2. Western Michigan at Michigan State
LINE Michigan State -23.5
ATS PICK Western Michigan
Well that moved quickly.
The line started out at a reasonable Michigan State -16.5 and got hammered very, very hard to get to -23.5.
It’s dumb to take what happened several years ago into account when coming up the outcome of a game this week – even though I keep doing it – but Michigan State always has a way of underwhelming right out of the gate.
Remember how scary the 38-31 win over Utah State was to kick off the 2018 season? How about struggling a bit in a 28-7 lid-lifter against a bad Tulsa squad in 2019?
Last year’s team only got by Western Kentucky by 17, had to fight to get past Indiana, and only beat Youngstown State by more than 24 points. A 27-0 win over Rutgers in 2018 was the only time in the last 30 games against FBS teams that the team beat someone by 24 or more.
It was mostly under the former coaching staff, but even when the Spartans were great, they still needed a little while to get going – the 2015 Big Ten champion needed a push to get by Western Michigan 37-24 in the opener, had issues with Air Force for a little while, and …
Enough. Sorry. No current Michigan State Spartan has a clue what happened against the Broncos seven years ago.
Michigan State will win this, but Western Michigan is good.
The offense might need to find some new key parts, but the ground game will move, the defense can get into the backfield, and this almost certainly won’t be anything close to the 47-14 wipeout against Michigan to start last season.