Another game, another loss.

This past Saturday, the Spartans played their first road game over in Iowa City, Iowa. Coming into this game, expectations were very low. The Spartans had lost their past two games before this to Washington and Maryland. However, this game was closer than the other two had been.

For almost the whole game, no team had been down more than 7 points. MSU had the lead until 5:19 left in the fourth quarter when Iowa kicker Drew Stevens tied the game with a 36-yard field goal to tie the game at 16-16.

The next possession for MSU did not go well whatsoever. On first down, MSU quarterback Noah Kim threw an incomplete pass. Second down, Kim threw a pass to Montorie Foster Jr. for seven yards. Then, the bad starts to happen. On third down, MSU gets backed up five yards by a false start penalty on Alante Brown. Then, just before the snap, Brown gets another false start penalty, backing the Spartans up five more yards. Now it’s 3rd and 13 on the MSU 22-yard line, and Kim throws yet another incomplete pass, forcing the Spartans to punt the ball away back in their own territory.

Ryan Eckley punted the ball away to Iowa’s returner Cooper DeJean. DeJean caught the ball at his own 30-yard line without an MSU jersey within 15 yards of him. Then, he took off. He sprinted down the near sideline, getting tons of blocks from his teammates. DeJean ran 70 yards all the way into the Michigan State endzone to put Iowa into the lead.

With Iowa now up 23-16, it was MSU’s turn to get the ball back. And not to my surprise, on the second play of the drive, Michigan State’s Tre Mosley fumbled the ball, and Iowa recovered it. Iowa, a few plays later, proceeded to kick a field goal to further extend their lead. The score was now 26-16.

MSU got the ball back with 59 seconds left in the game. MSU was trying to get down the field and get a touchdown as quickly as they could, but on the 5th play of the drive, Kim threw an interception to Iowa to seal the game away.

In this game, Kim threw three interceptions. I think that we should have started Katin Houser last week versus Maryland, and this week, I was hoping that we would start him, but that did not happen. Houser didn’t even touch the field this game.

MSU has a bye this week, and hopefully, this will help us improve in all areas. Their next game will be on the road against Rutgers, and once again, they are coming in as the underdogs. Hopefully, this struggling Spartan team can figure things out and be competitive when they play Rutgers.