Ahead of the upcoming matchup, The State News’ football beat writer Jenna Malinowski spoke with Eddie Rosenthal of The Western Herald to get a preview of MSU’s first opponent of the season. 

Q: What are your overall expectations for the game? 

A: "I'll start with Michigan State. Their run defense is one of the top in the league, or the country, really. So that's our offense basically is all of our runs off the run game. We lost our quarterback. We lost our top wide receiver. Our quarterback now, he's a guy who was thrown I think less than 10 passes in college football. Our top wide receiver, in my eyes, is Corey Crooms. He's a returning wide receiver. He played pretty well last year and had a touchdown in the bowl game, so that's really going to be the bulk of our passing offense in my eyes, which Michigan State was not great last year. I believe they were actually last in yards per game in passing last year. It's different. We're in the MAC, you know, we had a pretty good defense, but it's all relative. I really think that Michigan State just being a Big 10 team, Western’s coming to town. We do this every year. It's going to be tough. Our run game is really going to have to work, which like I said, Michigan State's pretty good at holding that down. I think we'll have to get out to a hot start and kind of upset Payton Thorne a little bit early and maybe get some early turnovers to have anything happen."

Q Who do you think is a player on Western that is going to surprise people that Michigan State might not be prepared for?

A: "Sean Tyler, our running back. I think he is really the star player of our offense and was still just an underrated name that not many people at Michigan State will know. He had a breakout year last year at the running back position, almost 1200 yards and I think nine touchdowns. La’Darius Jefferson was actually a Michigan State transfer so he might be a little surprise there because he had 10 touchdowns last year. I think he might have a bit of an impact there, so anyone who remembers him from Michigan State is going to have a lot of fun, and people will start remembering his name a little bit."

Q: Do you think Western Michigan is going to focus more on the run game, knowing that MSU doesn’t really know what they have at that position yet, or do you think they're going to focus more on the passing game knowing what Payton Thorne can do?

A: "I think the main focus probably should be the passing game. Just like you said, knowing that they have an established passing game and there's not really a starting running back yet. Obviously, you're going to have only talent in a Big Ten running back room, so I'm sure there's a lot of focus on that, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some blitzes. Personally, I think that's what I would do. I'm not a college football coach, you know, but I would probably send some blitzes, try to upset Payton Thorne early, try to get the running game going."

Q: What is your final score prediction?

A: "I think Mel Tucker's coming with fire this year. He wants to win the Big Ten, he wants to go to the college football playoffs, that's clearly a goal for him, or an expectation really. I don't expect them to fall too easily. I think Michigan State comes out with a win here. They'll pull away in the second half if they even need to. I think the final score will probably be somewhere around the Michigan game last year, we’ll say Michigan State 38 to 21."