Shawn Windsor: Right now, Michigan looks better than Michigan State

Ohio State had another bad week. We know this because of Twitter, where people who profess to love Ohio State excoriated the Buckeyes quarterback, Cardale Jones.tmpplchld They showed little tact, like this fan did, when he tweeted: “Please jump off a cliff.”tmpplchld Jones, who led OSU to the title last season, might be big and strong enough to survive a fall off a cliff. The question is whether he can survive the pressure when his team doesn’t win by enough points each week.tmpplchld Connor Cook can relate. The Michigan State quarterback is taking heat for leading his Spartans to a 5-0 start.tmpplchld Damn him.tmpplchld Wait, what?tmpplchld That’s right, Cook is the reason the MSU doesn’t look so pretty at the moment, never mind the loss of a future NFL cornerback, a future first-round left tackle, a returning starter at right tackle, a future NFL tight end, and arguably the best linebacker on the team, Ed Davis, who went down in August with a knee injury.tmpplchld Davis was a projected third _ round player at the next level. His loss began a chain of injuries that is testing MSU’s depth and on-field cohesiveness.tmpplchld Mark Dantonio may say all the right things about surviving adversity and next-man-up and all the other cliches. But let’s face it, few programs in the country can lose a handful of Sunday studs and be the team they thought they would be. Or the team we thought they would be.tmpplchld Saturday’s hold-on-for-your-life victory over Purdue only confirms this _ for now.tmpplchld In two weeks? When MSU travels to Ann Arbor to face U-M?tmpplchld That’s an eternity the way this season is unfolding. The Wolverines could lose to Northwestern. Or they could pummel them, keep them scoreless, jump up another five or six spots in the polls and actually be the favorite by the time the Spartans roll into town.tmpplchld After this past Saturday, it’s not a stretch to say U-M looks like the better team. So I’ll say it: They look like the better team. Of the four units between the two squads _ offense and defense for each _ the Wolverines’ defense is the most impressive, by far.tmpplchld This isn’t to say U-M will win; MSU still has the higher ceiling if they can get relatively healthy. But it is to say that MSU is clearly not the No. 4 team in the country. It’s also to say that ... this is college football, and what do we know anyway?tmpplchld Ole Miss takes down Alabama and gets trucked by Florida. Minnesota earns points by staying with TCU, which beat Texas by 43 points, then gets run over by Northwestern. Speaking of the Wildcats, they come to Michigan Stadium this Saturday in surely the most anticipated home game for U-M in several years.tmpplchld Or at least it’s the most anticipated game in two weeks. Remember when we thought the BYU contest was the game of the century? Those same Cougars, by the way, entered the fourth quarter against Connecticut in a 10-10 tie. At home.tmpplchld What do we make of that? Not much. BYU won by 17.tmpplchld On the other hand, the Cougars’ Hail Mary to beat Nebraska a few weeks ago doesn’t look as impressive now that Illinois beat the Cornhuskers. Nor does BYU’s close call with UCLA seem so nifty after the Bruins got punked at home by Arizona State.tmpplchld Once again, about all we can say is that Alabama knows how to beat Georgia and that Indiana knows how to stick with Ohio State and that fans know how to tell 20-year-old men they’ve never met to kindly stop being alive.tmpplchld In the meantime, Michigan State gets one more week to impress us before the U-M game and, if they can’t, they should shut down the football program. U-M gets _ we think _ its biggest test of the season when Northwestern comes to town.tmpplchld And the rest of us get several more days to change our minds about what we thought we knew but actually didn’t. Or maybe we did and don’t know it yet.tmpplchld Aren’t Saturdays fun?tmpplchld ___tmpplchld (c)2015 Detroit Free Presstmpplchld Visit the Detroit Free Press at www.freep.comtmpplchld Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.tmpplchld