Fitzgerald’s first MSU win revealed both the problems and the possibilities

EAST LANSING – Pat Fitzgerald’s first Michigan State team did not make opening night easy on itself.

The Spartans settled for four field goals after their opening touchdown, surrendered two enormous plays defensively, allowed three sacks, and watched leads of 13-0 and 19-7 disappear before falling behind by one early in the fourth quarter.

Then Michigan State showed Fitzgerald something more important than polish in the first game of his tenure.

It responded.

That word has occupied a prominent place in Fitzgerald’s messaging since he began rebuilding the program approximately nine months ago. It sits directly beneath winning on the value pyramid inside Michigan State’s football building, separating the deliberate action Fitzgerald demands from the emotional reaction he believes leads teams further into trouble.

Friday night, it became more than a slogan.

Michigan State regained control after Toledo took the lead, scored 11 unanswered points in the fourth quarter, and emerged with a 30-20 victory that provided an imperfect but meaningful first look at what Fitzgerald is attempting to build.

“You have to respond to win,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s tried, true, and tested in every athletic competition. It’s never going to be a yellow brick road to success. It could be injury, it could be bad plays, it could be bad coaching, whatever it might be. You’ve got to be able to respond to it instead of react.”

The Spartans have plenty to correct, and Fitzgerald made no attempt to conceal it. Michigan State’s defense allowed a 60-yard touchdown pass after a breakdown in eye discipline and a 71-yard touchdown run when two defenders filled the same gap. The offense controlled the ball for 43 minutes and 16 seconds and scored on each of its five first-half possessions, but four of those drives ended with Liam Boyd field goals.

Michigan State ran 83 plays, gained 397 yards, recorded 26 first downs to Toledo’s 10, and did not commit a turnover. In most respects, the Spartans controlled the game.

Toledo stayed in it because that control was interrupted by a handful of high-impact Spartan failures.

The 60-yard touchdown pass from John Alan Richter to Adjatay Dabbs and Connor Walendzak’s 71-yard touchdown run accounted for 131 of Toledo’s 273 yards. On its other 39 plays, Toledo managed 142 yards – an average of just 3.6 yards per snap.

Michigan State had the opposite problem. Its offense consistently stayed on the field but struggled to turn possession into separation. The Spartans converted only 6 of 18 third downs, averaged 3.1 yards per rushing attempt, and produced one touchdown from five first-half scoring possessions.

Boyd’s five field goals were essential to the victory, but they also covered for an offense that repeatedly moved into scoring range without reaching the end zone.

Fitzgerald was particularly disappointed with the way Michigan State emerged from halftime. The Spartans failed to score in the third quarter, surrendered the momentum they had established, and allowed Toledo to turn the game into the kind of fourth-quarter fight Michigan State appeared capable of avoiding earlier in the evening.

“If you’re in a fight, all of a sudden you got hit in the gut, and now you got hit in the face, and you’re stunned a little bit,” Fitzgerald said. “We just talked about what we value, and that’s respond. It’s all you heard on our boundary – respond, respond.”

There was recent history behind the concern when Toledo erased Michigan State’s 19-7 halftime lead and moved ahead early in the fourth quarter.

Michigan State entered Friday night coming off four consecutive losing seasons. Only 10 months earlier at Iowa, the Spartans carried a 17-7 lead into the fourth quarter, surrendered 13 unanswered points, and lost on a field goal as time expired. That defeat was the seventh loss of an eight-game skid during a 4-8 season that brought Jonathan Smith’s tenure to an end after two years.

Against Toledo, Michigan State again watched a game it had controlled begin to turn.

This time, the Spartans answered the opponent’s go-ahead touchdown with a 70-yard touchdown drive of their own.

Fitzgerald had attempted to prepare his team for precisely that moment.

Michigan State ends each practice with...