Head coach Mark Dantonio said the loss against No. 11 Notre Dame last week has been put behind the team and helped to strengthen the resolve of his players.

“I think we can still have a very good football team,” Dantonio said. “All of our goals are in front of us. That’s what’s important in this aspect here: everything is in front of us.”

For the Spartans, they’re giving Eastern Michigan no less attention than they would any of the 11 other teams on the schedule, despite the Eagles being outscored 56-122 in the previous three games.

Besides, after trouncing Central Michigan 41-7 earlier this year, the Spartans followed that up with a poor performance at home.

Junior quarterback Andrew Maxwell said he needs to see even more from his team this week than he did against CMU to ensure MSU doesn’t come out flat in its Big Ten opener against No. 16 Ohio State.

“We just want to get back on track as an offense,” Maxwell said. “We want to get back to doing what we do best — that’s running the football, being effective in the passing game (and) having those explosive gains; coming out fast (and) finishing strong.”

The Spartans also hope to see more production out of their defensive unit, which allowed its first two touchdowns of the season against the Irish on Saturday.

Defensive line coach Ted Gill said he expects to see Eastern Michigan’s Alex Gillett move around in the backfield as well to avoid the pass rush.

“They run bootleg, which gets out of the pocket, they run a sprint-out pass that turns the corner and gets upfield, they may drop back occasionally, but most of the time, they run out of the pocket,” Gill said.

Although the defense only has gotten to the quarterback twice this year, Dantonio said he didn’t see the lack of big numbers in the box score as an indication the defensive line was in trouble.

“(Opponents) haven’t been scoring a whole lot of points in three games. You have to look at that (and) say we’re playing well enough to win, (and we) need to continue to do that,” he said.