About Last Week

There has been a great deal of controversy and consternation arising out of Saturday’s game, so I think it’s best we clear the air and lay out the facts.

This is Michigan Stadium:

Pictured: Michigan Stadium

Michigan Stadium, built in 1927 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is the long-time home of the University of Michigan Wolverines’ football team. It has played host to just over 600 Michigan football games in that time, along with non-Michigan football games and other assorted athletic events. The athletic competitions in question take place on the field turf in the middle of the stadium (the green box in the diagram above). The stadium has been renovated several times, most recently in 2010, but it has always had one tunnel (the yellow box) leading to and from the field.

Michigan Stadium has large clocks at both ends of the field providing a clear countdown to the beginning of halftime. The visiting team at Michigan Stadium occupies the east sideline (the red box), while the home team occupies the west sideline (the blue box). Heading into halftime, the visiting team has approximately a 60-yard head start to the locker rooms, which are approximately another 50 yards up the tunnel.

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This is an Uncrustable:

Pictured: Uncrustables

Uncrustables were first created in 1995, and the J.M. Smuckers Company started manufacturing them in 1999. They are, as the name suggests, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with no crusts; the edges of the bread are crimped to seal in the fillings. They are popular with both toddlers and athletes. Athletes enjoy the portability and the rapidly digestible simple carbohydrates (they are popular with triathletes and endurance athletes). Toddlers appreciate the overall yumminess and lack of icky crusts.

Despite their relatively aerodynamic shapes, Uncrustables were not designed ⁠— at least not in a way the J.M. Smuckers Company has ever acknowledged ⁠— as projectiles.

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This is an offensive line:

Pictured: an offensive line [Fuller]

The “offensive line” is a collective term typically used to refer to the center, two guards, and two offensive tackles on a football team. The offensive line’s primary function is to block defenders, both in the run game and in pass protection. While all teams use some version of an offensive line, those lines ⁠— both individually and as a collective unit ⁠— can vary wildly from team to team in terms of composition, performance, technique, and overall quality.

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It is possible, though not certain, that if the team from the red box put more dudes in the green box who played like the dudes from the blue box, we would have heard a hell of a lot less about the yellow box and the purple box.

The Road Ahead

Michigan State (3-4, 1-3 B1G)

Last week: Beat Wisconsin, 34-28 (2OT)

Recap: I spent my evening flipping between this game and the Bama game, and the difference between the two was striking. This game was poorly played, poorly officiated, and poorly called (any minor quibbles with four straight weeks of Joel and Gus melted within 1.7 seconds of Tim Brando’s voice). I hope you didn’t watch this game. This game was being played at the same time as Alabama/Tennessee. You should have watched that game. That’s why you pay me. I watch the stupid games so you can watch the good ones. Life is too short to watch Michigan State/Wisconsin.

The end of the game and the two overtime periods were particularly ugly. With the game tied 21-21 at the end of regulation, Michigan State had a first down at the Wisconsin 36 yard line with two timeouts and 42 seconds left. They ran the ball and called timeout. Then they ran the ball again and burned their final timeout with 27 seconds left. I can’t do full justice to what happens next, and them how the two overtime periods play out, but I strongly recommend you watch.

Timeout malfeasance. Receivers jump-throwing touchdown passes right through a safety. Dropped interceptions. Fumbles. Just a joyful mess all around.

Touchdown. No notes.

Overall, Michigan State looked like the better team. Payton Thorne (21/28, 265 yards, 9.5 YPA, 2 TDs) had his first efficient outing in a while, though his day mostly consisted of one 72-yard catch-and-run to Maliq Carr, a buuuuuuunch of Jayden Reed targets that were almost universally successful, and some other assorted odds and ends. Sparty still couldn’t run the ball, with their backs combining for 108 yards on 33 carries (3.3 YPC) and a long of 12. Of those 33 carries, 21 went for 3 yards or fewer.

This team is as frightening as: Daniel LaRusso. They have a few effective tools such as “sand floor” and “paint fence” and “wax on, wax off,” but their super-wise sensei hasn’t bothered to show them how to apply those tools to the actual sport in which they are currently competing. But then they win, and you’re like, “wait, isn’t this the kind of competition where the bigger, stronger, better competitor should usually win?” to which everyone says “hey… shut up.” Also, they kick you in the face a lot, even though that’s expressly against the rules, and the ref is like, “POINT, LARUSSO, WICKED FACE KICK!” Fear Level = 7

Michigan should worry about: Jayden Reed. I would like to be more nuanced, but… it’s Jayden Reed. Michigan State’s only chance to win this game is to dust off the 2015 Aaron Burbridge playbook, where he was targeted 19 times against Jourdan Lewis in the Game That Michigan State Will Never Stop Taking Credit For.

Michigan can sleep soundly about: The Michigan team I watched on Saturday and the Michigan State team I watched on Saturday are barely playing the same sport right now.

When they play Michigan: It’s probably gonna be uncomfortable for a couple of quarters. Then it won’t be.

This week: Bye

[AFTER THE JUMP: More fast food talk than usual.]

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Rutgers (3-3, 0-3 B1G)

Last week: Bye

Recap: No recap. Bye.

This team is as frightening as: According to Diogenes, the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus died in 475 B.C. when, in an effort to cure his dropsy, he smeared himself in cow dung, only for the dung to dry and basically squeeze him to death, at which point he was eaten by dogs. The risk of this actually happening seems low, but the potential resulting suffering and humiliation seems to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t let this shit linger for too long. Fear Level = 3.5

Michigan should worry about: Noah Vedral is back and at least moderately healthy. He will also be fresher than a Rutgers quarterback would normally be this time of year.

What’s that? You scoff at the prospect of “Noah Vedral, Dangerman,” eh? Oh you sweet summer child.

“Grandpappy, what was the pandemic like?”
“Johnny, I’m not gonna lie, shit got REAL”

People forget that two of the three highest passing yardage games Michigan has allowed over the last decade belong to Rutgers quarterbacks. Gary Nova, Dwayne Haskins, Noah Vedral. That’s the Top 3.

Michigan can sleep soundly about: Rutgers is averaging 8 penalties and 2.7 turnovers per conference game. This is not a talented enough of a team to win with that many mistakes.

When they play Michigan: Nobody other than Ohio State has been able to successfully run the ball on Rutgers. That said, when 21 points is almost certainly enough to win you the game, you probably don’t need to rush for 7.6 yards a carry.

This week: vs. Indiana, noon, BTN (Rutgers -3)
 

Nebraska (3-4, 2-2 B1G)

Last week: Lost at Purdue, 43-37

Recap:

We all spent the Frost tenure, and especially the 2021 and early 2022 seasons, asking which way Nebraska would go. Would they turn the corner, or will they fall apart?” But we hadn’t considered a third option: they had already achieved their final form. They were the new #CHAOSTEAM. No more, no less.

Nebraska played a mid-2010’s Indiana classic against Purdue. The Boilers put up over 600 yards and gained 38(!) first downs while holding the ball for over 42 minutes. But every time Purdue would score to stretch the lead, Nebraska would respond with a ridiculous explosive play to pull juuuuuust on the edge of striking distance. The Huskers had plays of 72, 64, 60, 45, 39, 37, 31, and 30 yards, most of which went to Trey Palmer.

This team is as frightening as: Being stuck in the tunnel at Michigan Stadium when there’s an ENTIRE TEAM OF LOUD PEOPLE BEHIND YOU AND THEY WON’T STOP TALKING TO YOU and you have NOWHERE TO GO except for the large double doors to your own locker room. Imagine the terror. Fear Level = 4

Michigan should worry about: Nebraska doesn’t have a lot of scary skill position threats, but Trey Palmer is the notable exception. He leads the Big Ten in receiving yards per game, and is second only to Charlie Jones in total receptions. Palmer had 297 total yards (237 receiving, 60 rushing) on only 8 touches. That’s 37 yards per touch. Purdue or not, that’s scary.

Michigan can sleep soundly about: Nebraska is last in the Big Ten and #120 nationally at 4.9 yards per carry allowed on the season. This week they Purdue walk-on running back Devin Mockobee rushed for 178 yards at 5.9 yards per carry, which was the most rushing yards by a Purdue running back since 2017. And they let ***Purdue*** grind out the last six minutes of the game on the ground.

When they play Michigan: This is the one game remaining on the schedule where I feel confident that Michigan can declare, in advance, in a notarized statement published in the papers three weeks in advance, “passing is for hippies, we intend to just run the ball down your throat,” and have no issues doing so.

This week: Bye
 

Illinois (6-1, 3-1 B1G)

Last week: Beat Minnesota, 26-14

Recap: This game was a lot like the Michigan/Penn State game, in that it was nowhere near as close as the score suggests despite the score already suggesting it wasn’t close. Illinois outgained Minnesota 472-180, largely because Illinois refused to take turns and share the ball. They ran 86 plays to Minnesota’s 42, and picked up 27 first downs to Minnesota’s 12. Minnesota got their points thanks to one big Mohamed Ibrahim chunk run in the first half and one 4-yard drive set up by a 90-yard kickoff return. Outside of that, bupkis.

Illinois wasn’t particularly efficient running the ball, but they were voluminous, totaling 54 total carries at 4.1 YPC on the day. Chase Brown ran for 180 yards, but it took him 41 carries to get there. He tacked on 3 catches for 53 yards and a touchdown, increasing his nation-leading total to 207 touches (29.6 per game).

This team is as frightening as: The Taco Bell $28 challenge. Yeah, we can probably do it. No, it probably won’t be pleasant.  Fear Level = 7

The last time Illinois was this good

Michigan should worry about: I’ve seen enough: Illinois’ defense is one of the best in the country. They lead the nation in defensive yards per play allowed (3.8 YPP), yards per pass attempt (4.7 YPA), and scoring defense (8.9 PPG), and total defense (221 YPG), and they are fourth nationally in yards per carry allowed (2.8 YPC) and third down conversion rate allowed (26.5%).

They held veteran’s veteran quarterback Tanner Morgan ⁠— before he left on a cart with what looked to be a significant injury ⁠— to a career-worst 4 of 12 passing for 21 yards. For reference, that’s 8.5 yards per attempt less than Morgan tallied against Michigan State.

Michigan can sleep soundly about: Perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, Chase Brown’s yards per carry numbers have decreased game-over-game in each of the last four weeks, from 7.3 against Virginia down to 4.4 against Minnesota. He’s also been moderately less explosive, with only one run longer than 23 yards in the last four games.

When they play Michigan: “Red zone offense” is only partially a thing, but this game may come down to which team can finish drives. Illinois is last in red zone touchdown conversion rate in Big Ten play (6 of 19, 31.6%). Michigan has obviously struggled in this area as well.

Or Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards and Roman Wilson can score from a billion yards away. That would be cool too.

This week: Bye
 

Ohio State (6-0, 3-0 B1G)

Last week: Bye.

Recap: No recap. Bye.

Although, to be fair, if “we can’t discuss Ohio State because they didn’t play anybody this week” was the standard… would we have been able to discuss them yet?

Looking at it before the season, Ohio State’s schedule through the first seven weeks of the season felt reasonably challenging (at least for a most teams), especially when compared to the cowards in Ann Arbor. They had #5 Notre Dame, also-receiving-votes Wisconsin, and #15 Michigan State. But Notre Dame lost at home to Marshall and Stanford (and should have lost to Cal), Michigan State is butt, and Wisconsin just lost to that butt. Through three conference games, Ohio State’s only transitive wins in Big Ten play are Wisconsin and Northwestern.

Granted, Ohio State has ⁠— with the exception of Notre Dame, which comes with season opener caveats ⁠— generally dispatched these opponents the way you would expect a good-to-elite team to dispatch such teams. But Ohio State is almost certainly going to roll into The Game having played… /fiddles with abacus/… nobody. At least Michigan will have played the third-best team in the Big Ten (Illinois, obviously).

This team is as frightening as: The Yungas Road in Bolivia, also known as the Death Road. Fog. Rocks slides. 2000 foot cliffs. It may be the only way from here to there, but that’s still a big ol’ nope. Fear Level = 10

big ol’ nope

Michigan should worry about: Advanced stats, such as SP+, FEI, Sagarin, etc., take quality of opponent into account, and their general consensus on Ohio State is, and I quote, “gather foodstuffs and weapons, as in the times to come, you will need the latter to guard the former.”

Michigan can sleep soundly about: Nothing, sorry, something wicked this way comes.

When they play Michigan: Are we calling this Football Armageddon II or Football Armageddon III or Football Armageddon IV? Do 2016 and/or 2018 count? Do they have to both be undefeated, because if so, 2016 and 2018 are out. I think it kinda has to be two Top-5 teams, and Ohio State was #10 entering the 2018 game, so that one is off the list.

Anyway it’s a Football Armageddon and we’re all gonna die.

This week: vs. Iowa, Big Noon Saturday, FOX (OSU -29)
 

Objects in the Rearview Mirror

Colorado State (1-5, 1-1 MWC)

Last week: Lost to Utah State, 17-13

poor guy

Recap: Colorado State, despite being demonstrably terrible at football, somehow managed to lead this game 10-7 at halftime. However, 10 penalties, the inability to run the ball, the inability to throw the ball, and the aforementioned terribleness were too much to overcome.

Colorado State is one of only two teams in the country (along with UMass) that has yet to crack 300 total offensive yards in a game.

This week: vs. Hawai’i, 4:00 p.m. (CSU -4.5)
 

 

Hawai’i (2-5, 1-1 MWC)

Last week: Beat Nevada, 31-16

Recap: Timmy Chang’s first real, actual win.

To be sure, Nevada is very, very bad. They’ve lost five straight games against the Murderer’s Row of Incarnate Word, Iowa, Air Force, Colorado State, and now Hawai’i. Still, you can see some real signs of progress at Hawai’i. They’ve gone over 5.4 yards per play offensively in three straight games, and they held Nevada to 4.2 yards per play, the Rainbow Warriors’ best FBS outing by more than a yard and a half. More importantly, after surrendering an average of 53 points per game in their first 4 FBS games, they’ve held their last two opponents to 32 points combined.

Dedrick Parsons scored 3 touchdowns, and is up to 10 rushing touchdowns on the season on only 105 carries.

This week: @ Colorado State, 4:00 p.m. (Hawai’i +4.5)
 

UConn (3-5)

Last week: Lost at Ball State, 25-21

Look how sad he is this week.

Recap: I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but this may have blown UConn’s shot at the least likely bowl berth in recorded history.

UConn had an 8-point lead and the ball midway through the 4th quarter, but running back Victor Rosa fumbled on the UConn 24. Ball State scored, but missed the conversion, so UConn still led 21-19. But the Huskies went 3-and-out, Ball State scored again, and UConn stalled on their last drive.

Now the Huskies need to beat UMass and Army and then steal one from either Boston College or Liberty. That seems unlikely.

This week: Bye
 

Maryland (5-2, 2-2 B1G)

Last week: Won at Indiana, 38-33

Recap: Your classic Good News/Catastrophic Potentially Season-Altering News situation. On the positive side, they successfully pushed back October for another week, overcoming a fourth quarter deficit with two late touchdown drives. But that effort may have cost them their starting quarterback, as Taulia Tagovialoa got rolled up by a tumbling Hoosier and left on the cart.

Billy Edwards, Jr. ⁠— a person who is definitely a real person and isn’t the name of the person Andy Dufresne created to launder money in the Shawshank Redemption ⁠— led those two scoring drives, but he completed zero passes in doing so. He did rush 5 times for 53 yards, and he looked plausible as a passer against Michigan (albeit in limited borderline-garbage-time snaps), but this would be a tough blow to Maryland. Mike Locksley declared Tagovialoa a “game time decision,” which at least suggests that he isn’t definitively done for the year.

That said, Maryland has some time to get Tagovialoa healthy. They get Northwestern this weekend, and they can almost certainly beat the Wildcats with Billy Edwards taking the snaps. They could probably beat Northwestern with Anthony Edwards taking the snaps. It’d be a toss-up if they were starting King Edward I, a/k/a Edward Longshanks, who has a decent arm but below-average mobility given his 715 years of corporeal decay. After their Northwestern bye, Maryland has their actual bye and then Wisconsin before they have to face Penn State and Ohio State.

This week: vs. Northwestern, 3:30 p.m., BTN (Maryland -13.5)
 

Iowa (3-3, 1-2 B1G)

Last week: Bye

Recap: No recap. Bye.

We all know that the “Brian Ferentz sucks” pile is too big to effectively sift through in a systematic way. It’s basically a Hoarders episode where some of the discoveries are so horrifying that when they get to “hey, we just found a stack of 400 old Filet O’ Fish containers,” it’s hard to respond with the appropriate level of disgust. But here’s one we haven’t mentioned thus far:

Last year, Iowa’s “just please don’t make mistakes and eff this up for the defense” offense allowed the most tackles for loss in Big Ten play, surrendering a TFL on 10.7% of their offensive plays. This year, that number is up to 14.2%

Iowa football

This week: @ Ohio State, Big Noon Saturday, FOX (Iowa +29)
 

Indiana (3-4, 1-3 B1G)

Last week: Lost to Maryland, 38-33

Recap: The haters doubted. The doubters hated. But folks, Indiana didn’t care. They persisted, they persevered, and they did it.

Indiana football leads Division I with the most losses in history. On Saturday, the Hoosiers became the first program to lose 700 games. https://t.co/vZd6ty3ORO

— IndyStar (@indystar) October 16, 2022

These were no cheapies, either. 521 of those losses came against Big Ten teams, with 78 coming to Ohio State, 61 to Michigan, and a whopping 75 to… Purdue? Y’all lost 75 games to Purdue? In football? Good lord, this is Sacha Baron Cohen-levels of commitment to the bit.

This loss was not unlike so many Indiana losses, at least in recent years. They had a late lead against a team that was favored but couldn’t close the deal. This was the Indiana team we saw two weeks ago; they threw the ball reasonably efficiently but couldn’t run at all and couldn’t protect Connor Bazelak.

Indiana now needs to sweep Rutgers, Michigan State, and Purdue to make a bowl game, though they’ll probably be an underdog in all three.

This week: @ Rutgers, noon, BTN (IU +3)