Payton Thorne admits it is 'hard not to see' outside noise surrounding Michigan State football

It’s been a 2-2 start of nightmares for Michigan State to begin the 2022 season as the Spartans have gotten obliterated by their two Power 5 opponents. Ahead of a road trip to play a feisty Maryland team, MSU quarterback Payton Thorne acknowledged it’s near impossible not to see the noise from the outside.

Blocking it out — not giving it mental space, basically — isn’t too difficult, Thorne said. But with Michigan State falling short of expectations so early, the din of outside noise is only growing.

“Yeah, I don’t pay attention to the noise. It’s not hard to block out,” Thorne said. “Sometimes it is hard not to see. But it’s not hard to block out, you know. I care what my teammates think about, I care what my coaches think about me and outside of that, I care what my family thinks about me. But other than that, all the people on the outside, they don’t know what’s going on, totally.” 

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There are certainly outside observers who know the ins-and-outs of what Thorne, his teammates and coaches are doing behind closed doors. But those people with real experience in a locker room or football facility are few and far between.

An average fan doesn’t give it much thought because there isn’t much to go on.

“There are select people that aren’t in the program that have been in football and know what’s going on, but the majority of people, they just don’t know. And that’s nothing against them. They’ve just never been in it, they’re not in our team meeting room, they’re not in our quarterback meetings. So, I don’t have a problem blocking all that stuff out.”

A win against Maryland would go a long way to silence a lot of the noise, at least for the time being. Michigan State still has to play Ohio State and Michigan in October.