East Lansing — If you look at the numbers, Payton Thorne played well in Michigan State’s season-opening victory over Western Michigan.
The Spartans quarterback threw for 233 yards and four touchdowns in a 35-13 win, putting the redshirt junior on an early pace to surpass the program-record 27 touchdown passes he had a season ago.
However, spend a minute in the postgame press conference with Michigan State’s signal-caller and you see an entirely different picture.
“I was very disappointed with the first half,” Thorne said. “We scored 21 points and we had three nice plays.