Madison, Wis. — When Andrew Maxwell took the field with just over six minutes remaining and Wisconsin leading 10-3, the feeling of déjà vu was unmistakable.
MSU already had lost three of four Big Ten games by a combined six points, the Spartans were forced to rally from a halftime deficit for the seventh time in nine games, and MSU hadn’t even cracked 200 yards of total offense.
It was seemingly the same game Spartan football fans had seen every week this season.
Not only was the offense unable to move the ball all afternoon, it had become the type of close game this MSU team had proven unable to win.
The type of game that needed a player to breakout and make a game-winning play to steal a victory against a team with the second-longest home winning streak in the nation, and in a stadium where MSU’s football program hadn’t won in more than a decade.
And with Maxwell barely having completed 50 percent of his passes and averaging less than five yards per pass attempt on the afternoon, there wasn’t any reason to believe anything would be different.
Yet, it was in that moment that everything changed.
The junior quarterback went on a tear, completing nine of his next 11 passes for 81 yards, including two touchdowns, the first to junior running back Le’Veon Bell with 1:08 remaining and the second to junior receiver Bennie Fowler in overtime to stun Wisconsin (6-3 overall, 3-2 Big Ten) 16-13 and send the Spartans (5-4, 2-3) sprinting out onto the field victoriously.
Despite the doubt from outside the program that surrounded his offense in recent weeks, head coach Mark Dantonio said his confidence in Maxwell never wavered.
It’s both Maxwell’s mental and physical makeup that Dantonio said make him certain he has the right man to lead his team.
“I’ve got a very confident young man on the field, (a) guy that was going to step up and go,” Dantonio said.
“I think sometimes when you’re a young player, you just don’t want to mess it up, let’s just not mess it up. You can’t do that with the quarterback position. You have to go at it. I think that’s what he did in the second half. Even if we had just three points he was going at it. … (I’m) really excited for him and for his family and for our Spartan nation.”
It was the final answer Dantonio would give Saturday night and perhaps his most prideful response of the year.
As he went to leave, he stood up from his seat, definitively slammed the table and proclaimed, “Go green!” with a smile as he walked away.
The prideful smile didn’t come from MSU dominating from start to finish.
Heck, the Spartans were outplayed for most of the afternoon, but that’s not what this game was about.
They had games where they’d been the better team for most of the day and lost.
They had moments where Bell was hurdling defenders, and yet they couldn’t get over the top.
They had times when the defense appeared to be one of the most dominant units in the country, and they still weren’t able to get it done.
For a team that had suffered its fair share of heartbreak, what they truly needed was a win, and not because it revitalizes their bowl chances or could be the spark that turns the season around.
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They needed it to lift the cloud of losing and affirm once again that these aren’t the “Same Old Spartans,” high on talent and low on composure.
It wasn’t pretty and it hardly was resounding, but by winning in gritty, grind-it-out, come-from-behind fashion, the Spartans returned to the core principles Dantonio has made synonymous with MSU football, and in the end, there’s no more positive sign than that.
