[EDITED] 2023 ESPN+ Big Ten East college football preview: Projections, burning questions for each team
[REMINDER: Please don't copy and paste entire articles or large portions of articles. This goes for both paywalled and non-paywalled pieces.]
Here are some of the highlights on this ESPN+ article just in case some of you don’t have it. The oily reason I have ESPN plus is because it’s free for the Hulu and Disney+ bundle.
2023 PROJECTIONS
TEAMSP+ RKOFF.DEF.AVG. WCONF. W
Michigan29.2 (3)42.0 (7)12.9 (4)10.47.4
Ohio State29.6 (2)46.4 (2)16.7 (13)10.17.4
Penn State23.5 (8)37.5 (22)14.0 (6)9.66.7
Maryland9.0 (40)30.0 (49)21.1 (27)7.24.4
Michigan State7.9 (42)28.5 (56)20.6 (25)5.93.7
Rutgers-4.0 (73)20.8 (95)24.8 (50)4.11.9
Indiana-3.4 (71)27.8 (61)31.2 (92)3.81.8
A group of just seven teams manages to break out into four clear tiers: Ohio State and Michigan (a combined 47-7 the last two years), then Penn State (18-8), then Michigan State and Maryland (31-20), then Rutgers and Indiana (15-34). There's always a chance for variance based on close-game fortune or sparkly new quarterback play -- both Ohio State and Penn State are breaking in new blue-chippers -- but we start out in pretty orderly and logical fashion.
Burning questions
Who ends up on top this time in college football's most important current rivalry? It's incredible how rivalries magnify everything good and bad. The better both teams are, the higher the stakes and the bigger the disappointment (and occasional irrationality) for whoever loses.
Jim Harbaugh's first five seasons as Michigan's head coach were an undeniable success. The Wolverines had finished in the AP top 20 once in six years before his arrival, and he pulled it off four times. In 2016, just two years after going 5-7 under Brady Hoke, Harbaugh's team came within millimeters of beating Ohio State and likely going to the CFP. But in those five years, the Wolverines went 0-5 against the Buckeyes, and Harbaugh was therefore labeled by many as a relative failure.
Fast forward two years. Ohio State's Ryan Day is 45-6 overall. In his four seasons as head coach, his Buckeyes have made the CFP three times. They made the national title game in 2020 and were unlucky not to do it in 2019 and 2022. He's doing very, very well. But he has lost two in a row to Harbaugh and Michigan. That has created a bit of an existential crisis in Columbus. You can actually find "Ryan Day hot seat?" takes out in the wilderness, and it almost feels logical. Again: 45-6.
One of these two teams will again be very good and the other will end the year very unhappy...
How does Penn State bridge the gap? I do wonder sometimes how much James Franklin thinks about 2017. After riding a midseason ignition to a surprising Big Ten title in 2016, Penn State fielded an even better team the next year. The Nittany Lions moved to No. 2 in the AP poll, pummeled Michigan by 29 points and held an 11-point lead at Ohio State with five minutes left. But Ohio State scored twice late and stole a 39-38 win. Penn State fell victim to a long storm delay the next week at Michigan State, then found their form again, winning out to finish a bittersweet 11-2.
They've been chasing that opportunity ever since.
...the remainder of the article, including the other four B1G East teams? You'll have to click the following link:
While I don't think its ok to copy/paste a sizeable chunk of an article, I'm not willing to pay for ESPN+ to read it. So what I'm saying is thanks!
Why the fuck would anyone pay to read an article from SECSPN? Fuck them. Post all their articles....in the trash
My best 30 second attempt at fixing the table formatting.
TEAM SP+ RK OFF. DEF. AVG. W CONF. W
Michigan 29.2 (3) 42.0 (7) 12.9 (4) 10.4 7.4
Ohio State 29.6 (2) 46.4 (2) 16.7 (13) 10.1 7.4
Penn State 23.5 (8) 37.5 (22) 14.0 (6) 9.6 6.7
Maryland 9.0 (40) 30.0 (49) 21.1 (27) 7.2 4.4
Michigan S 7.9 (42) 28.5 (56) 20.6 (25) 5.9 3.7
Rutgers -4.0 (73) 20.8 (95) 24.8 (50) 4.1 1.9
Indiana -3.4 (71) 27.8 (61) 31.2 (92) 3.8 1.8
How on earth do they have Michigan as the 7th best offense in the big ten?
edit: nvm that is clearly 7 in the nation not big ten.
That's national rank. The only conference item is wins in the last column.
That conference loss they predict is really going to be painful. But I think the 0.6 loss will be even worse. No one will understand how it happened, and there will be inevitable finger-pointing.
Did you seriously just copy/paste am entire ESPN article? Doesn't this go against board rules?
It's just ESPN. Does anybody care about ESPN? Does ESPN even care about ESPN?
It's more than "just ESPN." The article was written by Bill Connelly, CFB stathead, creator of SP+, and friend of the blog. He's not just some random ESPN pundit, he's a long time blogger before he got the ESPN gig. It's one thing to C&P a Finebaum clickbait article, but this is not that.
It's in poor taste, IMO, to copy-and-paste so much of the article. It's doubly wrong to not even credit the author or link to the piece. EDIT: I see the link at the bottom, so points for including that at least.
The proprietor of this site cares, for one.
Can I repeat premium information?
To a limited extent. More details are here. Briefly: don't hit CTRL+C, and don't repeat every last detail.
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This board has rules?
I can understand why having ESPN+ makes you feel oily.
Here are some of the highlights on this ESPN+ article just in case some of you don’t have it. The oily reason I have ESPN plus is because it’s free for the Hulu and Disney+ bundle.
Overtaking ass is the oily reason I can think of.
It’s for the moms to decide.
All your wins are belong to us.
Another burning question, will Ohio fire their high priced Head Coach and D Coordinator after getting boatraced in AA?
They'd be stupid to, short of the rest of their season imploding and them limping to some kind of 7-5 to 8-4 season, which isn't going to happen.
Ryan Day is, I think, 45-6. He's made the CFP three times, made the title game once, should've been twice (or even all three times, given the ending of the 2019 Clemson game), and if they don't whiff that kick last year they beat TCU and win it all. And then them getting blasted by Michigan would've ultimately amounted to nothing for them.
Day's only issue is that he's losing the wrong games. If he loses to Michigan this year, I imagine some position coaches and a coordinator or two are getting sacked, and yes, he'll get a lot of heat, but he's not going anywhere. There really is no room for them to "level up" by parting ways with Day. The only coaches who are proven to be better than Day at this juncture are Saban and Smart, and they're not going anywhere. That said, there is a crap-ton of room for them to level down if they get the hire wrong. All it takes is one bad hire to send OSU into a RichRod-esque spiral that takes a decade plus to recover from.
Ryan Day was born on third base and hasn't shown that he can build and maintain shit. He can only slip so far before the floodgates of doubt burst open. I think the loss of a highly experienced HC and offense guru like Kevin Wilson is going to hurt quite a bit more than people realize. They could easily walk into Ann Arbor at 9-2, or even worse if they find a way to lose to ND, especially with mediocre QB play. 8-4 OSU is not beyond fathoming if Frames Janklin doesn't throw away another one (but who am I kidding about Frames?)
I believe 8-4 happens to OSU when I actually see it happen. I just think they have too much talent for that to happen. Aside from Michigan, PSU and possibly ND, OSU can easily out-talent everyone else that it has on its schedule.
For OSU to go 8-4, they'll also have to have something that they've only had once in seemingly the last two decades: bad QB play. Seems like every year since at least Troy Smith, OSU has struck gold at the QB position and they seem to never miss, 2011 aside. They're up to their eyeballs in 5 star QBs and 5 star receivers for them to throw to.
I'll believe their play goes downhill when I see it happen.
Of course OSU can go 8-4. Texas went 5-7 last season despite similar recruiting rankings over the previous 5 classes. (OSU had 4 top-5 classes; Texas had 3 and one ranked 8th.)
I get why people say “I’ll believe it when I see it,” but that’s both fatalist and a cop-out. The whole point of preseason analysis is to look at what’s going on with a team and try to forecast what will happen. I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it is tantamount to saying I won’t forecast change even if I should.
As Connelly noted, there is reason to doubt OSU’s OL. The combination of an inexperienced QB and a suboptimal OL could make for a much different dynamic there this year.
"I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it is tantamount to saying I won’t forecast change even if I should."
Who says it's a proven fact that you "should" forecast a substantially negative change for OSU? Connelly's opinion about OSU's OL is just that—an opinion.
When a program has established as lengthy a record for offensive production across so many different years, QBs, and OLs as Ohio State has, it's hardly illogical to predict it will continue to do so without some major change happening in the program. Especially when it continues to recruit as well as it does.
That doesn't automatically mean that they'll beat Michigan this year, but there's a large difference between going 11-1—with the only loss to Michigan—and going 8-4.
I believe you're being way too wishful - 8-4 OSU just isn't happening. They have way too much talent for that to happen. Their problem is coaching - especially on defense where they've given up way too many big plays in games that count over the last 2 to 3 years
Maybe Day can't "build" shit but saying he hasn't "maintained" shit?
OSU is 42-6 in Day's full 4 years, they've made 3 college football playoffs and even though they're 1-2 in their 3 semifinals, they were damn close to 3-0. They really did get hurt by some referee calls in the 2019 Clemson Semifinal, and of course the field goal last year. Nobody was beating 2020 Alabama, their loss in the Final wasn't a bad loss.
I think we tend to forget --- Urban only made 2 college football playoffs in 5 years: they wouldn't have made it in 2013 either if the CFP existed. 2012 I suppose they would have made it but that team had all kinds of narrow 1-score wins that year. They weren't great.
Yes, yes ... Urban was 7-0 against Michigan and Day has 2 losses. But Day's OSU resume really isn't that different than Urban's OSU resume. Day has, IMO, definitely "maintained" shit.
I'd be pretty shocked if OSU goes 8-4. In the 2013-2022 era, the 2018 team --- which was Urban's team, of course --- was the only one that even theoretically threatened 8-4 (they finished 13-1 but they was hardly elite: bunch of narrow wins and then the pole-axing at Purdue).
In what was a very mediocre B1G (Dantonio leaving, Wisconsin fading, Scott Frost), Day walked into a huge talent gap over everyone else. It wasn't going to collapse overnight without Charlie Weis level incompetence. He lucked into Justin Fields his first two seasons. He hasn't won the B1G in 3 years. Kevin Wilson, the only veteran head coach on his staff, is now gone. I'm predicting that the slide is starting to become more evident this year, in which he drops some B1G games to teams that aren't UM, and it becomes clear that he can't field consistently great OL or defenses. They certainly could have lost the Maryland game last year with a break here or there. And PSU was in the game if not for some monumental gaffes. Now, do I think they'e going 8-4, no. I think 10-2 is the most likely outcome. But 12-0 is possible, and so is 8-4.
Fair enough - we disagree.
I can respect a prediction of "Day drops some B1G games to teams that aren't U-M" ----- but I find these facts hard to ignore in predicting otherwise: (1) Day still hasn't lost a single B1G game to a team not named Michigan (he's 32-0!!!), while (2) Urban lost to a non-Michigan B1G team every single one of his last 4 years in Columbus.
We'll see what 2023 brings ... but I give Day credit (and benefit of the doubt in predictions) for avoiding every single in-conference, pre-Michigan potential slip-up.
Day definitely born on 3rd base regarding where the team and talent was. That said, 4 years later he's still on 3rd base. So, he has more than done well enough to maintain and in some ways upgrade the talent at osu. As we see, he's got their NIL back on track with the current class and is locking in another massive recruiting haul. Now rather or not that develops into the potential remains to be seen as the big ten itself is massively changing in this time.
Ryan Day has maintained the same level of play that Meyer had and in many ways improved it if we're honest. Osu fans are now saying they overlooked and don't take Michigan as seriously as Meyer did. And I think that is incorrect. Imo I think the biggest difference now is Michigan, not osu. The leadership at Michigan, the coaching esp on the defensive side of the ball has totally changed and is the difference.
Going forward though, we welcome Usc and Ucla into the conference.
Dude has 2 B1G losses, total in 4 years. I think he’ll survive if he ends the year with 3 😊
Two years in a row everyone expected Ohio state to beat us. I’d rather the team hear all season long from the media, Vegas, chatter, etc they will lose the game. Prove everyone wrong again
Oh, I can’t wait to face that defense again! He’s their Don Brown.
No, Ryan Day is their John Cooper.
tl;dr
Jim Harbaugh's first five seasons as Michigan's head coach were an undeniable success.
Uhhh...
They were a success. Hoke only had 1 good year and it was in 2011. JH took a 5-7 team and went 10-3 two years in a row in 15 and 16. Yeah, it took a lot longer than we all wanted to beat osu but Michigan was in a rough patch with that rivalry for a better part of 20 years. If JH came here and turned it around after 1 or 2 years I bet we would have actually lost him to the NFL.
I'm gunna assume you just wiped 2008-2014 from your memory.
Don't violate paywalls. Support journalists or suffer the consequences.
OSU’s most talented team under Day was actually the only team that didn’t make the CFP (2021). I would say, this year’s team is probably less talented than the last two years, but could possibly be a better team. Or they could struggle (for OSU’s standard) this year. I think it all comes down to McCord and Knowles.
I would be very wary as an OSU fan if Marvin Harrison Jr gets any hint of an injury early in the year.
I would say that OL play is high on the list of Ohio concerns. Losing both Tackles and Center is a lot to overcome….unless you have Sherrone Moore and great depth. The Domers, Sconsin, PSU and Michigan will harass the Ohio QB.
Yikes.
I can't get to it right away but when I do I'm going to have to remove most of your opening post. MGoBoard rules.
Thanks for sharing
Re: Ryan Day, yes it's crazy to have him in the hot seat for 45-6 but a ton of those 45 wins have come against bad teams where he's had a significant talent advantage. But he's gotten beaten badly by UM the last two years, needed a crazy performance by his WRs and Utah losing 3 corners to barely win a Rose Bowl, got blown out by Alabama in the national championship game in 2020, and more generally has looked really mortal the past couple of years as Meyer's influence and players cycled out.
So yeah, he shouldn't be on a hot seat but he's also a coach who you can't just judge on wins and losses in totality because 90-ish% of college coaches would drag 40-ish wins out of this outfit just by showing up. So you do need to judge him on his coaching in games where he doesn't have a huge talent advantage and on that front he's more middling.