With five field goals, Moody led the team in scoring. As definitive as the loss was for the Spartans, had the red zone defense not been as strong as it was, the score would have been much more lopsided.

“I think we tackled better in the red zone,” fifth-year safety Xavier Henderson said. “That’s probably the main thing we did poorly was our tackling.”

Five stops on third down from the MSU defense resulted in 15 points from field goals. Had they failed, the Wolverines could have added on a maximum of 35 points to their score.

“Kids played hard,” Head Coach Mel Tucker said. “We held up on the red zone and that’s what we need to do, keep them to lower numbers.”

There's no doubt the defensive performance is what kept the game competitive going into halftime and that they performed well compared to other games this season, but if the Spartans want to be a competitive program and have seasons like the 2021 season, defensive stops will have to be more frequent and come from all over the field.

The issue with the defense is that it has shown time and time again that it can get stops on third down and that it can make game changing plays, but only in the red zone where scoring is almost inevitable.

Sure a field goal is a much better result for a defense than a touchdown, but had MSU gotten those stops earlier in the drives when Michigan was further down the field, the Spartans wouldn’t have even had to worry about that. 

Of course, for the game to be competitive the offense would have had to perform much better than it did, but from a strictly defensive standpoint the timing of MSU’s third down stops has been a weak point throughout the season and it was on full display against Michigan. 

Even when Michigan State was able to get stops outside of the red zone, it still couldn’t get stops that weren't within field goal range for Moody. His fifth and final field goal of the night was from 54 yards away.

While the “bend, don’t break” approach had some mild success for the team last season, it hasn’t worked this year. The issue now is while the defense had its problems last year, the offense was consistent and had both a dependable run and pass game. The run game has been almost nonexistent this season and the pass game has lacked consistency.

In just the matchup against Michigan, the Wolverines had 276 rushing yards while the Spartans had just 37. The Spartans did have 215 passing yards compared to U-M’s 167, but other than the one touchdown, they were unable to consistently string together plays that resulted in a trip to the end zone. In addition to the five field goals, the Wolverines were able to string together their explosive plays at the right times and get two trips to the end zone.

Because the offense isn’t having the production it had last season and a similar pattern has developed over the last few games, the defense can’t only “see the light” when the other team gets to the end zone.

Tucker constantly emphasizes the need to play 60 minutes of complementary football and defensively that means stops have to come from every inch of the field if the team hopes to get back in the win column.