Essentials

WHAT	Michigan vs Washington
WHERE	Michigan Stadium Ann Arbor, MI
WHEN	8 PM Eastern
THE LINE	Michigan -7
TELEVISION	ABC
TICKETS	exist
WEATHER	partly cloudy, mid-70s, ~0% chance of rain, 10 mph wind

Overview

What looked like a crucial early-season bellwether game against a high-profile Pac-12 foe now looks more like a trap in which Michigan can stick its foot after the Washington Huskies lost their opener to FCS Montana, joining an exclusive club of ranked FBS teams to lose to lower-level competition. (As of press time, information on other members of this club is unavailable.) The Huskies averaged 4.9 yards an attempt with 3 interceptions and no touchdowns en route to seven (7) points. Washington was missing its top three receivers and lost a fourth during the game, but… I mean… dude.

Meanwhile we know essentially nothing about Montana since their 2020 schedule was canceled.

[Hit THE JUMP for why the Husky is so sad]

Run Offense vs Washington

meep meep [Bryan Fuller]

Jury is still out for the Huskies, obviously. FWIW, Montana's main backs combined for a respectable 119 yards on 24 carries—4.5 a pop. This largely came on the edges as UW's very very Polynesian DTs won their battles on the interior. They're going to be hard to move. Alex:

The first two features meet you right in the middle up front, and they are not small boys, Tuli and Taki. A fearsome pair of space-eating defensive tackles, they're not here to pass rush, but sometimes they still get into the backfield and make things happen.

In better news, Washington rotates a bunch of guys outside of the tackles, and they don't seem to have a complete DE. They've got some rushers, some more run-oriented guys, but no Hutchinson. Alex clipped a number of questionable plays on the edge. This may be more of a Blake Corum game than a Hassan Haskins game—not that Haskins can't get to the edge, but I mean… Corum.

Since your author's personal headline here is "ooh Blake Corum" after Corum's absurd +16.5 game, per Seth's UFR, that suits me just fine. (For the record I think Seth is more generous with points than I have been historically, which is fine but there is going to be a bit of a recalibration.) One thing to watch for is how much stuff Michigan pulls out of the Bag Of Harbaugh here. Michigan's ground game against WMU was understandably vanilla, and while I'm guessing we're not going to see Michigan's QBs pulling the ball much, if at all, that doesn't mean Michigan doesn't have misdirection up its sleeve. Ask Notre Dame from a couple years ago.

I, uh, wish I had something more to say here? Early season preview content is going to be extremely annoying as we try to extrapolate from games that are (supposed to be) massively unbalanced and do our best to ignore all data from the stupid COVID season. Washington will probably be tough up the middle but has some edge weaknesses, and we don't know much else.

KEY MATCHUP: BLAKE CORUM vs NOT AT ALL GRANDIOSE EXPECTATIONS PLACED UPON HIM BY A CADRE OF INTERNET WEIRDOS. Honestly Seth is the biggest offender here at this point. That UFR grade is taunting fate.

Pass Offense vs Washington

KEY MATCHUP: MICHIGAN WIDE RECEIVERS vs PICKING UP THE BELL SLACK. Suddenly this is one of the team X-factors. Performances could range from "no problem, see you next year Ronnie" to a version of Washington's opener.

Run Defense vs Washington

big test for Hinton [Fuller]

This Washington team doesn't do any of the things that give Michigan fans hives when it comes to modern up-tempo spread football. QB Dylan Morris is very much a pocket guy; there's little QB run game to speak of. Washington's pace is best described as glacial—as Alex pointed out, UW's median plays per game over the last five years is 102nd. There are a lot of two-tight-end sets, and a third of UW's snaps against the Grizzlies were under center. #chaosteam Indiana this is not.

It is in fact a John Donovan team. You may remember Donovan as "the guy at Penn State before Joe Moorhead," and while Donovan was saddled with the kinds of offensive lines that give up infamous sacks to a two-man rush from the Temple Owls this is just straight up goofy:

 

As a quick hint as to what went wrong for Washington in this game, this chart may provide a pretty big window:

Formation	Run	PA	Pass	Total
Shotgun	8	-	42	67%
Under Center	16	8	1	33%

The predictability of formation wasn't something I honestly picked up on until compiling the data and holy cow. 

You'd think they'd self-scout out of this if it's smacking Michigan bloggers in the face, but, uh… I remember Christian Hackenberg.

Anyway, there's going to be a relatively heavy dose of two tight end formations and beefy-ish runs. Normally this would be a cause for optimism against anyone not named Wisconsin, but going into the season Michigan's main concern was their defensive tackles and what happens when they're in a base formation with approximately all of their functional guys on the field at the same time. WMU did not provide an answer to that since Michigan was almost always in what was functionally a 4-2-5 nickel. We're going to see an actual 3-4 happen a lot more here.

The good news is that Washington's offensive line, which returned all five starters and was hyped in some corners as the Pac-12's best, massively disappointed. Alex has the grisly details in FFFF; the high-level summary:

After allowing just 0.25 sacks per game last season in the PAC-12, Washington allowed Montana to sack Dylan Morris three times in this game. After averaging 4.5 yards per game on the ground last season in the PAC-12, they rushed for 2.41 yards per carry in this game. They had a small bit of success running to the outside, but between the tackles it was a horror show.

Washington actually rotated out its guards, with equally dismal results. The Husky RBs combined for 70 yards on 21 carries, with one run longer than ten yards.

FWIW, Richard Newton is the primary back. So far he looks like Just A Guy, with 4.2 YPC on about 100 carries in 2019 and limited reps since.

KEY MATCHUP: MICHIGAN DL vs THE STANDARD SET BY FCS MONTANA. This is a lot lower bar to clear than it looked like preseason. Still, clearing it is a bare minimum to maintain the cautious optimism coming out of the WMU game.

Pass Defense vs Washington

i need this shot but with Hill-Green also in it [Barron]

The aforementioned WR injury situation makes it difficult to project here. UW head coach Jimmy Lake is the kind of guy who says nothing about anything, but these sideline observations from the Montana game make it seem like returns are unlikely for any of the missing:

Odunze was in pads, but he kept his head tucked under a hoodie while McMillan had some sort of cast or bandage on a hand that's been surgically repaired and Bynum hasn't practiced for a couple of weeks now.

Seems like losing to an FCS team would be a time you would break glass in case of emergency so I doubt any of the three are particularly close to the field. Ditto Ja'Lynn Polk, a Texas Tech transfer who got hurt on the first snap.

Compounding problems for Washington is that five(!) WRs transferred out this offseason, with Old Friend Giles Jackson and Polk transferring in. They have a total of eight scholarship WRs, and half of them are potentially out. Ouch. The remainder: Jackson had four catches for 15 yards*; Taj Davis had 6 for 59, and that was about it when it came to WR production. Washington does have a highly touted tight end, Cade Otton, who led the team with eight catches for 82 yards.

Meanwhile, QB Dylan Morris did not impress Alex. His bullet-point summary:

• • He threw a good number of catchable balls to easy, low-stress targets who were rarely more than 10 yards past the line of scrimmage (The Rutgers Offense) 
  • He also threw a solid number of plainly inaccurate balls that were uncatchable, some of which were also on bad reads
  • He had a tendency to make life harder on the receivers than it needed to be
  • He was also without any viable outside downfield targets and faced considerable pressure due to a leaky OL.

Questionable accuracy, questionable arm, limited mobility, may be better in a different context. One that probably isn't coming this week, or this year. The Washington message boards were clamoring for a QB change and may have been right, except insofar as their is someone to replace him.

Add in the OL coming in well below expectations and this looks way more comfortable than it did preseason. Caveats about first game to second game transitions are warranted, particularly for the OL, but Alex caught UW throwing the 4'7" Jackson a sideline fade that landed about five yards short. Washington is not in a good place.

Michigan is in a slightly better one, with Dax Hill excelling as a spacebacker/nickel against WMU and the cornerback situation looking tentatively improved. (Guys are still getting behind Vincent Gray too much for my taste.) Michigan threw a bunch of zones at WMU and looks set to diversify their schemes; this will be another opportunity to work on their drops without getting punished too extensively for their failures.

*[If it took four injuries to get Jackson 15 yards we may have an explanation of his place on the depth chart at WR and thus his transfer. Still a shame because he was electric on special teams.]

KEY MATCHUP: AIDAN HUTCHINSON vs FEAST WEEK. I'm not betting on Michigan's interior DL getting a lot of pressure even against some wonky guards. This would be a nice week for Hutchinson to get most of the playing time and establish himself as a consistent down-to-down problem.

SPECIAL TEAMS

You know all about Giles Jackson on kickoffs. Hopefully Michigan can put the ball deep enough to dissuade return attempts. I find it somewhat inexplicable that Jackson's not returning punts; Trent McDuffie had the sole return (for nine yards) against Montana.

Washington's punter got in some work; he averaged 45 yards a punt but UW got tagged for a couple 20+ yard returns. They gave up a 60 yard PR TD to Oregon State in the abbreviated 2020 schedule. Kicker Peyton Henry missed his only attempt against the Grizzlies but was 19/21 in 2019, that's unlikely to be a major problem. (But not impossible, #collegekickers.)

KEY MATCHUP:  AHHHH YOU CONTINUE DOING EVERYTHING WELL

INTANGIBLES

this is what happens when you type "cat that looks like a dog" into google

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if…

• A bunch of their WRs get healthy.
• The OL thing was a weird week one issue and they're back to expectations.
• McNamara's 11 attempts last Saturday aren't representative.

Cackle with knowing glee if…

• They're throwing sideline fades to Jackson because that's their best option.
• John Donovan is doing John Donovan things.
• Denard appearance? Come on make it happen.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 3 (Baseline: 5; –1 for To State The Obvious, Losing To An FCS Team Is Not Good, –1 for Home Night Game, –1 for Washington WR Injury Catastrophe, +1 for Spooky Transfer Revenge Juju, +1 for General Suspicion, –1 for John Donovan's Very Boring Offense, +1 for Should The Line Be Higher Here For A 2? Yes.)

Desperate need to win level: 7 (Baseline: 5; –1 for We're All Gonna Die Eventually, +1 for All Of A Sudden We Could Have A Good Vibes Empty Calories Fall, +1 for Is Denard There? Win For Denard,  -1 for I Mean This Season Probably Doesn't Have Capital-S Stakes, +1 for Something Good Happen To Football Please, +1 for Keep The Night Game Record Intact)

Loss will cause me to… pivot even harder to basketball. ("Not possible" –everyone.)

Win will cause me to… wonder how big of a dog an 11-0 team can be.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

One does not want to get too cocky just because a team had a bad, stupid opener. This happens to teams all the time. Hell, the Horror team got off the mat and ended up finishing that year by beating Tim Tebow in the Citrus Bowl. However, that was a talent-laden team hideously unprepared to deal with modern football. Washington just looks… bad.

That doesn't mean Michigan is good, but a home night game three time zones away from Pacific is a nice boost and if you're looking at the skill players for both teams this is no contest. Washington has better answers at DT and CB, probably, but also looks like they're going to be scrapping for any sort of pass rush.

If the teams look like they did in their openers this should be a game where Michigan can play it relatively close to the vest and still ease out to a win. "If" is doing some work there.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid Sunday:

• Blake Corum crests 100 yards in total offense.
• McNamara takes a small step back as he's asked to do more and dampens the hype from the opener a bit.
• Michigan, 23-11.