Michigan State football is back in action on Saturday afternoon against a Richmond team that’s looking to bounce back. The Spartans are coming off a 31-7 win over Central Michigan while Richmond suffered a tough loss at the hands of Morgan State.<\/p>\n
This should be a nice confidence-booster before the Washington game — keyword being\u00a0should<\/em>.<\/p>\n Let’s dive into some fearless predictions.<\/p>\n I’m going to be the first to officially declare that I’m on the Antonio Gates Jr. bandwagon. There’s still a little bit of time to join before he blows up and becomes a star in East Lansing. While that may not be this year (my best bet would be 2024), he’s still going to show flashes of stardom.<\/p>\n One of those flashes will come on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n Gates will catch his first career pass as a Spartan early on for 15 yards and then continue to gain confidence throughout the game. He’s going to finish with four catches for 75 yards and a touchdown, really breaking out for the first time in his collegiate career. This is (hopefully) a sign of things to come.<\/p>\n Morgan State didn’t exactly have a ton of success on the ground against Richmond in a Week 1 win, averaging just 2.5 yards per carry, but this is Michigan State football. The Spartans are expected to dominate the trenches. And the Spartans will.<\/p>\n Admittedly, the offensive line was disappointing in the opener against Central as the Spartans rushed for just about 130 yards and only broke a couple of big runs, but this game will be different. The line will assert its dominance right away. The first run will be another 30-yard Nathan Carter scamper and he’ll finish the day with 120 yards on 15 carries with a touchdown, too. Jalen Berger will also rush for 100 yards on 13 carries with a score.<\/p>\n Two 100-yard rushers? That’s a great way to instill confidence in the run game before facing Washington.<\/p>\n The last time Michigan State pulled off a shutout was almost exactly a year ago in Week 2 against Akron. The Spartans dominated from start to finish, beating the Zips 52-0. I expect a similar result in this one.<\/p>\n While Richmond was supposed to be a decent FCS team this year, seeing the Spiders put up just 10 points against Morgan State in a loss was a bad look. That shows that Michigan State needs to dominate this game from start to finish. It really shouldn’t be close after a quarter.<\/p>\n I’m going with a 45-0 Michigan State win to send us into the Washington game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I want more offense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[306,59,191,189],"class_list":["post-6632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-antonio-gates-jr","tag-featured","tag-michigan-state-football","tag-michigan-state-spartans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}1. Antonio Gates Jr. has a breakout game<\/h3>\n
2. Michigan State has two 100-yard rushers<\/h3>\n
3. Michigan State gets the shutout<\/h3>\n