The Vig - week 2

Scared money don't make money.

Well played.

What about against Pac 12 teams that just lost to Montana?

Gambler's fallacy.  Past results don't indicate future success (or failure).

I am not a fan of historical arguments, especially this one.  Every year is different.  Every team is different year to year.  There are countless moving parts in the statement "last 12 matches against the Pac 12, Michigan is 1-11 ATS" that it means absolutely nothing to the game that will be played on Saturday night.

Forget about BPONE.  Just look at the week 1 results.  Look at the rosters.  Look at the setting.  Objectively, what do your eyes tell you?

BTW, if I don't think Michigan can cover ATS, I don't bet it because I hate betting against my team.  If that is the case and I still want skin in the game I will typically bet the O/U.  Or tease the spread with the O/U.

UM has been pretty weak ATS over the last little bit here (in my short time of paying attention).  The program seems to have an aversion to running up the score on teams they are heavily favored over, add in how many games they barely win when they are favored and the games they lose as favorites it’s hard to understand why any gambler would have faith in them to cover while an underdog.

That’s not to say they never cover, but when I’ve been looking it’s felt like picking the opponent of UM to cover has been the higher percentage play.

I think that's a fair point, but since most of those teams are losing to FCS teams early in the season in non-conference play, how many of those games the following week are at home against a bad FBS opponent?  I doubt many of those covers are  going on the road to play a top 20-30 team.

I'd think weeks 2-3 are probably the easiest weeks to make money for professional bettors as the public wildly overreacts to tiny sample sizes, and there is probably no bigger overreaction than from a big upset like an fcs team over an fbs team. Not to mention Montana probably isn't a meaningfully worse team than Western. I feel basically the same way about this game as I would have two weeks ago if you told me Washington was without their top 4 receivers, which is relatively confident but could easily see it being like a 24-17 type game,

Here's hoping Washington's 2021 season looks EXACTLY like Michigan's in 2007, including a big time L in week two. 

Sure, but we lost to a much better FCS team, and we weren't held to 7 points.

Scoring 7 points on an FCS defense is pretty much unheard of.  There is not a quick fix for that.  If Washington scores 21 or more offensive points we should drive Jim to DTW just to fire him on the tarmac.

You are correct, 2007 did eventually turn around.  We also got completely clobbered the following week after App State at home to a good Oregon team, and that Notre Dame team was atrocious (incidentally, I was at both of those games- side note, ND was the beginning of the Jimmy Clausen era and the team deeply disliked him, the center intentionally snapped the ball over his head on the first play of the game almost resulting in a safety).  

I'm not saying we're a damn good team and that Washington is awful.  I'd just be very surprised if they can turn things around in a week, unless we help them out and play an awful game.

Yes, but that same year, in the game immediately following our loss to an FCS school, we got absolutely obliterated in a way that Michigan hadn't (to that point) been obliterated at home in my memory.  So even in your example of a good team losing to an FCS school, they still had clear problems that were further exposed by better talent.  That Michigan team also had a senior Henne and senior Hart and was coming off what would have been a playoff season if there was a 4 team playoff, so they were pretty loaded. Given the talent on that team, it's not surprising they were able to finish with a respectable record and some nice wins.

Washington is now two years removed from the Chris Petersen era, and is coming off a Covid year where they went 3-1 against the meh part of the Pac 12 (they played the last-place teams in both divisions), and gave up over 20 points in all of those games. They have a shaky QB, a seemingly porous OL, and they're missing the better half of their receiving corps.  A better parallel might be the Florida team that lost to Georgia Southern.  They were initially ranked highly, partly due to their long success under a coach that had departed a few years earlier, but their Wile E. Coyote years were ending in 2013.  The Georgia Southern game was the penultimate game on their schedule, and famously featured a play where one of their players blocked one of their other players.  After the loss to Georgia Southern, they hosted Florida State and lost by 30.

I'm not saying Michigan is going to go out and win 42-10, or that Washington is going to miss a bowl game, but losing to an FCS school is a sign that you have serious issues that are not going to be ameliorated by going on the road against significantly better competition.  If their receivers suddenly get healthy, maybe it's a different story, but right now I'd be surprised if Michigan doesn't win by a couple touchdowns.

FWIW so do I.  So much so I just parlayed Rutgers -2 & Buffalo +14.