had nine catches for 132 yards.
A big part of the reason why Michigan did not need to do much on offense this game to move the ball was due to Jabrill Peppers in the return game. He returned both kicks and punts for a combined 129 yards on six attempts. He was setting up the Wolverines offense all afternoon to take advantage of short fields and at least get field goals.
Michigan took a 23-14 lead with 9:25 left in the game after a four-play drive that was set up by a Jabrill Peppers punt return deep into Michigan State territory. The Spartans answered on the very next drive as Connor Cook hit Trevon Pendleton for a 74-yard gain, and L.J. Scott punched it in for the 1-yard touchdown to close the gap to 23-21 Wolverines.
From then on, it was three straight punts from both teams before Michigan State took a three-minute drive at the end of the game and turned it over on downs on a heave on fourth-and-19.
For most people, they thought that was the end of the game. That there was no way Michigan State could pull this one out. With less than two minutes and only one timeout left, this game was all-but-over.
That’s not what Mark Dantonio had in mind.
The Spartans forced a fourth down and a punting situation for Michigan, where all the Wolverines had to do was get off the punt, and they would win the game. There were 10 seconds left when they snapped it, so if they had gotten the punt off, then there was likely no shot MSU had any chance of winning.
All they had to do was get the punt off.
That’s when the now infamous words were uttered by Sean McDonough and his famous voice crack:
“Oh! He has trouble with the snap! And the ball is Free! It’s picked up by Michigan State! Jalen Watts-Jackson! And he scores! On the last play of the game!”
Those words will forever live in the minds of Michigan and Michigan State fans alike, as this game became infamous in rivalry history. The camera panning to the Michigan fan hitting the surrender cobra lives on in social media and in pregame hype videos for these teams. It is a game that will forever be remembered.
This rivalry is a storied one, with plenty of history, hatred, and lots of smack talk thrown at each other. This game is one of those games that just had to be experienced live to believe it.
Even Sean McDonough will reference it from time-to-time when asked about his best or favorite calls. I remember where I was when the game took place. Do you?