Michigan State built the kind of first-half lead that should have put it away, but Toledo's ground game kept finding cracks. Cam Edwards carried the load for the Spartans with 98 yards on 27 carries, the exact profile of a team trying to grind clock and protect a new quarterback room — except Toledo had an answer for it, and the response came at the worst possible time for East Lansing.
Fitzgerald's aggressiveness nearly bit him late in the third quarter, when he sent Edwards on fourth-and-1 from the Toledo 30 and the handoff got stuffed a yard short. Toledo cashed in immediately — Connor Walendzak broke a 71-yard touchdown run on the very next snap to give the Rockets their first lead of the night at 20-19, though the missed two-point try left the door open a crack.
Michigan State didn't blink. Milivojevic converted a fourth down and found Rodney Bullard for a 5-yard go-ahead score early in the fourth quarter, and the Spartans put it away for good with an 11-play drive that ended in Liam Boyd's 51-yard field goal. It's the kind of finish a first-year staff wants on tape — proof the offense can answer a punch, even against a team it was never supposed to be in a dogfight with.
The bigger picture: this was just the second meeting ever between these programs, and the first since Michigan State's 58-0 win back in 1925. A century later, it took a fourth-quarter answer from a new quarterback and a new head coach to keep the anniversary rematch from turning into a genuine upset. Both staffs have a full season to smooth out the rough edges this one exposed.