Michigan State football<\/a> fans are just begging for some normalcy again. They’ll get it for at least a few hours on Saturday evening as No. 8 Washington comes to town.<\/p>\nA year ago, No. 11 Michigan State fell short against the Huskies on the road, 39-28, and that felt like the beginning of a massive drop-off from the 2021 campaign. Michigan State went on to get blown out at home by Minnesota and the season was officially lost.<\/p>\n
The Spartans get a chance at revenge on Saturday in East Lansing.<\/p>\n
Here are three of my boldest predictions for the matchup.<\/p>\n
1. Nathan Carter will approach 150 yards<\/h3>\n
Through two games, Nathan Carter leads the Big Ten in rushing with back-to-back 100-yard games. He’s been a breakout star in the Spartans’ offense and he’s going to have yet another big game with Jalen Berger likely sidelined with an injury.<\/p>\n
We saw a week ago that the backups were just not ready for action. A couple of the backup running backs fumbled during garbage time against Richmond. That means that Carter is going to carry most of the workload. And if we know anything about a team with Mark Dantonio on the staff, they will run the ball heavily on Saturday. I expect another big game from Carter.<\/p>\n
Washington’s run defense has also been pretty poor against Tulsa and Boise State, allowing over 150 yards per game on the ground. Carter will approach that number on his own.<\/p>\n
2. Noah Kim out-duels Michael Penix Jr.<\/h3>\n
Done shaking your head in disbelief yet? I know, this is a wild prediction, but that’s exactly what makes it bold and fearless, right? These wouldn’t be fun to read if they weren’t bold. I’m predicting a big game from Noah Kim as he out-duels one of the best quarterbacks in college football.<\/p>\n
Will Kim pass for 400-plus yards like Penix usually does? Probably not, but I could see him having his first 300-yard game as a Spartan quarterback and he’ll throw three touchdown passes with no picks. On the other hand, I’m predicting a couple of turnovers from the Washington quarterback.<\/p>\n
Fans will start believing in Kim after this one and he’ll even earn some national recognition.<\/p>\n
3. Michigan State pulls off the shocking upset<\/h3>\n
Entering Saturday as 16.5-point underdogs, the Spartans are looking to shock the nation. Although the game will be streaming on Peacock which means that a lot of college football fans are going to miss watching this live, everyone will take notice of the score and updates on ESPN.<\/p>\n
By the time 8 p.m. ET rolls around, Michigan State will be in a position to pull off the upset.<\/p>\n
In a tie game just seconds left, Jonathan Kim will step up and kick the game-winning 41-yard field goal to beat Washington. Chants of “Harlon! Harlon! Harlon!” will rain down from the crowd as the Spartans celebrate their biggest home win since 2021.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is going to be a good one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[59,191,189,249,504,248],"class_list":["post-6974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","tag-featured","tag-michigan-state-football","tag-michigan-state-spartans","tag-nathan-carter","tag-news","tag-noah-kim"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974","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=6974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spartanshadows.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}