EAST LANSING – Long before the blocked kick and Aidan Chiles’ homecoming heroics did in Michigan State football, Pat Fitzgerald saw the missed opportunities building.
Then, Northwestern’s Brendan Flakes – one of the remaining Wildcats who played for Fitzgerald – broke through the line and stuck his big right hand up. He deflected Liam Boyd’s 33-yard field goal attempt that would have given the Spartans the lead again after letting it slip away earlier in the fourth quarter.
A minute remained in a tie game Saturday, Oct. 17. The end zone was 80 yards away. And Chiles took full advantage of another chance to silence the Spartan Stadium crowd.
Six plays, three completions and 55 seconds later, Northwestern’s Jackson Kleather booted the final dagger
through Fitzgerald’s team, a 34-yard field goal with 2 seconds left, to send MSU to a fifth straight loss, 24-21.
“In a one-score game that goes down to the wire, every play matters,” Fitzgerald said. “We didn't make the plays that winners make. They did.”
The Spartans (2-5, 0-4 Big Ten) must make a cross-country trek next week to No. 12 UCLA (5-0, 3-0 heading into Saturday night’s game with Wisconsin), reeling from a second straight last-second loss and with pressure mounting to end yet another long losing skid – the program’s fifth of five or more games in the past decade – with five games remaining this season.
Mark Dantonio lost seven straight in 2016 and five straight in 2019. Harlon Barnett lost six straight as interim coach in 2023. Jonathan Smith lost eight in a row last season, won the season finale and was fired.
Fitzgerald has lost his past 12 Big Ten games since his last victory on Aug. 27, 2022, in his final season as Northwestern’s coach. He lost eight straight to end that season, and he finished 1-8 in 2019, 2021 and 2022 in conference games. The Spartans were 1-8 in conference games last season.
“I get paid to win and we're not winning,” Fitzgerald said. “So it starts and ends with me.”
Chiles, the Spartans’ starting quarterback in 2024 and 2025 before getting benched for Alessio Milivojevic with four games left last season, went 8-for-10 for 111 yards in the fourth quarter despite absorbing two of the five sacks MSU had on the day.
On the winning drive, with all of Northwestern’s timeouts gone, the senior transfer had completions of 21 yards, 12 and 17 to get the Wildcats (5-1, 2-1) into field goal range. A 14-yard run by Caleb Komolafe and a spike with 5 seconds to play set up Kleather’s chip shot.
Time ran out on the ensuing kickoff. The Wildcats dashed onto the field to celebrate. The Spartans congratulated their former teammate, who has Northwestern a win away from a bowl berth.
“There was never a doubt, just never was a doubt,” said Chiles, who threw for 226 yards and tied the game with a 1-yard touchdown run and 2-point pass with 7:24 to play. “No matter what happened – if they'd have scored, if they would have made the field goal – we were gonna go down and we would've taken that game to overtime or we would have won the game. Simple as that. But we were never in here to lose this game.”
Milivojevic, who seized the job from Chiles and directed the lone win over Maryland, threw two touchdowns and ran for one Saturday. However, the sophomore twice overthrew Rodney Bullard Jr. deep, including on a fourth down in the first quarter and again in the fourth quarter after Northwestern tied the score. He also couldn’t get Bullard the ball as Bullard broke free when he got hit from behind and fumbled on a strip-sack deep in MSU territory early in the game.
“I think every loss stinks,” Milivojevic said. “Obviously, a close one like this stings a little more. Every loss, you never want to lose a game.
“But I know the character of this team, I know the guys we have in the locker room, I know the coaches we have coaching us. I know no one's gonna put their head down and stop working.”
Asked if he felt his team left some big pass plays on the field, Fitzgerald was curt and gave a hint of frustration.
“Yes,” he said. “Not to be short, but the short answer is yes. You watched the game like I did, right buddy?”
The Spartans now must find a way to win four of their next five games to get to the postseason for the first time since 2021. They'll have to regroup after watching last week’s comeback turn into a 38-37 overtime loss to Illinois, followed by Saturday's blown fourth-quarter lead.
“It doesn’t matter what happened last week or the week before, we expect to win in those situations,” said defensive tackle Ben Roberts, who had two sacks. “So in our head, we gotta go win the game. Obviously, we came up short and we gotta go back to work.”
Fitzgerald said he believes “there's a lot of fight in this group.” MSU held Northwestern’s offense to 360 yards and well below its scoring average despite playing without starting linebackers Jordan Hall and Brady Pretzlaff, starting cornerbacks Tre Bell and Tyran Chappell and key backups in corner Charles Brantley and linebacker Caleb Wheatland. The five sacks were the Spartans’ most in a Big Ten game since 2023 against Nebraska.
Yet as Roberts said simply: “Doesn’t matter. Wasn’t good enough. Lost. We gotta be better.”
“Coach Dantonio used to say all the time that it's a game of inches, right?” Fitzgerald said. “And we're not making those plays in the inches to get us over the hump and get a win.”
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.
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Next up: Bruins
Matchup: Michigan State (2-5, 0-4 Big Ten) at No. 12 UCLA (6-0, 3-0).
Kickoff: 3 or 3:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24; Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California.
TV/radio: TV TBA; WJR-AM (760).
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MSU let one get away: 'You watched the game like I did, right buddy?'
