Couch: There's so much to lose for Michigan State at Rutgers

EAST LANSING – Don’t call on Michigan State’s football team for any inspirational public speaking this week. It’s not that sort of week.

“I think there is more to lose than there is to gain,” MSU quarterback Brian Lewerke acknowledged.

That’s a first for the Spartans this season, heading into their late afternoon kickoff at Rutgers.

With that comes a certain absence of vibrancy. It doesn’t mean a lack of focus, per se. It means: “Yo, it’s Rutgers. In Piscataway. There are no seniors to send off in a home finale. No long-standing rivalry to rally around. No championships to build toward. Just a ninth win, which matters, but we’re not going to put it on a T-shirt.”

Case and point ...

“Winning also allows us to get double-digit wins, which has only been done a handful of times in this program,” Lewerke said. “We still wish we could have been in a little better position maybe. But we’re still proud and happy with how far we’ve come.”

The Spartans are in that place where life is good, but dreams have died. They sound like 40-year-olds who settled in choosing a spouse and are 10 years into a marriage that looks good on paper.

“Rutgers is a good team. They beat a solid Purdue team, they beat Maryland,” sophomore linebacker Joe Bachie said, selling me on the Scarlet Knights, which, is hard to do. “There’s no team in this league you want to take lightly. 

“We’re trying to flip our record from last year. We’re trying to get to 9-3.”

There’s actually a lot at stake for MSU at Rutgers. Partly because there is so much to lose. And MSU’s players know it.

“I feel like we’ve got a whole bunch to lose,” MSU junior receiver Felton Davis said. 

That’s both tangible and intangible — the intangible as bad as anything. Think about what a regular-season-ending loss at Rutgers would do to how you’d remember this season and to program momentum, to the buzz going into a bowl game and, tangibly, which bowl game that might be.

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If MSU wins, it’s going to one of three bowl games — Citrus, the Outback or Holiday, the Big Ten’s three first-tier bowls, by its own definition.

If MSU loses, lessening the appetite of fans to travel and dinging an otherwise appealing season story, the postseason fall could be painful, if things don’t break correctly. Say the Big Ten has a team in the Orange Bowl, so the Citrus Bowl isn’t available (which is among the league’s postseason agreements). And say Penn State or Ohio State isn’t including in the New Year’s Six bowls, above the Big Ten’s affiliated games. Then, with a loss to Rutgers, MSU could be behind three teams in the Big Ten bowl pecking order — Penn State or Ohio State, Michigan and Northwestern. 

Below the Holiday Bowl, for the Big Ten, is the Music City Bowl in Nashville or TaxSlayer Bowl in Jacksonville (one of which will get a Big Ten team), followed by the Pinstripe Bowl in Yankee Stadium. That’s as far as MSU could slip in the worse-case scenario, which is only triggered if the Spartans lose at Rutgers. 

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Suddenly the 2017 season would be remembered as less of a reclamation, with wins over Michigan and Penn State countered by miserable memories in Columbus and Piscataway, capped by a third-tier bowl game, perhaps in a northern climate.

It ain’t a Knute Rockne speech, but failure is a helluva motivator. 

Beyond the harm of losing at Rutgers, there is opportunity that can be framed more positively.

MSU’s offense could use an all-around feel-good day. Its passing game, which three weeks ago against Penn State was so prolific, has been dormant since, thanks to Ohio State’s defense and, last week, Mother Nature’s pass coverage. 

“Before that couple weeks off (before bowl prep), you want to have something you can hang your hat on,” Lewerke said.

MSU’s ground game, which found its footing on the wet and frozen track last week, could use to see that sort of push and production two weeks in a row for the first time all season.

The Spartans could also use a decisive win — just to know its possible. The closest thing MSU has to a blowout in Big Ten play is 17-7 last week against the Terrapins. 

If the Spartans bludgeon Rutgers and look smooth doing it, they’ll go skipping into the postseason — headed to a good bowl, someplace warm, likely on Jan. 1 — confident in their trajectory.

“It’s another program game, I think,” MSU coach Mark Dantonio said. “As I told our football team, we've come so far, be ready to play. Doesn't guarantee winning, but be ready to play mentally and emotionally. Expect to play well, get yourself right. This is a program game. You don't want to take any shine off of this season. We want to go into the bowl season like this going forward.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.