Michigan State running back Zion Gist (20) runs down the field with the ball after shaking off an Eastern Michigan defender in Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Mich., on Saturday, Sept. 12, 2026. The Spartans would end up winning the game 35-7 after a strong second half.
It was fourth-and-five, and the game was all but decided at 35-7 as Michigan State football looked to run out the clock. The Spartans could have tried a field goal, but handed the ball to junior running back Brandon Tullis instead, who barreled through the middle, carrying defenders for a 12-yard gain and the win.
That play summed up the half of MSU football played tonight.
A dominant second half turned a 14-7 halftime lead into a 35-7 blowout of Eastern Michigan, improving MSU's record to 2-0 ahead of a marquee matchup against No. 3 Notre Dame next weekend.
“The emphasis coming out of last week was to start fast in the third quarter. Again, there was no emphasis on let’s have a lull in the second (quarter),” MSU head coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “You achieve what you emphasize typically. So we’ve got to put together a complete game. We haven’t done that yet.”
The game started similarly to last week: The Spartans won the coin toss, kicked off to their opponent, and forced a punt just three plays later. But this time, they didn't respond with a score on their opening drive.
It was the complete opposite. MSU's offense was only on the field for three plays, gaining only one yard before punting right back to the Eagles. EMU's defense pressured sophomore quarterback Alessio Milivojevic early, forcing a sack on second down followed by a one-yard scramble to escape pressure on third.
Despite the offense's slow start, the defense stood tall early, forcing another punt from the Eagles after just six plays — one that would set up the Spartans' first score.
A line-drive punt that traveled 44 yards found senior wide receiver Chrishon McCray on the sideline, and he made multiple defenders miss on his way to a 31-yard return, starting the MSU offense at EMU's 24-yard line. Three plays later, Milivojevic found junior wide receiver Fredrick Moore for an 18-yard touchdown, the Michigan transfer's first at MSU, giving the Spartans a 7-0 first-quarter lead.
Another Eagles punt set up another Spartan score, this time from a one-yard rush after graduate running back Cam Edwards took the direct snap, capping a 16-play, 80-yard drive that took 7:19 off the clock and pushed the MSU lead to 14-0 with 8:40 left until halftime.
Edwards led the charge for MSU, finishing with two touchdowns and accounting for 152 of the team's 258 rushing yards on 21 attempts. The biggest difference in the Spartan rushing attack was explosiveness. After producing no rushing plays over 20 yards last week, Edwards broke off gains of 33 and 40 yards.
“I think the run game was great. It makes it a lot easier on me to go out there and win a game when you got a guy like this running for, I don’t know how many it was,” Milivojevic said about Edwards. “I think together, mixing in run, pass; it makes it a tough offense to stop.”
EMU's offense answered right back, going 78 yards in 13 plays over 6:50, as quarterback Noah Kim scored the Eagles' first touchdown of the game on a 4-yard run to cut the Spartan lead to 14-7.
Kim, a former MSU quarterback who started five games for the Spartans in 2023, finished his return to East Lansing with 118 passing yards on 16-of-26 passing to go with the Eagles' lone touchdown.
After two drives ate up 13 minutes of the second quarter, MSU had just 1:50 to try to add one more score before halftime. But after driving to the EMU 38-yard line, a four-yard sack followed by a dropped pass stalled the drive and took the field goal off the table, leaving the Spartans leading just 14-7 against an Eagles team that went 4-8 last season.
“I thought they (Eastern Michigan) put together a good plan," Fitzgerald said. "They were more physical than we were in the second quarter on both sides of the ball."
With EMU controlling the clock and holding the ball for 18 of the first 30 minutes, the Eagles limited MSU to just four drives in the first half. A big reason: MSU's defense struggled to stop the run, as the Eagles compiled 107 first-half rushing yards, part of a 162-143 edge in total yardage, outgaining the Spartans by 19 yards at the break.
Part of that struggle could be traced to the absence of senior linebacker Jordan Hall, the defense's captain, who was sidelined for the game with an injury. Without its leader on the field, the Spartan defense continued to give up explosive plays, allowing four runs of more than 10 yards and a 22-yard pass in the first half.
Just like last week, MSU found itself in a one-score game in the second half against a Mid-American Conference opponent. But the Spartans came out of halftime a totally different team.
MSU's defense held EMU to just 57 yards in the second half, headlined by minus six rushing yards. The offense put on a show of its own, scoring 21 points and compiling 329 yards of total offense in the second half alone, a performance that allowed the Spartans to dominate not just the scoreboard, but the stat sheet, outgaining the Eagles 472-219 after trailing by 19 yards at the half.
“(We've) got a ton of work to do. We can’t allow a lull to happen," Fitzgerald said. "We cannot be out-physicaled, and we’ve got to get a lot better. And I look forward to working on that this week."
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The Spartans (2-0) will now hit the road for their next matchup against No. 3 Notre Dame (2-0) in the renewal of a rivalry that hasn't been played since 2017. The game is set for 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 19 at Notre Dame Stadium and will air on NBC.
