East Lansing — When Michigan State faced a fourth-and-1 deep in its own end Saturday against Northwestern, trailing by three and desperate to keep its hopes alive, coach Mark Dantonio decided the Spartans needed to go for it.
There were two timeouts left and more than two minutes to play, but in that moment, the Michigan State coach thought his team’s best bet was to run the ball and pick up the yard. In most cases the previous three seasons, that would mean LJ Scott was getting the ball.
But on Saturday, Scott was where he had been the previous two games — on the sideline in uniform but amounting to nothing more than a spectator.