Love this take. Really sums up how I feel about playing OSU

I think Cade has played well overall and proven his doubters wrong to be the clearly right person to start. But what you described is not the perfect qb for an upset. Upsets aren’t about avoiding turnovers and taking what the defense gives you. It’s about making hard, unexpected plays that overcome a talent disparity that means you’ll lose on most individual plays. Beating osu is going to mean making that dangerous throw down the field on third down rather than taking the check down, punting or kicking a fg and trusting your defense to make scoring 24-28 points enough to win.

Luckily osu’s pass defense is much worse than penn states so the opportunity will be there

I had Michigan chances against osu at 40%, but with Corum out I give it 20%. He is the exact type of playmaker Michigan has missed having against osu. 

No way man. I've had to catch myself on this, but we're only setting ourselves up for disaster if we start thinking we have a chance. No way. No way.

...that said, Cade is improving noticeably throughout the season. 

But we won't be able to stop their passing attack, so no way, no hopes up here. Nope. 

Probably going to take some things going our way like some timely turnovers and maybe the refs calling a fair game for once. I think we got a puncher's chance especially if we get consistently good pressure on Stroud. 

it will be strength (Michigan running game) on strength (OSU run defense)

Even a Rutgers can shut down our run game by overplaying it; the question is, does that open up anything else, and if so, does Michigan take advantage.  In some games (namely, Rutgers), they didn't.

To your point, strength vs. strength does serve as a meaningful starting point, because OSU would love to be able to shut down Hassan Haskins while staying in their base defense, because if you can do that, Michigan's offense is otherwise "decent".  The passing game has recently seen a Rudock-esque renaissance, but I'd bet OSU still likes their chances with the absurd talent they have all over the field.  McNamara hit some tight windows last Saturday, and PSU's pass defense is legit, but the latter were largely covering for the absence of Mustipher, which opened things up in a sort of U-shaped zone from the flats to the middle of the field.  That won't be there.  It's the combination of a back seven of PSU's caliber, along with a D-line of MSU's caliber, that's going to be bad news for Michigan's over-reliance on matchups.

So the key here wouldn't be to pit strength vs. strength, but to create matchups based on respecting your opponent's strength.  OSU has gobs of talent but Haskins remains the best RB in the country, so they should still be wary of putting DBs in gaps.  Michigan's finally moved on from the counter-less split zone garbage, but this would be the absolute worst possible week to go full Al Borges on the playbook.  And OSU will be ready for that little Haskins screen they deployed against Penn State.  But if Gattis is up to earning his paycheck this week, he should have ready some counter to what they put on film last week, and try to get that Haskins-DB matchup that invariably goes badly for the defense.

Rules allow for the kick holder on PATs and FGs to work with a live ball when his knee is down.  If he gets the ball and then stands up, he cannot go back down to kneel.  But as long as he catches the ball with his knee down, and stays down, that's a live ball.

Yeah, the fact they seem to be getting better offensively is likely due as much to playing Rutgers, NW, Iowa without their crazy TO luck, and Purdue.  I still think they'll struggle against better defenses because that offensive line is still meh and Mertz isn't a consistent enough passer.

Yeah, losing to OSU won't be that depressing, total collapse of my psyche that it's been in previous (many previous) seasons. This team plays like a team should play; every aspect plays well and complementary. This is the most complementary team ever. They are talented, they deserve to be highly ranked. They will be competitive against OSU. They might lose by 17 still, but they will be competitive.

But they might win.

Things need to happen for them to win, but they are at home, the fans will be behind them (the Non-Capitalist ones, anyways) and it's going to feel...wholesome. These guys play hard, they play for one another, they're going to have fun out there. The overwhelming pressure isn't going to register with these guys. They are going to see this game as a great challenge. And they might win.

BEAT MARYLAND FIRST!!!

Totally agree with this assessment. It’s a successful season and THIS is the year. No playing for next year with now monster defensive ends, Haskins, and an up and coming defense. 

I bought OSU tickets after watching the Western M game seeing that this team looked different (also after watching OSU against Minnesota but man have they improved - yikes).

Make Maryland game huge, go all in and work on things we would use against OSU to make them have to prepare for more and open up our normal stuff. 

Believe!!!

Assuming we lose to OSU, I don't think we can say that nobody thought the season could turn out like this.

But I think that, assuming Michigan beats Maryland, a 10-2 season with a loss to OSU and another road loss to someone like MSU was about the best we could hope for, the most optimistic projection.

So if that's what happens... yeah, it'll still hurt to lose to OSU. But the season shows that there's a lot of promise in the future, especially if the defense can rebuild from losing the DEs. 

Hear, hear. This for sure. I predicted a bleak 6-6/7-5 season. The coaching, defense, QB, OL, All at TE, and the RBs are all better than I thought they would be. This team has overcome the loss of WR1, RB1A/B, and many OL and other injuries to post 9-1 versus the best division in CFB, including one of the toughest extradivisional schedules in the country. Only WWE-level ref BS has tarnished our record.

Whatever happens against OSU happens. Even 10-2 is something to be proud of in this division, this year. 

They were pretty good with Hill, but they were good because they had a guy like Hill that could just bomb through a poorly blocked LOS; happened a lot. I don't know that the Harbaugh offense has ever been as inevitable in short yardage as we'd like it to be.

It does kind of boggle that Michigan struggles so much in short yardage given the run emphasis the program has. An issue, like other issues, that has existed through multiple OCs.

My pet theory this year is that Michigan spent a lot of effort installing a goal-line-only under-center offense specifically to give them a chance to QB sneak occasionally and built out a limited portfolio of plays that worked out of the same look. For example, the 4th-and-2 that didn't work that Penn State had bottled up. 

And I think a large part of the issue is that defenses can afford to zero in on run plays in those situations because Michigan has shown considerable reluctance to pass inside the 5 (and in other places, with receivers that don't really frighten teams from assigning zero-high man coverage and stacking the box). It's no coincidence that Roman Wilson got an easy release on that goal-line TD pass when he feinted a blocking assignment. 

That's Lucy talk.  Of which, there should be:

I like your idea.  I would support a one-game substitution of that for the muppets, which for some reason are only now making a comeback.

I know Coach said that .... but I watched the game (I was in very BLUE Happy Valley for the game) and counted 11, so I think it was all about a possible fake.

Go Blue!

Yep, this idea is directly related to Harbaugh's throwback-to-Bo strategies. Despite his improvements this year -- and there have been a number of them -- he still often sticks to "we will impose our will, go ahead and try to stop us". The heavy goal-line package appeals to him in this way, plus he probably figures if they block it right, it will work. Where he fails is that, to stop this play type, all the defense has to do is gum up in interior with big bodies. Hell, even a couple guys falling down in likely gaps will give plays like this no chance. 

It's fine to run plays like this -- once you have shown a tendency to also attack the edges in a variety of ways in the run and pass games. But to do this a majority of times -- it's just bashing your head into a wall that won't give. 

Here's to hoping they have some interesting stuff set up for OSU out of these formations.