Michigan State football stock watch: Who’s up, down after Washington loss?

While it would be easy to say every Michigan State football player and coach’s stock went down after Week 3, that’s not entirely fair.

Game No. 3 for Michigan State football has concluded after a 41-7 loss at home against Washington.

Did anyone’s stock actually go up? And whose stock is down?

Stock up: Katin Houser

Katin Houser was one of the bright spots of this game. While he came in during the fourth quarter and played against backups, you could see why fans were so excited for him. Katin’s first two pass attempts were both dropped (one was slightly underthrown, to be fair) but that didn’t bother him. He stepped up and threw one of the best balls all night to Christian Fitzpatrick for 61 yards. That led to the only score of the night for Michigan State as Houser scored his first touchdown as a Spartan on a 4-yard run. While this was done against backups, this was one of the only effective drives all night and it should give Houser confidence and maybe a chance to start in the near future.

Stock up: The fans

When you have to put fans in the “stock up” of a stock watch article, you know it was a rough night.

The fans do deserve credit for showing up and supporting the players. You could hear how loud the fans were at the beginning of the game and for those fans that stayed until the end, those fans deserve credit as well. The fans were involved during the whole game even when it wasn’t close and that was great to see. I hope they continue to support these players going forward but it won’t be easy for some fans to come back after a performance like this.

Stock down: Everyone that is not mentioned above:

I don’t like saying that everyone else’s stock is down, especially the players. We all know what the players have gone through this past week and we have to continue to support them. With that being said, no one besides the above-mentioned individuals deserves to have their stock up. With coaching mistakes, players not communicating with each other, and special team issues again, this is a game that fans, coaches, and players want to forget and forget quickly.

I do want to talk about the coaches.

The coaches were not prepared on Saturday night and a majority of the coaches need to do better or they won’t be here next year. The main two coaches are the offensive and defensive coordinators. Jay Johnson and Scottie Hazelton were horrible. Johnson hasn’t had an effective offense since Kenneth Walker III and that continued against Washington. He had to be better. Hazelton had an even worse performance. While we’ve seen some improvement from Hazelton, this was as bad as it could get for him. The secondary was not good, and the defense only forced two punts and gave up over 700 yards of offense. Things have to get better soon or these two coordinators may not survive the year.

Things could not have gone worse for Michigan State football. While this is game three, we can’t let this spiral. Harlon Barnett did say that no one is quitting even after this game but you have to come back with a better performance next week.

If this type of performance happens next week, fans’ voices will get louder for coaches to be fired than they already are.