Fantastic, Functional, Forgettable: Milivojevic, MSU triumph, Michigan’s defensive plan a dud

Detroit — Michigan State picked up a strong win against Maryland to end the regular season in the Mitten on Saturday night at Ford Field. 

And with it, the postseason comes into focus. One Mitten team, Western Michigan, is conference title bound, and the Broncos, along with Michigan and Central Michigan, will be bowl bound when the games are slotted a week from now. 

But before then, it’s time to dig in to the final week of the regular season, one where WMU beat EMU, 31-21 on Tuesday before a trio of Saturday games: Ohio State beat Michigan, Toledo beat Central Michigan and the Spartans were victorious. And there was lots of good, a fair bit that was bad, and lots in between. 

Let’s dig in. 

Fantastic

Western Michigan’s turnaround: Western Michigan sat at 0-3 already and trailed Toledo, at home, 13-0, with about 20 minutes left in the game. The Broncos came back to win that game, and have not looked back since. Including that victory, the Broncos went 8-1 in the final nine games and ripped of a 7-1 record in the MAC to secure first place in the league and a bid to the conference title game on Dec. 6 at Ford Field.

It’s been a miraculous turnaround for this team, one that’s seen quarterback Broc Lowry be the first WMU quarterback in a century to rush for more than a dozen touchdowns in a year and defensive coordinator Chris O’Leary end up on the shortlist for assistant coach of the year. And for their efforts, the Broncos get another crack at Miami (OH), the only team to defeat them in MAC play, in the conference title game. 

Michigan State’s rush defense: Maryland isn’t a prolific rushing offense, but this unit has been a stalwart for the MSU defense of late and showed up in a big way on Saturday night. After the first half, Maryland had just 33 yards on eight carries. And things didn’t get much better as the game went on, as the Terrapins did score a touchdown on the ground but finished with 75 yards on 15 carries. 

With strong play down the stretch run from Alex VanSumeren, Grady Kelly, Ru’Quan Buckley, Jalen Satchell and a plethora of others, the Spartans have anchored a strong defensive second half of the season around a stout rushing defense. That showed up once more, against Maryland, and helped the Michigan State defense lead the Spartans, at last, to a Big Ten win this year. 

Alessio Milivojevic: MSU might have QB1 for 2026 in Milivojevic, should he stay with a new staff. He picked up his first win as a starter last night and finished his second college season with a 27-of-39 passing line for 292 yards and four touchdowns, plus an interception. He led a crisp two-minute drill at the end of the first half for MSU to score a touchdown in :55 seconds and connected on a 4th down touchdown in the final minutes to seal the game.

It was the best outing of a young career for Milivojevic, and an earned payoff after the Spartans had a series of close calls in his first three starts. Milivojevic’s ascendence is thorny for how MSU handles him and Aidan Chiles, but redshirt freshman showed a lot of good in his final outing of 2025. 

Michigan State’s offensive line: Jonathan Smith rolled out a new-look group on Saturday night in what turned out to be his final game at MSU, starting a five-man group, left to right, of Rustin Young, Gavin Broscious, Cooper Terpstra, Rakeem Johnson and Conner Moore. Young and Johnson are redshirt freshmen and Terpstra, a former walk-on, is a redshirt sophomore. Moore and Broscious were the relative veterans of the group as redshirt juniors. 

And the combination worked and worked well, for the most part. MSU had a spate of early false starts, something Smith said needs to get cleaned up, but he was content with the overall performance. MSU ran for more than 5 yards a carry and didn’t give up a sack for the first time in Big Ten play. Milivojevic played his part in dodging the pressure, but it was an overall strong showing from a group that had been the root of many of MSU’s offensive problems this year. 

Tailique Williams: Williams actually didn’t catch a pass in Western Michigan’s season-ending win at Eastern Michigan, but the graduate transfer receiver has stepped into the breach and made plays every time the Broncos have needed one. He caught a critical 4th and 10 pass to set up the go-ahead score vs. Toledo. He caught the game-winning TD against Central Michigan. His 71-yard catch and run set up a key score to take the lead vs. Ohio. 

And against EMU, Williams had five carries and took an end around 36 yards for the opening touchdown for the Broncos. He finished with 67 yards and has continually shown up and made plays when the Broncos have needed him. It hasn’t been the easiest or most consistently productive season for Williams, but he’s been a quietly key piece to Western Michigan having the season it did.

Functional

Michigan State’s run game: The Spartans carried 31 times for 161 yards. MSU didn’t score a rushing touchdown, as Alessio Milivojevic has four touchdowns and Alante Brown returned a kickoff for a touchdown. But the lack of finding the end zone is really immaterial to how effective the Spartans were on the ground. And that effectiveness helped pace MSU to a Big Ten win.

Elijah Tau-Tolliver led the way with 13 carries for 95 yards and Brandon Tullis also ran hard, going for 46 yards on nine totes. At the end of the game, MSU finished at 5.2 yards per carry in one of its best offensive performances of the season all around. It just got the job done and looked good in the process as MSU beat the Terrapins. 

Michigan’s rushing offense (especially before the Marshall re-injury): The Wolverines rushing output on Saturday was workable to start and Michigan eventually got away from the run late needing to throw to get back in the game. But the Wolverines ran on 18 of the first 22 plays of the game — something head coach Sherrone Moore said was not specifically the plan — and had some success. Marshall reaggravated his shoulder injury and the rushing attack didn’t have as much down-to-down juice afterwards, but he finished with 7 carries for 61 yards, starting with a 36 yarder on the first play from scrimmage. 

Bryson Kuzdzal had some moments but wasn’t as effective and Bryce Underwood was entirely erased as a rushing threat for most of the game, despite mostly avoiding sacks. The end result for Michigan was 24 carries for 100 yards. Nothing flashy, and surely not enough to win, but Michigan could get things going a bit on the ground before the game got away from the Wolverines. 

Joe Labas and Central Michigan’s pass offense: Since Angel Flores went down prior to the WMU game, Labas has been tasked with dropping back and throwing more for the Chippewas. And despite an uptick in interceptions — he threw another on Saturday — he’s been a generally accurate and on-time quarterback for the Chippewas. And he did his best to give the Chippewas a shot against Toledo with the run game not working. 

Labas finished 19-of-30 for 242 yards and the interception, which came on a stunning individual effort from Toledo star safety Emmanuel McNeil-Warren. With the rushing offense working at a 2.3 yard per carry clip, CMU needed Labas’ arm to keep the offense moving. And while they couldn’t find the end zone, he did make the Chippewas offense functional. 

Eastern Michigan’s final month: The Eagles did lose to Western Michigan in the finale, but it wasn’t for a lack of fight. And after going down 31-7, EMU fought back to make it 31-21. And further, in that game, the Eagles averaged 7.2 yards per play, one of the worst outings for the WMU defense all year. But turnovers cost them. 

Regardless, EMU finished the season going 2-1 in the month of November, playing some good football and showing improvement on both offense and defense. The Eastern Michigan team in the final month of the season is probably closer to what head coach Chris Creighton imagined this squad could be, and the Eagles deserve some credit for not folding at 2-7, turning around, and finishing the year strong. 

Forgettable

Michigan’s defensive game plan, pass rush: Michigan linebacker Jimmy Rolder said postgame after Michigan’s 27-9 loss to Ohio State that the game plan for the defense was more coverage based. And the product on the field showed that, as Wink Martindale consistently called for four man rushes with seven men in coverage, seemingly to dedicate extra attention to shutting down Ohio State’s vaunted receiver duo of Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate. 

The result? Smith and Tate combined for eight catches, 122 yards and two touchdowns, and Michigan finished with no sacks and barely even a hurry on Julian Sayin. The thought behind the plan, to make Sayin stand and hold the ball, had merit in theory but it quickly fell apart in practice as he calmly found completions in the zones or when his guys eventually won vs. man coverage, plus got aided by elite schemes from OC Brian Hartline and head coach Ryan Day. It proved to be the wrong game plan, and one that de-fanged Michigan’s pass rush entirely and the Buckeyes played from a step ahead. 

Michigan State’s false starts: The Spartans committed a bevy of false starts early in the game which managed to not cost them but will certainly deserve some attention. It’s not necessarily surprising that a group of offensive linemen who largely haven’t played together, and with a center making his first start, could be a bit disjointed. 

But MSU had something like half a dozen false starts against Maryland that consistently put the offense behind the sticks. It’s not anything that will be of import in the coming months as MSU doesn’t play again until next fall, but it’s troublesome that it persisted so long in the game. The good news is, if they want to, all five of the linemen who started Saturday can return to MSU and run it back — there’s reason to believe this group can catapult into 2026. 

Michigan’s passing game: What, ultimately, is the point of having a player of Bryce Underwood’s caliber if not to let him try and win you the most important game of the season? Or, perhaps, when you’re so overmatched by your annual measuring stick — receivers blanketed, pass rush creating disruption, lacking QB development, getting outfoxed by the opposing play caller — Underwood didn’t get enough help, anyways. 

Whatever the reason, Michigan avoided putting the game on Underwood’s shoulders early and didn’t really start having him drop back with any consistency until down by two scores. Concurrently, his favorite target, Andrew Marsh, got locked up and got no targets as the Michigan pass catchers at large had little ability to win individually against Ohio State defenders. Michigan has now gone back-to-back seasons with an incapable passing offense against top competition, and there’s no excuse for that to be a three-year problem, no matter the reasons.

Central Michigan’s run game: Toledo is a talented and deep MAC defense, one of the best units in the league year-on-year. And it showed against a Central Michigan rushing attack that, while generally playing better than the sum of its parts, doesn’t have much talent in the trenches. A similar outcome happened against Western Michigan. But while it might just be the realities of roster limitations for a new coaching staff, the end result Saturday was still bad. 

Central Michigan carried the ball 36 times for a net 81 yards. That does include Labas taking four sacks for -34 yards. But even removing those, Central Michigan had 32 carries for 115 yards. That’s a jump from 2.3 yards per carry to 3.6 — it just didn’t get the job done for a team that is built around taking air out of the ball and controlling games with the rushing attack. 

Eastern Michigan’s turnovers: The Eagles turned it over five times against WMU, all from the hand of quarterback Noah Kim. Two interceptions came on tipped balls that the Broncos came down with, and the third came later in the game as he tried to throw the Eagles back into the game. He also got sack fumbled once and lost another fumble on a red zone keeper. 

And while Kim bears the ultimate responsibility for these giveaways, the Eagles receivers could’ve helped him out a bit on a couple of turnovers. Regardless of fault, it's difficult — not impossible, as Michigan showed vs. Northwestern — to win a game when you lose the turnover battle 5-0.