Notebook: J.T. Floyd gets start, records 4 tackles for Michigan football team

The 6-foot redshirt freshman from Greenville, S.C., finished with four tackles and one pass breakup.

“They were able to eat up chunks of yards, five here, four there, three there, first down,” Floyd said. “We kind of cleaned that up, manned up the second half and were able to control them a little bit more.

“But we still didn’t come out with a victory, so obviously it wasn’t enough. We have to go back to the table to get better.”

Michigan defensive coordinator Greg Robinson, though, wouldn’t rate Floyd’s play after the game.

“I’ll wait until I see the film,” Robinson said.

Bump in the road

Rodriguez is the first Michigan coach since Chalmers "Bump" Elliott to lose back-to-back games to Michigan State. The Spartans, who captured the Paul Bunyan Trophy with last year's 35-21 win in Ann Arbor, secured their second consecutive win over the Wolverines for the first time since 1967.

After Saturday's overtime loss, Rodriguez didn't seem fazed by losing back-to-back games to the Spartans.

"Last year's last year," Rodriguez said. "What are you going to do about that? There's no do-overs from last year. We're disappointed because we lost this year. … I'm not a revisionist. I'm not going to look back in history. This one hurts, it's gonna hurt and it better hurt everybody in our program for 24 hours."

Clock chatter

Michigan had the ball for 7 minutes, 22 seconds of the first half, keeping its defense on the field for much of the first quarter. Michigan State ate up 10:02 on its first scoring drive after Michigan was forced to settle for a field goal after Stevie Brown picked off an early pass.

"I've always said we have to make the other team play some defense," Rodriguez said. "They did, but they didn't have to play it for any extended period of time because we weren't getting first downs and we weren't stopping them."

Injury update

Safety Mike Williams' return from the ankle injury that kept him out of last week's game against Indiana was brief.

Williams started and played the first few series, but spent most of the final three quarters on Michigan's sideline with his helmet off. Walk-on Jordan Kovacs played in Williams' place and made a career-high and team-leading 17 tackles. Kovacs forced one fumble and had 2 1/2 tackles for loss, including a big third-down stop on Larry Caper to set up Michigan's game-tying touchdown drive.

Quarterback Tate Forcier showed little effect from the sore right shoulder that limited him in practice last week. He finished 17-of-32 passing for 223 yards and two touchdowns.

"Didn’t affect me too much," Forcier said.

Extra points

The Michigan-Michigan State series has had three games going into overtime in the previous six years with Saturday's 26-20 win representing the first overtime win for the Spartans. … Michigan State out-gained the Wolverines 197-28 on the ground, marking the 38th time in 42 games in the series that the team with the most yards on the ground went on top win. … Michigan State's win over the 23rd-ranked Wolverines represents the Spartans' first win over a ranked opponent since beating Notre Dame in 2005. The Spartans had lost 11 straight games to team ranked in the AP Top 25.

- Jeff Arnold contributed to this article.