Essentials

WHAT	#2 Michigan (4-0) vs Nebraska (2-2)
WHERE	Signalwire Stadium Minneapolis, MN
WHEN	7:30 Eastern
THE LINE	M –18.5 (Vegas) M -18 (Bill C)
TELEVISION	NBC PBP: Noah Eagle Color: Todd Blackledge
TICKETS	From $54.
WEATHER	cloudy minimal wind around 50

Overview

The Little Brown jug was stolen in 1931, returned soon after by mysterious goggle-wearing ne'er-do-wells, vouched for by Fielding Yost, and played for twice before someone else discovered another jug on Michigan's campus in 1933. Everyone decided this was the real jug, and the fake(?) jug was consigned to the mists of history. How you gonna top that, other rivalry trophy?

You aren't. You just aren't.

[AFTER THE JUMP: Gophers]

Run Offense vs Minnesota

been a minute [Fuller]

It's hard to tell how good Minnesota's defense has been over the last few years because the Big Ten West tends to set metrics like SP+ on fire. The insular scheduling of some of the country's most offense-averse programs creates anomalies. Last year, Iowa was SP+'s top defense in America. Illinois was #2; Minnesota was #5; Wisconsin was #15. If this seems inflated, well, yeah: if you remember how last year's Nebraska game went consider that SP+ ranked the Husker defense #61—about average.

An inflated #5 is still pretty dang good, and it fit well with what Minnesota did on offense.

Unfortunately, there's been a major dropoff. Am I basing this entirely off of "blew a 31-10 lead and lost to Northwestern"? Yes. Am I wrong? No. Three Northwestern fourth-quarter touchdown drives covered 75, 69, and 80 yards in 28 plays, and the winning touchdown came on Northwestern's first snap of overtime. "Big yikes," as the kids say.

This team has a couple of nice pieces in the secondary but their PFF grades are way off last year. The 2022 Gophers had seven guys with 300+ snaps who graded out at 76 or better; this team has three before a steep drop, and that's with two non-conference tomato cans and Northwestern comprising a majority of the schedule. This is particularly relevant on the defensive line, because line grading is often about who you play.

As far as the run defense goes, their top line numbers are okay—4.2 YPC—but the schedule breaks down into three chunks. One, EMU, can be disregarded. Chunk two consists of games against UNC and Northwestern in which Minnesota was giving up 400 passing yards and defending the run pretty well against meh-to-horrible rush offenses.

Chunk three is getting ripped by good rush offenses with mobile QBs. ULL put up 177 yards on 27 carries; 6.6 per. Nebraska put up 181 on 37, 4.9 per. Now, these are legitimately excellent rush offenses. ULL's averaging 6.6 YPC; Nebraska leads the Big Ten (although their numbers against Michigan are one long TD run against the third-stringers and bupkis otherwise).

If we're putting Michigan in a bin it's bin three; Michigan isn't going to run McCarthy as much as the other two teams but the threat will even numbers in the box. I'll believe a team not named Penn State can shut down the Michigan ground game when I see it.

KEY MATCHUP: BLAKE CORUM vs INDUCING MISSED TACKLES. Alex points out that this is a very bad tackling Minnesota team, particularly at the linebacker level. Corum hasn't been dusting guys as often this year; this could be a get-right opportunity for him.

Pass Offense vs Minnesota

[Barron]

This looks like JJ McCarthy is about to set this team on fire. That Northwestern comeback was enabled because a person named "Ben Bryant" threw for 396 yards, 215 of those to a person named "Bryce Kirtz." In games not against UTEP or Minnesota, Bryant is averaging 4.3 YPA. Kirtz, who averaged 22 yards a catch against Minnesota, is averaging 7.1 yards per catch in other games. Meanwhile Drake Maye, currently projected to go right around where McCarthy is in the NFL draft, posted 10.4 YPA and a 73% completion rate.

Minnesota has posted decent results against Jeff Sims Nebraska, EMU, and ULL, so they've got that going for them. They've also picked off eight passes, though three of those come with a Jeff Sims disclaimer. Maye did throw two, one of them a nice play by the nickelback to get underneath an out route, the other a throw to no one induced by pressure.

That pressure doesn't seem likely to recur much in this game. Alex:

[The DTs] make players here and there, but also got moved far too much to believe they are stars without pass-rush dominance (which was absent)… The RUSH spot, as Minnesota calls it, or WDE, as we are going to call it, is occupied by Danny Striggow. He's also fine in the same way the other DL starters are. Flashes but largely mediocre. If Striggow leaves, Jah Joyner is an intriguing player because he's Minnesota's only good organic rusher on the DL, but the rest of his game is underdeveloped.

Joyner and rotational edge Anthony Smith both have solid win rates (17% and 13%, respectively), but as Alex notes Joyner is a very bad run defender and sees most of his time on passing downs, or close enough. He will not be out there on first and ten unless Minnesota wants to live dangerously. Nobody else on the roster with more than a handful of rushes is a threat except LB Devon Williams, who's been productive on blitzes. Just 20 of those, though—it's not common.

That leaves Michigan attacking the Minnesota secondary, which does have the best two non-Taylor players on the team. Safety Tyler Nubin was excellent a year ago; nickel Jack Henderson is a jack-of-all trades who is a secure tackler. These guys have five of the eight INTs for Minnesota this year.

Unfortunately for the Gophers, everyone else is in just a guy territory and Henderson does the large bulk of his work at or near the line of scrimmage—12/16 completions on targets on him, but for just 48 total yards. He is untested carrying guys down the field and is about to get Roman Wilson or Colston Loveland as his primary matchup. If it is Wilson, Michigan can run him deep, carry both of the good players in the secondary thirty yards downfield, and the digs will be wide open again.

KEY MATCHUP: LADARIUS HENDERSON vs SOLIDIFYING THE TACKLE JOB. He's there as a run blocker. This is not exactly a pass-pro layup since Joyner will be a test… but also it won't be going up against Chop Robinson. This is a moment to see if he can hang at LT.

Run Defense vs Minnesota

[University of Minnesota]

This looked like a disastrous regression after week one, when Nebraska stomped on the Gopher ground game. 25 attempts yielded a measly 55 yards; just five of those had a positive EPA. I tweeted something out about how Minnesota looked like they'd lost their identity. Then they inserted true freshman Darius Taylor, a Michigan native, against EMU. Taylor went for 193 and his now-backup went for 93 as Minnesota rushed 76% of the time in a 25-8 win. Just EMU, sure, but identity re-established.

The Gopher ground game since:

• 31 rushes for 170 yards against UNC
• 42 for 244 against Northwestern
• 51 for 201 against Louisiana-Lafayette

Minnesota: still Minnesota.

One issue for the Gophers: Taylor missed the ULL. game. His availability Saturday is in question. All we know is that he has a leg injury. If he can't go that would be a major blow; PFF grades him amongst the best backs in the league and thinks the other options are just guys. Alex is of the same opinion:

…if Taylor doesn't play, there is no Dangerman on Minnesota's offense. Taylor accounts for 54.7% of Minnesota's rushing yards this season and yet he's only had >1 carry in 3 of their 5 games this season. After an anemic rushing game against Nebraska that saw Taylor used once, he emerged to be the lead back against EMU, which was the start of three strong showings pre-injury. For the season, Taylor has as many rushing TDs as all other Gopher RBs combined and his YPC clip of 6.1 is best on the team, 0.4 ahead of Zach Evans (who has 72 fewer carries) and 1.5 better than Sean Tyler, WMU transfer and projected started pre-season.

If the Gophers are aiming for an upset he has to play. If they are resigned to their fate they might sit him in the hopes of having him 100% against more tractable opponents.

Despite the rebound in the numbers above, the offensive line looks like a major step back from last year's crew. New guard Martes Lewis picked up a cyan in Alex's FFFF and while he's got the requisite biglargeness he's also an unwieldy 6'7"; Minnesota has yanked him from games at times this year. PFF likes right tackle Aireontae Ersery okay but believes most of the rest of the line to be just guys, with Martes outright bad; both tight ends who play a bunch come in for scores in the mid-50s.

Michigan's crushed all comers and reports are that Mason Graham will return this week, albeit with a club on one hand. This does not look like the offensive line that is going to solve the Michigan front four. If Taylor does play he's good enough to zip around some disaster areas and/or run through tackles and grind out some yards himself. Minnesota's other backs look like they'll meekly accept what the blocking gets them, which isn't much.

KEY MATCHUP: TAYLOR vs AVAILABILITY. If he's not playing it's Nebraska/Rutgers part III.

Pass Defense vs Minnesota

Gopher QB Athan Kaliakmanis isn't untalented; he is highly inconsistent. He gets off platform a lot—like, a lot a lot, often completely unnecessarily—and while he can make some things happen in these situations, as on this play Alex clipped…

…he also will miss hideously:

Yes, pressure. Also that is a two yard route on which the 6'7" tight end barely gets a finger on it.

As a result Minnesota tries to avoid leaning on him too heavily; when they had to against Nebraska the result was 13 points largely because Daniel Jackson made an insane catch on a badly thrown ball. There is a huge gap between games where Kaliakmanis has to throw 30+ times, where he's averaging 4.5 YPA, and games where he throws fewer than 20, where he's averaging over 8.5 YPA. As soon as you get him into passing downs he turns into a pumpkin.

PFF is grading out Minnesota's pass protection shockingly well given what you see on the field, but when you revisit the games it makes sense. Kaliakmanis has suffered 41 pressures this year but PFF only attributes 22 of these to the linemen; dude sits in the pocket a ton and then gets in trouble, goes on a journey of discovery, and comes back with a 42% completion rate and 4.2 YPA once he starts moving around.

Minnesota does have a couple of weapons in Jackson and TE Brevin Spann-Ford. Spann-Ford's grading out hideously this year but is coming off two consecutive good years; it's possible the flip to Kaliakmanis has hurt him as he gets less accurate balls.

Michigan has some concerns here. Josh Wallace has been okay after transferring from UMass; Will Johnson has been in and out of the lineup and is coming off a rough game against Nebraska. Rod Moore has also been in and out of the lineup; Keon Sabb has been mostly fine but seemed to be primarily responsible for the long pass Nebraska hit at the beginning of the second half. If Minnesota is able to protect decently—which seems likely—the secondary will get tested with some Kaliakmanis on-platform darts. Hopefully Will Johnson can bounce back this week like Edwards did last week.

KEY MATCHUP:  WILL JOHNSON vs WILL JOHNSON. Malkovich?

SPECIAL TEAMS

Boring. Minnesota has three punt returns on the year, none of note. Their main kick return guy is averaging 12 yards a pop; they have a total of 11 returns and it seems like none of them get to the 25. They're 122nd in this department to FEI, for what little it matters.

Aussie punter Mark Crawford is averaging 43 yards a kick and has only suffered two returns on the season; kicker Dragan Kesich is 9/10 on the year but is just 40th in FEI because he's kicking a bunch of short stuff. He puts the vast majority of kickoffs in the endzone.

This looks like the special teams matchup least likely to make a difference in a while. All of this points to no meaningful returns and no missed field goals.

KEY MATCHUP: AHHH YOU PUT IT THROUGH THE UPRIGHTS

INTANGIBLES

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if...

• Taylor plays and looks 100%.
• Will Johnson still doesn't look himself.
• The raucous, beer-fueled crowd whips Minnesota into a frenzy of nice.

Cackle with glee if...

• McCarthy continues doing McCarthy things.
• Corum jukes someone into the ground.
• Rod Moore is fully active.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 3 (Baseline 5; –1 for You Did What Against Northwestern, –1 for A Dollar Says Taylor Sits, –1 for No Samoans On The OL, +1 for This Is A Functional Program, Unlike, Uh, All Others Played To Date, –1 for QB Matchup, +1 for Road Night Game)

Desperate Need To Win Level: 9 (Baseline 5; +1 for Jug, +1 for God Their Hockey Fans Are Irritating, +1 for Loss Would Have Implications About How Michigan Does At End Of Season, +1 for Winning Is Nice, –1 for Michigan Kind Of Gets A Mulligan Because If They Win The Big Ten With A Loss They Go And If They Don't Win The Big Ten They Don't, +1 for Jug Again.)

Loss will cause me to... have to drink water off the dang ground.

Win will cause me to... mmm night jug water.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

More or less a replay of the last two games. Inconsistent QB the opposition tries to avoid using too much, an OL that ain't blocking Kris Jenkins, a defense that's got some pieces but not the full kit you need to slow down Michigan meaningfully. Lots of running, lots of long drives for Michigan, not a whole lot of snaps on defense, and a final score that seems to understate how dominant the performance was.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid tomorrow: 

• McCarthy gets 25 attempts as Michigan re-balances the offense after force-feeding Edwards last game. He completes 21 of these.
• Kaliakmanis throws two boggling INTs as he has to throw 30 times.
• Michigan, 37-9.