Michigan vs MSU 2021 - First Ever Matchup of Undefeated teams in the Rivalry's History?
With Mich playing NW next and MSU playing Indiana, it looks very likely that the 2021 version of Michigan/MSU will feature 2 undefeated teams. Has that ever happened? I'm guessing maybe back in the early 1900s when they may have played each other in the first or second game of the season?
October 10th, 2021 at 11:08 AM ^
Beat Northwestern
October 10th, 2021 at 11:17 AM ^
Go IU.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:08 AM ^
Don’t tempt the jinx gods.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:06 PM ^
Seriously. I don't even take for granted that we're going to win the bye week.
Also, speaking of jinxes, I was apoplectic that they kept repeating the "Cade McNamara hasn't thrown an interception in XXX career pass attempts" and "Michigan is the only FBS team not to trail this season." graphics. F you, production booth.
October 10th, 2021 at 1:27 PM ^
He still should be INT free. Nebraska was offsides on that play.
October 10th, 2021 at 2:52 PM ^
Nebraska was clearly offsides on that play. I actually rewound to watch that a couple of times. The defensive end was a yard and a half past the LOS when the ball was snapped. Is that not replayable? The reffing was pretty awful last night other than on replays.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:08 AM ^
Don't you dare call any game ever a instant win. How dare you sir!
October 10th, 2021 at 11:13 AM ^
2010, both teams 5-0 going in.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:15 AM ^
I remember that. Crazy atmosphere and an 82 degree day in mid October in Ann Arbor. msu kicked our butts.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:18 AM ^
Yeah, always good when you get an idea to LOOK THE F'ING THING UP BEFORE YOU POST.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:15 AM ^
Delete this terrible thread.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:19 AM ^
You might remember 1997, when the nation expected a matchup of 6-0 Michigan and MSU teams on Oct. 23. But the week before, MSU got caught looking ahead and lost to—guess who?—a talent-depleted NW squad. They came in 5-1 and limped to a 7-5 season. We don’t want to be in Sparty’s position. Ask again later.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:42 AM ^
Nick Saban shouldn’t have allowed Sparty to look ahead. Gary Barnett later said that it was obvious that MSU wasn’t thinking a thing about them from the start of the game.
My dad and I were driving home on I-94 from visiting my sister at Western, listening to the end of the game on the radio with the Spartan broadcasters saying how amazing this season is going to be. Then when Northwestern blocked the field goal, we were both cheering like crazy.
That combined with Michigan’s soap opera win over Iowa earlier in the day made it the perfect day.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:38 PM ^
I don't think Saban could get them not to look ahead. They lost the next two games (albeit to decent Ohio State and Purdue teams).
They had another big let down in 1999 after they won the Michigan game, too. That was Saban's best team at Michigan State and they just got slapped around on consecutive weeks by a mediocre Purdue team and a good Wisconsin team.
I think this is a big part of the reason Saban left as quickly as he could after his first decent team at Michigan State. The program was second fiddle in the state and even he had trouble managing that.
October 10th, 2021 at 3:35 PM ^
Saban’s record without a substantial recruiting advantage isn’t very good.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:24 AM ^
Blocked out the RR years from memory? It happened in 2010.
It also happened in 1999.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:29 AM ^
Would you blame him if he had?
October 10th, 2021 at 11:25 AM ^
Shit …. According to RCMB UM may as well not even show up. The game is already lost for us. Pride before the fall Sparty. Pride before the fall.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:51 AM ^
RCMB thinks we were gifted the game. As if we weren't the reason for the fumble and the 4th down stop at the beginning and on and on. And as if they weren't super fucking lucky to escape EAST LANSING with a win over Nebraska thanks to a special teams breakdown.
Lmao they really think they're the 2007 Patriots on offense and apparently no one has realized that we score more on Nebraska ON THE ROAD than Sparty did at home (Sparty had zero first downs and zero offensive points in the 2nd half of their game vs Nebby, which is always fun to point out). Some terrific offense they have there lol
October 10th, 2021 at 11:58 AM ^
Right, Nebraska outgained Michigan State by almost 200 yards. They were lucky to win that game.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:43 PM ^
Poor damn Scott Frost. I almost feel for the guy.
Almost.
October 10th, 2021 at 3:30 PM ^
Pay me the money and I will take the pain he is taking. Life is frustrating.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:26 AM ^
Guess Sparty not layin in the weeds this year.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:28 AM ^
Is anyone else annoyed that state was a mess a year ago, scandals with the university itself…and Mel tucker was not great at Colorado, and now…they’re world beaters. How did Wake not start that RB.
side note I read an article that an unmade State player is filing a title19 lawsuit because he’s been suspended from playing due to sex assault allegations. Doesn’t seem to be getting much national attention though. Media seems to look the other way when it comes to Tucker and state, don’t know why.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:35 AM ^
Msu was outgained by 200 yards against Nebraska and gave up 31 to Western Kentucky. They are good but they are in no way better than Michigan.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:45 AM ^
Iirc they were up 42-7 on WKU. So their second string gave up a lot of points....
MSU is somehow good, face facts.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:59 AM ^
As a WKU season ticket holder and someone that watched that whole game…
it was 42-16 and WKu, who has maybe the worst defense ever (see Penix’s stat line from a week before) held WKU to field goals in the second half and almost came back. Final was 48-31 and Zappe was 46 of 64 for nearly 500(!) yards.
edit: they played against the 1’s the entire game.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:06 PM ^
I watched that game. Both offenses went up and down the field all game but WKU settled for FGs while MSU got TDs.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:09 PM ^
They beat Rutgers pretty handily
October 10th, 2021 at 12:14 PM ^
They led RU 21-13 at half. Their second half vs RU was better than ours, I’ll give them that.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:25 PM ^
The 3rd quarter is becoming an issue for us.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:07 PM ^
I want to believe you…
I think M is better but looks like state is good enough to punch up. Last years game is still burned into my memory and not in a good way. I think if we had beat them the wheels would’ve fell off.
October 11th, 2021 at 10:30 AM ^
As a grad of Colorado, I will say that Mel actually did a fantastic one year turnaround there. Colorado has been so far in the dumps and he made them respectable. He is a good recruiter going back to his days at Ohio State.
Doing the turnaround that he did at State with the transfer portal is baffling.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:36 AM ^
The question isn’t if they’ve been undefeated, it’s if both teams ranked in the top 10 have played each other? More than likely MSU beats Indiana this Saturday and Michigan beats Northwestern after their bye week, both teams should be in the top 10. Should be an interesting matchup regardless. Go Blue!
October 10th, 2021 at 11:36 AM ^
Slow your roll bro... Anything can happen.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:41 AM ^
As a note to the OP, you didn't need to guess - the records of each team at a given time and place are freely available.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:28 PM ^
Ok Biff Tannen, but you wouldn't be so smart if you didn't have that almanac.
October 10th, 2021 at 11:56 AM ^
Not so fast my friend, beat Northwestern!
October 10th, 2021 at 12:05 PM ^
Those Cats are sneaky. They'll scratch ya.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:11 PM ^
I’d wouldn’t be super shocked if Indiana didn’t put together some mojo and down state next Saturday. Just sayin.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:22 PM ^
Marsupials scare me. Because they are fast!
October 10th, 2021 at 1:51 PM ^
I know right?
October 10th, 2021 at 12:02 PM ^
If Michigan and MSU are both undefeated when we play each other on Oct. 30, it will be the first time both have been undefeated and ranked in the top 10 this deep in the season when the Paul Bunyan trophy is at stake.
The last time both Michigan and MSU were undefeated and ranked in the top 10 when they played each other was 1961, but that game was only the third game of the season for both teams.
We're going to blast NW and Sparty will probably do the same to IU, so it's going to be a huge matchup in EL.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:02 PM ^
Slow down son, the speed limit is 55 mph.
My favorite game to play on MGoblog? Read a post’s title and guess if it’s in the - or + for votes.
This one was pretty easy.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:03 PM ^
OP, why did you feel the need to create a thread about this 3 weeks before the game? Did you want to show all of us that you thought of it first?
October 10th, 2021 at 12:20 PM ^
For a guy with “88” in your username I would have thought you’d be old enough to remember that yes, it’s happened a few times.
October 10th, 2021 at 12:21 PM ^
Not really sure if this is the place to post this or not but I really didn’t want to start a thread and I figured the snowflake threads may be past their prime at this point so here goes. I read before where some of our players and our DC had talked about how we had prepared all off-season for teams like Wisconsin so we didn’t get ran over, part of the beef up front difference than Brown’s philosophy. It has made me wonder because we have struggled two straight second halves against option type teams with a mobile quarterbacks if we aren’t better suited to play the Wisconsin and Michigan State’s of the world because they want to line it up and play a form of ball control offense. Even Ohio St doesn’t use Stroud as an option quarterback. The next closest one to that would be Clifford when we play Penn St. It may be more of a youth problem as opposed to a personnel problem with these spread teams but after we handled Wisconsin and then the Rutgers and Nebraska second half’s gave gotten me to pondering on this. Any thoughts?
October 10th, 2021 at 12:38 PM ^
This was covered in some depth in both the FFFF (offense) and game previews. MacDonald runs an NFL defense, which is obviously geared towards stopping a more NFL-like offense that isn't a true college spread (like both Rutger and UN run). The college spread is necessarily different from the NFL because you can't run a QB that much against NFL LBs. Just ask Micheal Vick and Robert Griffen...
Brown's defense was better setup to stop a college spread with a good dual-threat. It would still work well today, also, except that he refused to recruit 'real' DTs and allowed CB crootin' to fall off. He did himself in here...
October 10th, 2021 at 12:53 PM ^
So how do you think this fares going forward for games against more talented teams with mobile quarterbacks? He’s going to have to learn to adjust for that or it’ll be the opposite of Brown vs Wisconsin. You’d also think he would be prepared considering he had to practice against Lamar every week.