Essentials

WHAT	Michigan vs Penn State	Penn State does not offer taxidermy
WHERE	Beaver Stadium State College, PA
WHEN	Noon Eastern
THE LINE	Michigan –1.5
TELEVISION	ABC (McDonough/Blackledge)
TICKETS	exist
WEATHER	partly cloudy, around 40 light rain possible early 10 mph wind

Overview

Penn State's season was going swimmingly until Sean Clifford took a brutal hit against Iowa. In stepped Ta'Quan Roberson, a four-star redshirt sophomore who was the only guy left over after Will Levis portaled himself to Kentucky. Roberson completed 7 of 21 attempts for 34 yards—1.6 per—and threw two picks as PSU slowly bled out an early lead.

Penn State did the thing where you wake up the guy in a coma despite it being a real bad idea, shoved Clifford back in there, and proceeded to lose more games because the only thing that kept their run game somewhat functional were legs Clifford was no longer deploying. Three weeks later PSU was unranked.

Then they were in a 14-14 game with Maryland in the fourth quarter when Jahan Dotson went 86 yards. Lesson: do not let that happen.

[Hit THE JUMP for One Guy]

Run Offense vs Penn State

[Patrick Barron]

The Illinois conundrum: how does one give up 357 rushing yards to Illinois while being a top half Big Ten rush defense? Well, step one is to lose star DT PJ Mustipher for the season during the Iowa game. Mustipher was tracking as a mid-round NFL draft pick. His replacements are… not doing that:

The reason the Mustipher loss is so massive is because while Derrick Tangelo can hang in there as a nose tackle, Dvon Ellies and Coziah Izzard are both horrendous tackles and have emerged as a major weak spot.

The resulting defense will remind you of Michigan's efforts last year, when Aidan Hutchinson and Kwity Paye spent most of their time assuming the tackles were going to get clunked and doing their level best to make up for it. PSU has good edge players and linebackers trying to repair play-by-plan sins being offered up by Not Mustipher.

PSU bounced back from that Illinois… uh… game (remember that was the "9 OT" game that ended 20-18) to hold OSU to one of their worst performances in recent memory, so the damage here is far from fatal. But you know Michigan is going to try to pave whenever they get a hint of the ability to.

Michigan's ground game has resumed churning up opponents after a couple of rough outings against Wisconsin (understandable) and Rutgers (uh). MSU did an okay job, holding Michigan to 4.3 YPC; they've been at or near 5 YPC in their other three recent games. Complicating factors for Michigan: injuries. Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards were both out last week, and there is still a revolving door at both guard spots.

But the addition of some zone stretch, which allows Michigan to run away from unblocked defensive ends instead of sell them on nonexistent QB keep threats, and Hassan Haskins continuing to prove he's one of the best fool-hurdlers in the country have kept Michigan's ground game churning.

This might be a game for some gap-blocked stuff that relies on blowing out those DTs and landing a bunch of body blows before breaking it big.

KEY MATCHUP: MICHIGAN PULLERS vs DE/OLB SORTS. PSU is going to try to compensate for their issues at DT, which means there's going to be a lot of slanting inside, and a lot of swaps on the outside. This will be a challenging game from a block ID perspective.

Pass Offense vs Penn State

Castro-Fields (#5) is 37 years old [Barron]

With the exception of a game against the #1 offense in the country by a mile (per SP+) this has been a dominant unit:

Opponent	Att	Comp	Pct.	Yards	Yards/Att	TD	Int
@ 20 Wisconsin	37	22	59.5	185	5	0	2
Ball St.	45	30	66.7	226	5	0	2
16 Auburn	39	21	53.8	185	4.7	0	0
Villanova	34	20	58.8	222	6.5	2	1
Indiana	34	16	47.1	195	5.7	0	2
@ 19 Iowa	31	17	54.8	195	6.3	2	1
Illinois	21	8	38.1	38	1.8	0	1
@ 6 Ohio St.	34	22	64.7	305	9	1	0
@ Maryland	58	41	70.7	371	6.4	1	1

This is the main reason PSU's defense is 7th in SP+ and 6th in FEI. They have not given up 7 YPA to anyone not named Ohio State. Now, you can glance at the schedule and try to figure out who the second-best quarterback they've played is, sure. But everyone gets got from time to time even against rubes.

PSU doesn't, really—only Michigan and NW have given up fewer 30-yard passing plays than PSU—and they do that while playing more aggressively than either M or NW. Tariq Castro-Fields is still hanging around, somehow, being quite good; safety Jujuan Brisker is a likely first-round pick; sophomore Joey Porter Jr is getting some early NFL draft hype as a 6'2" monster with an NFL pedigree.

The above numbers are even more impressive since Penn State does not get to the QB, with the country's #99 sack rate. Should be noted that they are about 30 spots better on passing downs than standard downs, so Michigan should look to not be too predictable on standard downs. That may be just one of those things—remember that year when Frank Clark was good enough to be a second round pick despite collecting almost no stats?—because Alex thought their ends were excellent. The above numbers are generally not possible when you aren't at least hurrying the QB on the regular.

FWIW, Michigan has the #1 sack rate allowed in the country. If the ends aren't getting home against lesser competition Michigan should be relatively safe.

KEY MATCHUP:  JOSH GATTIS vs FUNNY STUFF. This is a game to break out some of the exotics, whether that's some RPO stuff you haven't shown yet or more flea-flickers. This is a game where RPS is going to be important; it's likely that PSU gets aggressive in the box to combat Michigan's ground game; how will Michigan exploit that here?

Run Defense vs Penn State

no longer crossing the line of scrimmage [Patrick Barron]

Penn State's ground game has gone from formidable even in the face of infinite running back injuries to "also Indiana." This is almost entirely on the OL; last year Noah Cain was impressive, and he's still around. Football Outsiders maintains fancystats that are uniformly horrendous for PSU*:

• Average line yards: 117th
• Standard down line yards: 110th
• Opportunity rate: 118th
• Power success rate: 124th
• Stuff rate: 109th

These are rough stats and not equivalent to actual grading, but when every single one of them is in triple digits and your power success rate is pretty close to dead last nationally, you have problems. Alex may have noticed this in his film review:

Not a single lineman graded out well, and they just got routinely whipped all night long. The right side of the line was bad. The left side of the line was bad. The interior was bad. The RBs had no room to run, and Clifford's head was on a pike by the end of the night.

Well then. Michigan got whooped by Kenneth Walker and MSU tempo but has otherwise crushed opponent ground games, and it is close to unfathomable that this would change against the OL responsible for the numbers above.

Making things worse for PSU is Clifford's injury, which isn't bad enough to keep him off the field but is bad enough that his legs are no longer part of the equation for the Nittany Lions. Without bothering to remove sacks, Clifford had 402 and 335 rushing yards the previous two years. This year he's stuck at 122, and since he got knocked out of the Iowa game he's rushed for… uh… –51 yards. It's possible that Clifford got healthy enough to give it a go on the ground over the course of the last week, but that seems unlikely.

Keys for Michigan, then, are to not give up something huge and stupid because you missed a run fit and PSU managed to block something up. Down-to-down this looks like it should be PSU burning downs on the altar of balance.

*[Basic primers on these stats: line yards give the OL credit for yards 0-3 and half credit for 4-8, everything else goes to the RB. Opportunity rate is how often you gain four+ yards; Power success rate is converting on third and fourth and two or less; stuff rate is the rate of zero-yard-or-worse runs.]

KEY MATCHUP: CLIFFORD vs HIS INJURY. PSU's ground game might give M some troubles if it's a full-fledged, QB-involved one. Otherwise, bupkis.

Pass Defense vs Penn State

[GoPSUSports.com]

Well, here we go: finally Michigan faces an elite receiver in Jahan Dotson. Dotson is fresh off breaking Penn State's single-game receiving record with 242 yards against Maryland…

Penn State wideout Jahan Dotson is a Maryland killer.

On the second play of the drive right after the Terps scored, Dotson breaks free for an 86-yard touchdown catch and run. That's his third touchdown of the game. pic.twitter.com/WeoRJZjTWw

— Testudo Times (@testudotimes) November 6, 2021

…taking him to 932 yards on the season, which is 12th nationally. Dotson is just 5'11" and gets used in the slot and underneath frequently, which just makes the double moves all the more deadly. NFL level scouting:

very capable as a vertical receiver and big-play creator with the football in his hands … good sideline awareness and concentration to take advantage of accurate throws in tight spaces on out-breaking patterns and when targeted on the back shoulder on vertical targets on the perimeter. Dotson made several excellent high-point targets in 2020, including posterizing Ohio State’s Shaun Wade on a one-handed touchdown reception … effective in his release package to generate false steps and quickly stack defenders in press coverage

The main drawback is his size and catching radius, which points to slot-only usage at the NFL level. In college he can do whatever against whoever.

PSU's other targets are less prolific but they have some depth. Slot Parker Washington was a low four-star as a recruit and was immediately productive as an underneath guy as a freshman; this year his production has picked up as a sophomore. KeAndre Lambert-Smith is more of an Avant type, an outside guy who's mostly a possession receiver. The tight ends chip in here and there.

Say it with me, though: PSU's main problem is pass protection. They've given up 20 sacks on the season and things have gotten worse with the new, immobile version of Clifford. Alex noted that PSU throws a ton of screens, no doubt because they're terrified of exposing Clifford to yet more devastation. The prospect of Hutchinson and Ojabo going up against this tackle duo is going to cause PSU to build a very annoying gameplan around quick game stuff. Normally that leaves you pretty limited—see the Indiana game—but PSU has a couple of guys who can make it work much better than trying screens to Peyton Hendershot.

As for Clifford, he's leveled up as a senior, dropping most of the questionable decisions that plagued him in his first two years as a starter. His accuracy remains iffy—NFL teams are not frothing at the mouth to grab him—and he lacks the cannon arm to rifle it in. But since Dotson is making "only look at Jahan Dotson" right a lot of the time, it's working.

KEY MATCHUP: JAHAN DOTSON vs IMAGES OF LAST YEAR'S MICHIGAN SECONDARY. Here you go, sink or swim. Dotson's going to get his, but if that means "11 catches for 100 yards" Michigan wins. If it means 8 for 200, uhhhhhh…

SPECIAL TEAMS

Penn State checks in 38th in the FEI rankings largely because they have one of the best punt units in the country. Jordan Stout is averaging 47 yards a kick and opponents have a total of 17 return yards. That is quite the feat, and PSU slots in third nationally. Stout is also getting touchbacks on 92% of PSU kickoffs, so don't expect any excitement there.

Everything else is mediocre to bad. This may be mere sample size. Dotson has not gotten untracked as a punt returner this year but averaged 24 yards a pop on eight opportunities last year. Kick returns have been bleah. Stout is also the kicker, and he's only been okay. He's 13/18 on mostly short stuff and slots in 70th nationally once FEI takes distance into account.

Michigan continues to rank third in special teams FEI by virtue of being good at everything.

KEY MATCHUP:  AHHHH YOU CONTINUE DOING EVERYTHING WELL

INTANGIBLES

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if…

• Clifford is fully operational.
• Penn State's rushing offense is in any way functional.
• Dotson doin' Dotson things.

Cackle with knowing glee if…

• It's a passing down (and you've got a handle on screens).
• Michigan's able to blow out those DTs a la, uh, Illinois.
• Franklin calls for a punt on third and two.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 5 (Baseline: 5; +1 for Weird Beaver Stadium Business, +1 for Ack Elite Receiver, –1 for Massive Ground Game Disparity, –1 for Frames Factor, –1 for Gimpy QB Against Michigan's Terror Ends, +1 for Nobody Puts Up Yards On This Secondary, +1 for Pick 'Em Ish Line Doesn't Make A Ton Of Sense To Me And That Makes Me Nervous, –1 for Frames Factor)

Desperate need to win level: 9 (Baseline: 5; +1 for That One Time We Went And The Dumbest Things Happened, +1 for It's All On The Table, +1 for Second Straight Week Of CoFoPoff Rankings MSU Conniption Fit, +1 for Sort Of A Rival!, +1 for This Won't Bust The Can't Win Big Games Narrative But It Might At Least Make Next Week More Annoying, –1 for Basketball Season)

Loss will cause me to… assert that Jahan Dotson is KJ Hamler's clone and that's not, you know, legal or ethical.

Win will cause me to… be completely insufferable that Frames Janklin is a slightly more comedic gameday coach than Michigan's.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

I kind of don't get this line since it looks like PSU is going to be entirely dependent on Dotson, has a goofy OL, and looks vulnerable to Michigan's grinding ground attack. On the other hand, it's on the road and PSU just played OSU relatively even. On the other other hand, they just played Illinois dead even.

Bah. Unless Dotson goes absolutely bonkers it's hard to see the team that can't run at all keeping pace with the one that can, especially when two fire-breathing DEs are launching themselves at the QB on many, many downs. One team is likely to be ahead of the chains most of the night, the other is not, and the one that isn't gives up a ton of sacks.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid Sunday:

• Another sack-strip for the pile of skulls.
• Cornelius Johnson puts someone in the room of double-move pain.
• Michigan, 30-19