Essentials

WHAT	#2 Michigan (1-0) vs UNLV (1-0)	Nevada was apparently part of the confederacy
WHERE	Michigan Stadium Ann Arbor, MI
WHEN	3:39 Eastern
THE LINE	M –37.5 (Vegas) M -38 (Bill C)
TELEVISION	CBS?!? PBP: Brad Nessler? Color: Gary Danielson?!?
TICKETS	From $51.
WEATHER	partly cloudy minimal wind 70 degrees

Overview

Michigan's run of completely overmatched nonconference opponents continues with UNLV, a Mountain West team coming off a 5-7 season. Last year the Rebels played two P5 teams, losing 20-14 to Cal and 44-21 to Notre Dame. This year they've got a win over Bryant, which is probably an FCS school but may be an Ann Arbor elementary school. In the latter case: rude.

First year head coach Barry Odom was Mizzou's head coach from 2016 to 2019; prior to that he was first a Mizzou LB and then a defensive assistant in various capacities until becoming a DC in 2014 at Memphis; he was most recently the Arkansas DC. Odom got the job off the back of a pretty miserable season: Arkansas finished 13th in the SEC in YPA allowed and 10th in YPC allowed; they were dead last in yards per game allowed and 68th in SP+.

But he hired a fun offensive coordinator and has some talent on offense so this might be more interesting than, say, UConn.

[AFTER THE JUMP: "American River College"]

Run Offense vs UNLV

Trente time [Barron]

Michigan will try to get back on track against a defense that was massively vanilla in UNLV's opener, per Alex:

Where the offense for the Rebels is neat and funky, the UNLV Defense against Bryant was bland as white bread in scheme and because of who they were playing, it's hard to glean much about individual players.

Alex did not a large number of run blitzes, and a quick glance at Arkansas's stats from a year ago does indicate that Odom likes to be aggressive. The Hogs led the SEC in sacks and sent their primary linebacker across the LOS 30% of the time.

He inherited a run defense that was decent by Mountain West standards, finishing in the middle of the pack in raw YPC, but extremely conservative. UNLV finished last year with a stuff rate of 11% and line yards allowed of 3.5, which made them one of the worst teams in the country at preventing the first few yards:

collegefootballdata.com

This was offset by a relative lack of long plays; UNLV was about as good at Michigan at preventing second level yards and explosive plays. They just bled you down the field like Iowa last year.

Whether this is still the case on a defense with a new head coach and five transfers in the starting lineup is unknown. It does look like UNLV is less wacky with their fronts and blitzes than ECU was, and vastly less aggressive with their safeties. Whereas ECU was usually inserting both guys, one delayed, UNLV appears to be keeping a true deep safety on all plays. Given Odom's recent track record of blitzy-blitz-blitz with horrible results, the vanilla fronts, and UNLV entering game two under their new coach it looks like attempts to get aggressive are likely to result in UNLV parting like the Red Sea three or four times in this game.

As far as personnel goes, Alex didn't have a lot to go on with just tape against Bryant. They do have legit 300 pounders at DT but they rotated a ton…

Defensive tackle was the most heavily rotated position on the defense (not a surprising statement), with four players playing the following snap counts: 35, 35, 34, 26. Tatu Martinson and Darius Johnson are the starters, but Alex Whitmore was right there as the third option and Cooper Webb was used plenty as the fourth guy on the depth chart. I didn't see the biggest differences between these players quite frankly.

…and I assume that when you're at UNLV's level that means all of those guys are just guys. They are all old, so they've got that going for them, but three of the four guys are transfers. Martinson walked on after spending a couple years at a JUCO; Whitmore was at FCS Austin Peay; Cooper was at Louisiana-Monroe. That's a grim assemblage of backstories when you're travelling to the Big House.

KEY MATCHUP: MICHIGAN'S TACKLES vs MICHIGAN'S OTHER TACKLES. Barnhart and Hinton set a bar in the first game, and now we presume that Henderson and Jones will have their shots. OT issues were a fairly large chunk of Michigan's mishaps, such as they were, against ECU; here is an Opportunity. Who is going to take it?

Pass Offense vs UNLV

[Bryan Fuller]

McCarthy is likely to set this on fire:

Bryant's QB was 19/29 for 230 (7.9 Y/A). He is a pretty decent QB for the FCS level, don't get me wrong, but it's probably a bad sign when an FBS team is allowing a better completion% and a better Y/A clip than the FCS QB threw for the previous season.

Alex caught a ton of soft zone coverage where the UNLV players were covering grass.

Meanwhile the blitzes UNLV were bringing in game one were things with six guys in the box and a linebacker would come while a DE dropped out, basic fire zone stuff that Michigan's offensive line has seen and dealt with over and over again. On the other hand, if they sit back there's not a whole lot of hope they'll get to the QB. Their top returning rusher, Elijah Shelton, had a 12% win rate last year; they had a total of three pressures against Notre Dame last year. Alex also caught a large number of instances where UNLV lost gap integrity, which is a quick recipe for dead against McCarthy.

UNLV's best bet may be to keep up the Bryant game plan and play soft and hope to bend but not break, which seems unlikely to happen when Bryant is putting up 8 YPA.

I, uh, have nothing else to say about this.

KEY MATCHUP: JJ MCCARTHY vs THE TOWERING EXPECTATIONS JJ MCCARTHY HAS JUST ESTABLISHED. A single errant pass will now cause the fanbase to rend their garments and cancel plans for a national championship parade on the moon. If JJ McCarthy felt pressure this might be a problem.

Run Defense vs UNLV

the most interesting thing about UNLV

This could be an interesting challenge. Brennan Marion, UNLV's new offensive coordinator, has brought in an offense that he used to pave UNLV while he was at Howard. Look at this:

The Bison came out in a shotgun formation. That was the only normal thing about it. Two running backs lined up to the left of quarterback Caylin Newton. The formation was unbalanced with no eligible receiver aligned to the right side of the offensive line. Even the line splits were wonky. The left side was tightly aligned while the right side was a little more spread out.

At first glance, this may look like your typical college spread set, with three receivers stretching the defense horizontally.

Howard ran for 309 yards in a 43-40 win that was the biggest point-spread upset in history. From there he has bounced around, with one-year stops at W&M (OC), Hawaii (WR), Pitt (WR), Texas (pass game coordinator) before landing the OC job under Odom. He describes his offense like so:

“People say your offense is a spread offense,” Marion said. “It’s not even close to the spread in my mind. It’s a pro-style, triple-option offense. That’s what we’re trying to do. A true West Coast passing game, a triple-option run game and the up-tempo principles of Coach Malzahn.”

Sounds like a huge pain in the ass. I would not be surprised for Michigan to eat some garbage in this game. A more detailed breakdown of the offense can be found in Alex's post; for purposes of this section it's enough to know that the double-RB setup shown above is UNLV's base set and that they will go wildly unbalanced in an attempt to trip up your alignment rules, then throw in a blizzard of end-arounds, fake end-arounds, misdirections on top of that, and tempo. It kind of reminds me of the Mad Magicians. Personnel is almost beside the point, and we know very little about it anyway since we've got one game against Bryant to go on.

Michigan will be physically superior to pretty much everyone UNLV puts out there; Marion's job will be to make that matter less than it should. His track record suggests he'll do a good job at it.

KEY MATCHUP: BRENNAN MARION vs JESSE MINTER. RPS ho.

Pass Defense vs UNLV

will Johnson be ready to go did you see what I did there [Barron]

Obligatory: oh, no, it's Ricky White! That one MSU receiver that hamblasted Vincent Gray in a game that didn't matter in a season that didn't count is back, and he's playing the football for the UNLV. This space projects that Michigan does not lose because of Ricky White heroics. That said, White is UNLV's top returning receiver and a guy who should push for All-Mountain West at the end of the year.

His quarterback, Doug Brumfield, transferred in from… uh… a high school? Can you do that?

Yes, it says here you can. Brumfield was "recruited" by UNLV out of high school and they may have a hit on their hands. To start, Brumfield is huge (6'6") and mobile for his size. This mostly manifests on scrambles, which he had 40 of a year ago; he got a little over one called run per game.

Brumfield burst onto the scene last year after a redshirt and an injury-wracked second season, completing 65% of his passes for 7.5 YPA and receiving a solid 73 grade from PFF. Injury knocked him out of the San Jose State game; he did not return until SDSU. This means he missed Notre Dame, our closest comparable. FWIW, he was 18/33 for 206 yards, a TD, and an INT against Cal. Alex saw him bad (bad!), as his game against Bryant was well below his season output from a year ago…

…it was a very bland outing, okay check down throws that are nothing special and then consistent inaccuracy on more difficult throws that were largely open.

…but it's worth noting that Brumfield was pretty streaky last year, with PFF passing grades alternating between good and not good. After a 90 against New Mexico he put up a 42 (bad!), 66 (good), 33 (bad!), 71 (good), and a 46 (bad!). If he gets in a funk he seems to stay in a funk.

Brumfield has less than a full season as a starter under his belt and missed a big chunk of year two with injury so he has considerable upside left to explore; set aside the Bryant game and this looks like a QB who could come out of the gate and surprise Michigan with his ability, particularly if the secondary is still down key pieces.

The other side of the coin: this is a guy in a new, weird offense and his one performance against a bad P5 team a year ago implies that he's going to struggle. Alex put cyans on both tackles, and the go-go offense doesn't have special answers for passing downs. They have basic three-wide sets and the like. If Michigan is able to put them in passing situations the coordinator battle moves into the background, allowing Michigan's talent superiority to come to the fore.

KEY MATCHUP: ANYONE vs RICKY WHITE. Look I'm just saying if he scores an early touchdown to put UNLV up 7-0 I'm gonna be having a bad time in the stands.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Everything about this was a nightmare for UNLV last year save field goals. Daniel Gutierrez was 18/19, finished sixth in field goal efficiency, and ran out of eligibility. Every other drill-down category was a disaster except for kick returns, which were merely 80th. Kickoffs: 120. Punt returns: 110. Punting: 127.

The kickoffs thing is easily explained: North Texas got a touchdown on them and Gutierrez put three out of bounds. That's really all it takes these days. One TD and you go straight to the bottom.

The rest of it is probably something that will continue to hamper UNLV this year. Sophomore punter Marshall Nichols had a 42.5 yard average on 59 punts, which is superficially decent, but four of his punts were blocked, some of them in boggling fashion:

That is ND's best pass rusher blocking a punt with his knee before the punter actually hits the ball with his foot. These are teh ways guys get fired. When not having four punts returned to sender opponents were returning just under half of Nichols's punts for 8.4 yards a pop, which is abominable in 2023.

The punt returns are a bit more mysterious. They only had 12 opportunities a year ago and while they did nothing with them (6.3 an attempt) that doesn't shoot you to the bottom of the rankings unless you've got some muffs in there. Either that or a ton of punts that weren't caught and rolled a million yards.

In any case, this was a disaster a year ago save for the kicker. Gutierrez's replacement, Jose Pizano, is 3/3 in his young career so far. Maybe that'll continue to be steady. The rest of it points to a higher than average chance of a special teams mishap costing UNLV points.

KEY MATCHUP: AHHH YOU PUT IT THROUGH THE UPRIGHTS

INTANGIBLES

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if...

• Tackle rotation doesn't provide some relatively clear answers.
• Wacky tricky offense stuff gets guys chasing ghosts.
• A blindingly obvious targeting call is argued by the ref guy specialist they bring in and then the suspension is overturned, leaving you grasping at the thinnest strands of sanity in a world gone mad.

Cackle with glee if...

• JJ continues looking Heisman-ish.
• Corum knocks the rust off.
• It's a really nice day for a football game.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 1 (Baseline: +5; –1 for More Spread Than Last Game, –1 for You Hired A DC After He Was 68th In SP+?, –1 for Tricky Stuff As Likely To Blow Up Team Running New Defense As Get TFL, –1 for Run Game: No, –1 for Aidan Hutchinson Played For Michigan Two Years Ago And That Still Helps, +1 for Lions May Be Good, All Football Rules Are Out The Door)

Loss will cause me to... build a human-sized rotisserie oven, cover myself in jerk seasoning, and slowly render myself into oblivion.

Win will cause me to... create another silly JJ McCarthy chart.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

Pain. Also a couple UNLV touchdowns on wacky stuff.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid tomorrow: 

• Both backs go over 100 yards because UNLV tries to get nosy and gets it wrong.
• JJ McCarthy completes 121% of his passes, besting 2024 Alex Orji's projected statline. (Actually: 80%, 10 YPA.)
• Tommy Doman doesn't punt until the second half when the backups are in.
• Michigan, 44-19