Essentials

WHAT	Michigan vs Maryland
WHERE	Michigan Stadium Ann Arbor, MI
WHEN	Noon Eastern
THE LINE	Michigan –17.5
TELEVISION	ABC
TICKETS	exist
WEATHER	mid 70s, cloudy, muggy pockets of rain, worse later ~10 mph wind

Overview

Maryland's hammered Bowling Green and Minnesota, beaten Texas... and lost by three touchdowns to Temple in a game where they were outgained 429-172. They only scored on a blocked punt and pick-six.

College football is weird but even in an environment where sometimes Old Dominion beats Virginia Tech that stands out. Maryland can go toe to toe with Texas, with a three-yard gap in total yardage. Also they get placed in a burlap sack and beaten with hammers when the Owls roll into town. But at least their quarterbacks still exist!

Vegas thinks this is an easy three score win for Michigan, just like they did before the Nebraska and Northwestern games. Neither of those games was anywhere close to a three score win. Prepare for something or other. Rain, prepare for rain. And commercials. Prepare for rain and commercials.

[Hit THE JUMP for T-U-R-T-L-E power]

Run Offense vs Maryland

they'll try not to get leapt this time [Paul Sherman]

Maryland's run defense is the statistical opposite of their run offense, which as we will see is the same crew of gnomes with jetpacks they've always been. Maryland's pretty mediocre overall—71st in efficiency—and doesn't clobber you in the backfield neck—72nd in stuff rate—but they don't give up big plays. Maryland's ceded just one 20 yard rush this year and 11 of 10 or more; that latter number is third in the conference and a fair sight better than Michigan, which has given up 18. Connelly has them 4th in big play avoidance.

And one does kind of wonder how much of those mediocre run defense numbers are preseason extrapolations still in the system. Maryland's rushing defense last year was abominable:

It turns out removing DJ Durkin from your rushing defense still works. Maryland opponents are averaging just 3.5 YPC after removing sacks, which is a terrific number. Part of that is Bowling Green's 16 rushing yards at a smooth 0.5 YPC but Texas failed to get 4 YPC, Temple checked in at 3.2, and Minnesota struggled to 2.4. I didn't bother extracting sacks for the previous sentence; it doesn't matter. Four games in this has been a very solid run D.

Non-Durkin reasons that Maryland's taken a step forward include both defensive ends. WDE Jesse Aniebonam missed almost all of last year after a 14 TFL 2016; Auburn transfer Byron Cowart was the #3 player in the country out of high school and has finally negotiated the JUCO ranks to land on a playing field near you. Seth was all about their spacebacker, Antoine Brooks:

The one thing about Maryland's defense that absolutely reminded me of Durkin's time at Michigan was the "Nickel" who looks and plays a lot like pre-Viper Peppers. That would be Antoine Brooks. This was a guy I had to defend in our Big Ten preview this year, but I'm not at all happy about being (closest to) right.

Whereas Michigan under Brown asks its hybrid space player to set the edge of the defense on running plays, Maryland often gives Brooks a tight end gap he can shoot—swapping on the fly with another defender—and a lot of freedom to take a risk when jetting inside. Brooks responded by destroying just about everything they put in his path.

Maryland has a fair bit of depth on the line, as well.

Michigan will be the rush defense's biggest test of the season—Texas's rushing numbers have been poor to terrible against everyone they've faced save Tulsa—and a different sort of challenge than the nonstop spread attacks they've dealt with so far. Brooks is a good player but if Michigan can get hands on him they'll move him; this could be another game where Michigan is able to attack right off tackle with good success, or threaten it and use constraint plays to move the ball.

Maryland safeties were not absurdly aggressive in the Texas game, FWIW. They may get more nosy after seeing Michigan's lack of response to Northwestern; hopefully Michigan has some more checks in the offense this week. If Michigan is able to grind some guys off the ball—and they should since Maryland's DTs are absolutely not playmakers—a Mason-Higdon combination could have good success. We'll see if Michigan has more FB snaps available.

KEY MATCHUP: RUIZ/MASON/ONWENU/BREDESON vs THE SPINE. Michigan should be able to move some guys out and grind out yards directly up the field.

Pass Offense vs Maryland

Brooks is good, but not tall [Sherman]

The Maryland secondary is a bunch of guys. They're all fairly veteran—juniors and seniors all. They're mostly nondescript recruits. They have turned in nondescript stats, with Maryland ranked 45th in passing S&P+. They've played nondescript passing offenses, for the most part. They've intercepted a ton of passes so far—six—despite not getting their hands on many balls; that's probably luck more than anything else.

Corner Tino Ellis is the exception to the gray punctuated with interceptions, with seven PBUs through four games. (Naturally, he is not one of the Maryland players with an interception.) Ellis was a major reason Maryland won against Texas. Seven targets against him resulted in 13 yards as he made the PFF team of the week with a 91.9 rating. Last week he had five PBUs. Zach Annexstad is not Shea Patterson, but the directive is clear: it'll be easier elsewhere.

Maryland's pass rush has been good so far—34th in sack rate—without any particular star to key on. Nobody has more than two sacks. The aforementioned Aniebonam was trending towards stardom with a nine-sack 2016 and has two so far this year; he will be another test for Michigan's stabilizing tackle situation.

Maryland now plays a mix of single-high zone and man and are likely to bias their coverages towards zone, possibly zone with a lot of dudes in it, after Patterson's middling game against Northwestern. Given clean reads, Patterson is lethal; he was frequently late or hesitant when Northwestern was able to get their linebackers to sufficient depth. That happened frustratingly often. Michigan does tend to repair deficiencies in their offense; this is a big one.

Zach Gentry should be a major target, moreso than he was last week. Antoine Brooks is a lot of things. Tall is not one of those things.

 

KEY MATCHUP: PLAY ACTION vs LOOKING LIKE A RUN. Michigan's play action game from the gun is thoroughly unconvincing and needs significant tweaks if it's going to pull a linebacker up. Running an actual mesh point would be a start.

Run Defense vs Maryland

weeeeee [Paul Sherman]

Nothing can stop Maryland from recruiting more and more leprechauns to run the ball. Lorenzo Harrison is back. Ty Johnson is back. Lorenzo Harrison gets hurt? No problem, here's Anthony McFarland, a top-100 running back from the class of 2007 who's listed at 5'8" and has some of the most ridiculous hair, non-ironic-mustache division, to ever grace a 24/7 profile:

He knows there's a camera and everything. He's looking right at it.

There is one guy who breaks the mold here, sort of. Tayon Fleet-Davis is almost six feet tall and weighs 225. He's the short yardage back and chips in some carries here and there; otherwise this is going to be the usual thing where Michigan's defense chases rabbits to the sideline.

The only twist is Maryland's new coach. Matt Canada has led a vagabond existence over the past decade. He was the Hot Offensive Coordinator at one point in time, which got him a job under Orgeron at LSU, and a firing after one year when his motion-heavy offense infuriated the entire state of Louisiana. He landed at Maryland just in time for all hell to break loose and was elevated to interim coach by virtue of his lack of tenure.

Canada still runs the tricky flexbone-ish spread system that analysts call "modern" and your grandfather or local football coach calls "communist bullshit." Jet sweeps! Unbalanced formations! Receivers lining up in places where they may or may not be eligible! Every variety of screen known to man! If there is anything on earth Matt Canada can think of that might screw with your defensive coordinator, he's running it. Don Brown has been notably testy in press conferences this week, probably because he just emerged from a Canada film session that made him furious.

Lots of plays are easy to screw up on and there's a distinct lack of plays that are, you know, fullback dives and power that are highly likely to grind up three yards and change. This really comes through in Maryland's stats. The Terrapins are:

• 114th in success rate and 112th in efficiency overall; they're 51st in efficiency on the ground and 73rd in stuff rate.
• They're also 4th and 1st in S&P+'s explosiveness metrics overall and third on the ground.

This is a boom or bust offense, and the Temple result gets a lot more explicable. The Owls didn't give up any boom.

So let's dredge up that term of cliche used against option teams: this is an Assignment Football matchup for the Michigan defense. Maryland is going to throw everything at them to try and get a linebacker or DL in the wrong spot and then they're going to have a really fast guy in space.

If this doesn't sound super likely to work against a veteran LB corps and a couple of extraordinarily athletic defensive ends, well, yeah. It won't work, unless it does. See the numbers above.

FWIW, Maryland doesn't get a ton from the quarterback spot after Kasim Hill secured the job in the offseason. He's got 19 yards on 12 non-sack carries. They do mix in the occasional Piggy snap. The mononymed one has 8 passes and 11 runs this season, with the runs the far better option.

KEY MATCHUP: FOOTBALL vs ASSIGNMENTS. Do your job. Know your job. Don't get lost.

Pass Defense vs Maryland

the what me worry guy is Taivon Jacobs [Sherman]

Extant! For the last hundred and fifty years this has been Maryland quarterbacking:

Last year they played a small bird that transferred in from Air Force after all their actual quarterbacks and a linebacker who wandered into the wrong meeting exploded into sweet-smelling dust. Mo Hurst chased him. If you had just wandered into the stadium with no knowledge of what was going on you would have assumed this was an extremely elaborate way to torture an eighth-grader.

oh man whatever that guy did must have been baaaad [Paul Sherman]

Well, folks, all that is behind the Terrapins. For now. Kasim Hill, one of the dust people, has reconstituted his form and made it through a third of the season unscathed. He's... not real great! But he is a bonafide adult human. One completing 55% of his passes for 6.8 yards an attempt so far. Seth had him at a 52% downfield success rate against Texas, with a lot of bad or inadvisable throws. Hill's not here to throw the ball away. He's going to chuck the ball downfield, and also throw a lot of screens—a lot of screens—and complete some of those downfield passes to a crew of—surprise—small and quick receivers.

Hill's two main targets are Taivon Jacobs, the squirrelly guy you may remember from various Maryland games past, and 5-9 DJ Turner (not that DJ Turner) other wee folk populate the depths of the catchin' stuff roster, with one exception. That would be 6'2" freshman Jeshuan Jones. None of these guys are DJ Moore; Jones might be the most threatening long term but is a freshman wide receiver and therefore isn't real great right now. The tight ends do not exist. They have two catches for ten yards between them this season.

The same Matt Canada stuff discussed above applies here too: there is going to be a ton of motion interspersed with some tempo as Maryland tries to buy itself a pre-snap advantage. That will manifest itself largely in the screen game, of which there is a ton. Maryland threw seven against Texas; you of course remember that Maryland was the team that did nothing except rack up 100 tunnel screen yards a couple of years back. That wasn't Matt Canada but it was these guys, mostly.

When not trying to extend their run game by other means, Maryland will struggle to protect. The Terps' sack rate allowed is 93rd nationally; they're still running out a lineup that is five guards, more or less. (See also: Michigan.) Seth noted that Maryland's line has been suffering from injury turmoil and is only now getting back to their expected starting five preseason. Since a lot of the turnover has been at tackle that could result in an uptick in efficiency. If they weren't playing Chase Winovich, Some Version Of Rashan Gary, and the Rude Youngs that wreaked havoc on Northwestern last week.

KEY MATCHUP: MICHIGAN CORNERBACKS versus THIRD AND LONG FLAGS. Over it! Next problem!

Special Teams

Maryland features a 30-year-old Aussie punter who is extremely boring. He's got a 42 yard average and has given up just 5 returns on 24 punts. Those returns have been pretty successful—12 yards each—so if DPJ gets a shot he could do some things. Unfortunately-named freshman kicker Joseph Petrino is 3/3 so far in his career. He's also the kickoff guy, but that's been a struggle. Only 4 of his 25 kicks have gotten to the endzone. Three have gone out of bounds.

Terrapin return units haven't done anything of note this year but are populated with various sprightly forest creatures and could break something at any time. Ty Johnson had a kick return TD last year, FWIW. Maryland did block a Temple punt and return it for a score.

KEY MATCHUP: AHHHHHH YOU PUT IT THROUGH THE UPRIGHTS

Intangibles

Cheap Thrills

Worry if…

• A tiny man has the ball with no one particularly near him.
• Maryland's run defense is really the 2018 version and 2017 is irrelevant.
• DJ Durkin tries to recruit you.

Cackle with knowing glee if…

• The Rude Youngs take turns practicing their sack celebrations.
• Michigan rips a bunch of post routes when and if Maryland tries to do that Northwestern safety stuff.
• They're trying to edge Devin Bush.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 3 (Baseline: 5; +1 for DEEP STRIKE OFFENSE, –1 for That Is Horrible When Not Scoring Long Touchdowns, –1 for That Is A Large Spread, +1 DJ Durkin-free Rush Defense, –1 for Inability To Pass From The Pocket, +1 for Canada's Weird Stuff Might Be A Good Way To Make Up The Talent Gap, –1 for It's Not Northwestern It Can't Get That Weird)

Desperate need to win level: 9 (Baseline: 5; +1 for League Game, Smoke, +1 for Let's Burn The Maryland Football Program To The Ground And Salt The Earth, +1 for These Guys Shouldn't Be In This Conference, +1 for The Takes, Oh God The Takes.)

Loss will cause me to… demand that Michigan incorporate more videos of animals eating each other during training table.

Win will cause me to… wish we'd played Minnesota instead.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

It's tough to predict what the Maryland offense is going to do because of the inherent variability they've baked into it. Michigan is going to crush a lot of plays; Maryland is either going to cobble out some scoring drives because they get big plays and maybe grab a huge-long touchdown or two or die miserably. What Maryland does get it much more likely to be an RPS win than players executing; Hill's numbers are really bad for a guy who throws so many screens. Maryland is 100th in completion percentage nationally despite all the dinking.

Similarly, the Michigan offense is going up against a defense that was supposed to be horrendous and looks like it's been salvaged fairly well. But also  they've gone up against Bowling Green and freshman walk-on QBs and the like. If Michigan can handle Aniebonam about as well as they did Gaziano and Patterson can settle in a bit better they'll move the ball; Michigan's run blocking has been good enough, and consistent enough, and the Maryland defense hasn't come that far that fast.

Maryland's likely inability to drop back and throw downfield will be a problem; they won't be able to sustain enough drives to keep in contact without some big swingy plays in their favor.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid Sunday:

• The Maryland rush defense renaissance turns out to be about half a mirage as Higdon gets loose for 150.
• Kasim Hill completes less than half his passes.
• Michigan, 30-11