Michigan State football has its homecoming game this week hosting Illinois marking quarterback Katin Houser’s return to East Lansing.
Michigan State football team under Pat Fitzgerald has been sputtering out of control in the past three games after a 2-0 start against two solid Mid-American Conference schools. Once they made the trip to South Bend and Big Ten play started against Nebraska it was all downhill from there. First Cam Edwards is lost for the season in the first quarter of the Nebraska game. Then Jordan Hall misses the Wisconsin game and the defense cannot stop the run at all letting up 228 yards on the ground. Two embarrassing conference losses has the Spartans coming back home to take on the Illinois Fighting Illini led by former MSU quarterback Katin Houser. Illinois is coming off of an embarrassing home loss to the Purdue Boilermakers. To put how embarrassing it was into perspective, Purdue had not won a Big Ten game since 2023. This is a matchup on homecoming that the Spartans have a legitimate chance of winning before the rest of the schedule comes into play.
This game is basically the definition of stoppable force versus movable object. The Michigan State offense has been dreadful the past few weeks, especially since losing Cam Edwards. Their total offensive yardage is 305.6 yards per game which is 126th in the FBS and their total scoring is 18.2 points per game which ranks 125th in the FBS. There are 138 FBS programs. Meanwhile, the Illinois defense ranks 97th in total yardage allowed at 381.8 yards per game and 94th in points per game allowed averaging 26. The Illinois defense is bad and the MSU offense is even worse. This could be the game where Alessio Milivojevic gets his groove back and starts to play like he did at the end of last year again. MSU’s offense has thrown for 182 yards per game this season and over the past three games Alessio has hit 123, 208, and 103 passing yards. Struggling to barely get over 100 yards in that Wisconsin game is a big concern. However, the Illinois defense is allowing 255 passing yards per game as their secondary struggles to cover much at all. This could be the opportunity Milivojevic has to get back into a rhythm and get Chrishon McCray and Rodney Bullard Jr. going.
It could be a challenge for the MSU defense to rebound however as Illinois’ offense averages 404.8 yards per game and rushes for 155.6 yards per game. After seeing what the defense gave up against Wisconsin, Illinois will try to outscore MSU and get the morale down early in the game. Houser has been really good so far to start the season throwing for 1,246 yards, 11 touchdowns and three interceptions but his defense has not been able to stop anything this year so his play has not meant too much to Illinois. This is a game where Houser can show what MSU lost when they let him transfer away when Jonathan Smith was hired as the head coach of the program and brought Aidan Chiles with him. The good news for the Spartans defense is that Jordan Hall is expected to make a return to the team which should impact them greatly.
This is a very important game for Michigan State as a former Spartan quarterback visits Spartan Stadium on their homecoming and is favored to win. This could be a key win for Pat Fitzgerald early in his MSU tenure in what looks to be an otherwise disastrous season. This game and the next are crucial to the rest of the year to determine how Fitzgerald’s first campaign ends up.
