Essentials

WHAT	Michigan vs Rutgers
WHERE	Michigan Stadium Ann Arbor, MI
WHEN	3:30 Eastern
THE LINE	Michigan –20.5
TELEVISION	ABC? Ok?
TICKETS	exist
WEATHER	partly cloudy, mid-60s, ~0% chance of rain, ~10 mph wind

Overview

Welp, they started doing it. There's a big ol' article at 538 about The Case For Believing In Michigan, because historically teams that have played like Michigan in the first three weeks of the season are pretty dang good. Many stats are cited, and they're the stats I'd cite, but at no point does Alex Kirschner mention any paranormal curses. No babas yaga hovering over fetid cauldrons. &c. Oversight, I'd call that.

Anyway, here's Rutgers, 3-0 Rutgers, Schiano Rutgers? Feisty Rutgers? Not according to Vegas, and when you actually look at what Rutgers is doing not according to our personal eye tests. On the other hand this was a triple-OT game last year in which Noah Vedral threw for nearly 400 yards so let's not get cocky.

[Hit THE JUMP for I mean yeah you could get cocky]

Run Offense vs Rutgers

get loose [Campredon]

Greg Schiano is a defensive guy and this could be a meaningful test. Temple and Syracuse could do little against the Rutgers front seven. Caveats apply, of course: Syracuse was dead last in rushing average in last year's ACC and Temple could do nothing on the ground against BC last week.

Rutgers is still doing their trademark cocked nose tackle thing that Seth went into great detail on in last year's FFFF. Alex has the upshot:

What is consistent across the base defensive alignments is Rutgers' heavy reliance on stunts along the defensive front. You will see this pop up in many of the clips I will highlight and it was one of the primary reasons they walked out of Syracuse with a win. The Orange were consistently unable to pick up the stunts, and Michigan initially struggled against this last year. The reason I bring it up is to showcase that it wasn't a neat trick that was doing damage against Syracuse, but rather that it is what the entire defense is built around.

Rutgers' whole deal is swapping gaps as unpredictably as possible and getting guys through free, or at least with the ability to attack a late-reacting OL. This resulted in something of a stalemate last year, with Haskins/Charbonnet/Corum combining for 146 yards on 33 carries (4.4 per). A year later it looks like both teams are improved, particularly in their abilities to either execute a gap-sound stunt or ID it and pick it up.

This space has repeatedly noted that one thing you can take away from games even against bad opponents is a lack of OL mental errors. Michigan is big and strong and moves people but also when teams try funny stuff Michigan has picked almost literally all of it up. Rutgers is an excellent midterm exam for the developments we see but do not yet trust.

Another potential wrinkle: Rutgers is not shy about getting its safeties involved in the run game. Michigan's victims so far have largely been content to sit a couple guys back and eat dirt, whether that's because they got burned over the top (WMU), have a philosophy they stick to even if it's not working (Washington), or are extremely aware of their own limitations (NIU). Rutgers is likely to be more aggressive with their safeties, which is going to make things bumpier. I would not expect a bunch of four yard runs as the default expectation; Michigan is going to have to hit some home runs to offset times when Rutgers sneaks a guy through unmolested.

KEY MATCHUP: BLAKE CORUM vs THE SECOND LEVEL. Safety comes up. Does safety make a tackle, or grasp uselessly at the air as a muscle hamster zips by him?

Pass Offense vs Rutgers

[Fuller]

We have paintball-related news, and paintball-related news is never good:

Two Rutgers football players, who were suspended from the team on Tuesday, were arrested by campus police after shooting three students with a paintball gun in a drive-by on Monday night, university police said.

Cornerbacks Chris Long and Malachi “Max” Melton were charged three counts of aggravated assault and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose after the incident, which Rutgers police said occurred on the Livingston Campus.

Melton is a starter who had two interceptions and a blocked punt in his first three games; Long's been stuck on special teams.

So this is going to be even more hand-wavy than it was already going to be. Temple QB D'wan Mathis, a Georgia transfer from Michigan who you may remember from his rather convoluted recruitment, was horrible in the opener and then got hurt so we have no idea how much of that was Rutgers doing it and how much of it was Mathis getting the nod because ooh shiny transfer. Syracuse's Tommy Devito averaged 6.2 YPA last year and may be in the process of losing his job to his backup. Alex was particularly harsh in his assessment of Syracuse's air attack, which was completely unable to pick up those stunts:

Syracuse was routinely and consistently unable to even come close to picking up the stunts that Rutgers threw at them along the defensive line, putting their QB(s) under frequent pressure and blowing up the whole rhythm of the offense. This first clip shows a pretty standard look at their 4-3 stunt in action, with the NT Turner slanting inside and allowing the Jack Onyechi to stunt around:

So that's step one: don't have that happen. Michigan is probably going to do pretty well here if the first three games are indicative. It can also be true that McNamara is going to field more guys in his face than he has to date and his response to pressure will get an important test.

FWIW, this is an unusual situation where we have a direct comparable from last year, when McNamara took this team on and executed a wide array of speed in space stuff that had seemingly fallen out of the offense:

McNamara came in and the offense looked like the offense again.

I saw this take on twitter. It was a bad take! –twitter

Warn't. Milton got filed for zero RPOs, zero zone reads, and zero screens in this game. McNamara had six screens, four RPOs, and three zone reads. I may have missed something here or there but I mean… one of these had speed in space elements and the other absolutely did not.

He graded out well (70% DSR, +8.2 in my nascent QB single-number effort) and hit a deep ball on an RPO slant-and-go. I was trying to pump the brakes after this game and even I begrudgingly said he did pretty well. Hopefully he can match that and continue to move away from the Washington performance.

KEY MATCHUP: YOUR MICHIGAN OL vs STUNT PICKUPS. A clean quarterback is a happy quarterback.

Run Defense vs Rutgers

yep still him [Barron]

Post COVID-shirts the Rutgers offense is a vast collection of Brooks Bollinger Memorial Eighth Year Seniors, so yeah this is still Isaih Pacheco and no that is still not a typo in his first name. Kyle Monangai will get some carries in relief and Rutgers will use Vedral a few times a game but this is largely Pacheco's show.

Unfortunately for the Cable Subscribers they did not get to necro their offensive line back and things have been brutal for them so far this year. Pacheco and Monangai combined to average 2.5 YPC against Syracuse and were barely better than that against Temple. 4.3 yards a carry against FCS Delware is a major red flag, as well. Three different Rutgers OL got our cyan trouble spot designation. Alex on the situation:

…the story of the game I watched [was] a total domination of Rutgers up front by Syracuse. … You've got a stunt that the right side of the line totally biffs, as well as LG Cedrice Paillant (#54) being beaten badly. I think they were trying to set up a slip screen of some kind to the RB there, but the total inability of the RB's to help in pass protection was a theme in this game. Another one was the horrendous performance of Matt Alaimo as a blocker, which is rather mystifying given that he was on the field as a blocking TE.

Syracuse was 1-10 last year and finished 10th in the ACC in YPC rush defense. Getting skunked by them is a prelude to misery in conference play.

Michigan has likely already seen better—or at least equivalent—rushing offenses this season. WMU went for 4.3 yards a carry (sacks removed) against Pitt; NIU had huge rushing performances from Harrison Waylee against Wyoming and Georgia Tech. (Washington…. ehhhhh.) The transitive stuff is still pretty wobbly this early but GT held Clemson's ground game down and Tennessee's ground game did very little against Pitt, so there are at least a couple of solid comparison points to say these MAC teams are reasonable competition. Michigan clobbered both those teams until garbage time, and it wasn't from a lack of trying on the part of either opponent.

If this is at all like both teams first three games it should be a huge blowout, visions of that Pacheco run from a few years ago notwithstanding.

KEY MATCHUP: PACHECO vs SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING. Pacheco is not generally the kind of back who's going to find you extra yards by making a jump cut; he's the kind of guy who you deliver X yards downfield and he gets you X+2 yards. Since it appears X for Rutgers this year is zero, it's going to take an uncharacteristic performance for Rutgers to get much.

Pass Defense vs Rutgers

yep also still him [Barron]

As per tradition, the Rutgers passing game is a very urbanist thing. Everything's in a nice walkable distance from the central core. Depth of target? Minimal. Expectations of yards after the catch? Substantial. Reliance on QB arm? Nah. Protection leaned on? No sir.

Noah Vedral averaged 6.5 yards per completion against Syracuse. Aside from one 30 yard seam route to Jovani Haskins, the long completion on the day was 11 yards. Haskins, Bo Melton (yes, still him), and Aron Cruickshank averaged under six yards a catch on all other receptions. The story was largely the same against Temple except there the chunk play was a five-yard hitch on which a missed tackle set Melton free.

Now you may be asking yourself "uh what about last year," because if you're at all like me you swiftly and decisively deleted all memory of that game from your brain. Apparently I figured it out for some damn reason, although I labeled the post "Rutgers 2022":

Michigan can't run man and they can't run zone. This game was almost entirely Michigan not running zone well with the exception of Gemon Green, who was mostly stuck on the backside receiver and asked to run man against him as the rest of the defense zoned. … Unfortunately, the zones became as easy to read as man coverage for Vedral. He repeatedly hit simple outs for good yardage as Gray didn't fall off his guy in time … Meanwhile Michigan continued to struggle to put themselves in the right spots. Various slants were wide open as linebackers either picked the wrong one to deal with or players just got beat.

The other major issue was Dax Hill having a very freshman game, busting on a couple of big plays.

If this game is anything like last year's game that's a huge red flag and a clear sign that we can never have nice things. It shouldn't play out like that. Michigan's innovative decision to have the secondary coach in charge of zones actually on campus and coaching has resulted in a series of games in which opposing QBs have struggled to find areas to go with the ball. Palpable confusion has been seen at times, and there has not been an outright bust of the variety that cedes a quick touchdown.

Now, folks may point to the quality of opposition and cock an eyebrow but Kaleb Eleby was pretty good last year and just put up a 337 yard, 9.6 YPA, 3 TD day on Pitt and Washington's guy is probably going to be okay as we go along here. It is a distinct possibility that Michigan's secondary gets found out at some point. This is not going to be the point, and if it even looks like it's thinking about being the point I'm going to go hide under a rock with a copy of the basketball and hockey rosters.

KEY MATCHUP: DAX HILL vs LOL NO. Remember that period of Jabrill Peppers's career where teams kept trying to test him on the edge a couple times a game and were violently reminded that was a pretty bad idea? This is going to be an entire game of that.

SPECIAL TEAMS

You like Aussie punters? Adam Korsak is that and returns for a fourth year as a Ray Guy candidate. Dude has maintained a 43 yard average over his first three years and put just five punts in the endzone versus 85(!) inside the 20. He's averaging 52 yards a punt on 14 so far this year(!) and opponents have just three(!) return yards. Korsak's probably the best player Rutgers has.

Cruickshank has taken over the punt return duties from Melton and has a touchdown against Delaware so far this year. Probably not relevant given Brad Robbins's hang time to date. Cruickshank also returns kicks and housed two last year; this will be another situation like Washington where touchbacks will come with a small twinge of relief.

Stereotypical New Jerseyean Valentino Ambrosio is the kicker. He's 12/15 in his career on field goals but has put two kickoffs OOB this year and has a touchback rate of 45%.

Michigan's killing it; AJ Henning should catch the ball in the air on punts but everything else is solid.

KEY MATCHUP:  AHHHH YOU CONTINUE DOING EVERYTHING WELL

INTANGIBLES

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if…

• Rutgers stunts are zipping through.
• An ethereal mist seeps out of the field turf because things are going too well.
• Anything about the pass defense resembles last year.

Cackle with knowing glee if…

• Blake Corum hits the open field.
• Cade McNamara deep ball strike rate keeps on like it has been.
• You watch this full hour of Norm Macdonald on talk shows.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 3 (Baseline: 5; +1 for Sneaky Spooky Stunts, +1 for Triple OT Last year, –1 for We Really Shouldn't Pay Attention To Anything From Covid Year, –1 for All Due Respect To Noah Vedral But Noah Vedral Flinging Things In The Flats Ain't Gonna Work, –1 for This Time With Secondary Coaching, –1 for PAVE PAVE PAVE PAVE.)

Desperate need to win level: 10 (Baseline: 5; +1 for Losing To Rutgers Feels Bad, +1 for I Want To Emphasize The Previous Point As Strongly As Possible, +1 for Lucy I'm Thinking About Coming For That Football, +1 for Can't Let The Order Of Bull's Blood Get The Last Laugh, +1 for Big Ten!)

Loss will cause me to… as previously mentioned, rock + basketball roster + hockey roster + enough Ambien to knock me out for a month.

Win will cause me to… think about maybe thinking about something nice if they can beat Wisconsin.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

If you write off last year's pass defense as a stupid COVID thing in a stupid COVID season and look at how Michigan's done against similar plays this year this should be a clobberin'. Rutgers has displayed no run game to date and relies almost exclusively on dinkeridoos to move the ball. They'll probably cobble a couple things together but any sign of getting behind the chains and Vedral's going to be in Hutchinson's crosshairs.

On the other side of the ball it'll be more interesting but there should be enough pave in Michigan to combat Rutgers' fancy stunting and with a starting QB out any non-Washington version of McNamara will put this out of reach in the second half.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid Sunday:

• Rutgers does put up reasonable resistance on the ground but Corum breaks their backs with a 40+ yard TD.
• Noah Vedral passes for 143 yards.
• Michigan, 39-8