Pat Fitzgerald made the easy decision right and the hard one spectacularly wrong. Down one in overtime, 38-37, with a defense that had spent the night getting shredded, he went for two and the win instead of kicking the extra point. Then his staff dialed up a Wildcat lateral that never pointed at the end zone, and a one-score game turned into a loss.
The part he got right is the part he keeps defending. "We were just so beat up on defense, to go for two at the end, that was a no-brainer, frankly," Fitzgerald said, adding that they "made that decision pretty quickly." The logic holds up. Illinois freshman Michael Clayton II, in his first real action at quarterback after relieving an injured starter, had just walked the Illini into the end zone in overtime on one play. Handing that kid another possession in a second overtime, with a gassed defense, was a genuine risk. Going for the win there is a position you can argue.
What you cannot argue is the thing they actually ran. Michigan State sent quarterback Alessio Milivojevic out wide like a receiver, snapped it to running back Jaziun Patterson in the Wildcat, had Patterson lateral to Milivojevic coming back in motion, and then watched Milivojevic get swarmed and throw short of the end zone toward tight end Jayden Savoury. Savoury never got his route into the end zone before the ball arrived. Illinois read all of it. The instant Milivojevic motioned out, the design was telegraphed, and the Illini sat on the only player who could touch the ball.
That's a play that forgot its own objective. You need two yards to win a football game, and this sequence ran a snap, a lateral, and a throw that landed in front of the goal line. Everything that could go wrong in two seconds got the chance to.
On the design itself, Fitzgerald said: "Yeah, we've got a bunch that we have ready. That was the one we decided to go on." That's a coach defending the decision to go for two while declining to defend the call, because the call is indefensible. He reached for his catchphrase instead, "scared money don't make money," which sounds great right up until the money you spent bought a gadget Illinois had already scouted at the snap. "We felt good about the play, and credit Illinois," he said. "They defended it, so good for them." They did. It wasn't hard.
Then he went looking for a referee to blame. "I thought it was good coverage, they call us for pass interference on the two-point play. It was a mind-boggling night tonight, to be honest with you." That grievance runs backwards: a coach upset that his own offense didn't draw a flag on a play his own offense botched. The officials didn't throw an incompletion short of the goal line.
Keep the failures apart, because they belong to different people. Illinois scored on its first five drives to take a 16-point lead midway through the third quarter, and a defense that lets a game get away like that owns its share of this. The two-point call belongs to Fitzgerald and whoever on his offensive staff drew up the magic trick.
Michigan State fell to 2-4, a fourth straight loss and a third in a row in the Big Ten. A team sinking like that just needs two yards, and the simplest ways to get them are a sneak or a fade. Fitzgerald had the nerve to go for the win and then called the one play least likely to produce it. That's a coaching failure, and it's his.
