Also, this guy's name is Tim Smith! It's a lot harder to pin multiple ticket purchases to the same game in different locations with a common name like that as opposed to Connor Stalions. No one really ever thought this through at all. It's incredible.
I understand OSU and Maryland being more recent and therefor relevant matchups to scout Penn State, but I watched a good portion of their game against Illinois and Johnny Newton destroyed them. I don't think Michigan has any one defensive lineman as good as Newton, but on the aggregate I have to think this goes the same way.
I just looked it up and Penn State is 95th in country in yards per play on offense (against FBS opponents) that is one spot ahead of Rutgers and two spots behind Nebraska. These guys have been threading a fine needle of dinking and dunking their way past teams they could out talent.
I know you say that Penn State doesn't run much tempo, but they have run the 6th most plays of any offense in the country this year. I would like to see a higher possession game than Michigan has been happy to play so far this year, because it limits the impact one explosive play or turnover would have in a lower possession game.
In conference games only Purdue ranks 12th in yards per carry allowed and last in passing yards per attempt allowed. I'm a little surprised this write-up isn't a little more grim.
Yes, they have played Ohio State, but that is also balanced out by playing Iowa. Their other games are against Wisconsin, Illinois, and Nebraska. Not exactly a murder's row.
Congrats to Georgia closing the gap this week, but using this model they are still projected to lose to Air Force 27.4 to 26.9 this week. Try again next week Georgia!
Obviously these are small samples so getting obliterated by Penn State's defense is going to tank your numbers a bit, but the yards per play rankings for the FBS teams Penn State has played so far this year:
West Virginia - 125th, 4.35
Illinois - 50th, 5.85
Iowa - 125th, 4.35
Northwestern - 120th, 4.56
Like you guys said, they have a bye week and UMass before the Ohio State game so that defense is going to look like the best in the country going into the Ohio State game. I do not doubt that it is an excellent defense but they are cleaning up against scrubs right now.
As a cheapskate that won't subscribe to ESPN+ I am curious if the bottom of the sport has moved closer to the median as well. The #1 team has fallen back 6-7 points, has the number #133 team (or maybe the bottom 5 if there is a true anchor) moved up at all? I'm curious how much of this is due to the shortening of games and how much of it that the top end just isn't quite as dominant as usual.
Maybe this is crazy, or maybe it's not because they've come out and said they have a "Beat Georgia" period in their off-season practices, could repping so much Outside Zone be a plan of attack they see as a weakness for Georgia?
If they do for some reason see that as a weakness then they've got a whole bunch more time to rep it.
I was surprised that Zeke Berry's INT in the spring game didn't get clipped for his section, but then I looked at the TV angle and it doesn't look very impressive from there. From the stands he closed a ton of ground in a hurry and leapt up and made a nice catch high pointing the ball.
No mention of Roman Wilson getting the #1 jersey this year? I guess it means less than it used to (thank god), but it still has me irrationally excited for him this year. If JJ makes 'the jump' I think it's going to portend great things for Wilson above all others.
Vegas Insider has the opening line as Nebraska -8, but that was almost certainly a typo. The line is currently Minnesota -7.5. It is basically impossible for a line to move that much before the season has even started.
I said this on umhoops after the Illinois game and I was only half joking - my main takeaway from that game was that every single player on Illinois' roster would start at the 4 for Michigan.
I was also somewhat surprised by the Purple Theory assertion that Michigan ain't played nobody. I also found it interesting that they were far more dismissive of Michigan's offense and the success they would be able to have and were not as sure TCU's offense would be able to handle Michigan's defense. I have pretty much the exact opposite belief looking at all the stats. I don't think TCU has much of a chance of slowing down Michigan's offense, but I am more worried about TCU being able to hit big plays.
The way I'm looking at this game though is through the lens of previous CFP semi-final games. If Michigan is a real title contender I think they will treat TCU the way most upstart teams that have made the playoff have been treated. I do think TCU will be able to score some, but maybe something like 34-17 where the game isn't really in doubt.
The drive from Kankakee to West Lafayette is about 20 minutes longer than the drive from Kankakee to Urbana-Champaign. The close to home factor is about the same.
I would still guess this mostly bodes well for Michigan's chances though.
That was the Mills concept that Steve Spurrier ran. It's a post route run behind a square in. It's supposed to be a shot play. The post was open so he threw the post.
It does seem pretty likely that the loser of ND vs OSU would drop below Michigan in the polls, but if Utah beats Florida on the road I could see them jumping us. Oregon is probably the only other team with a shot to move up ahead Michigan, but Georgia would likely drop below Michigan if they were to lose that game.
Come on, everyone knows when you Create-A-Recruit you make him a punter with 40 Kick Power and 40 Kick Accuracy and a god at the actual position of need. Then you can easily win the recruiting battle with as few points as possible and change their position to the one of need in the off season.
He ended up at #129 overall on Rivals. The 2018 recruiting recap profile paints a more complete picture of him as a recruit. He blew up late in the cycle.
I understand the confluence of events that lead to this being the case, but it is just sucks that this team could legitimately win a national title and end up with like the 12th best class in the country.
This is nitpicky for sure, but what better place to be picking nits. On the throw in the flat to Schoonmaker I would call that marginal instead of catchable. The throw is not far enough outside and requires Schoonmaker to adjust inside to catch it and he loses all momentum. Maybe All scores on this anyway so a -1 is in order, but if the throw is further outside I think Schoonmaker has the speed to take it to the corner for a TD.
My wife is having surgery on Friday. Wife day is taking a back seat to kids weekend while she recovers. I have a 3 year old and a 1 year old. Please keep me in your thoughts in these trying times.
Torvik currently has Michigan with a 28% chance at winning an outright B1G title. If you input a Michigan win on Tuesday that goes up to a 38% chance at an outright title and 56% chance at a title share.
I know this was mentioned a lot by you guys last year, but I feel like it is getting lost in the shuffle some this year - another reason to believe Franz can take a big leap this year is that he is still the third youngest guy on the team this year (Jace Howard 23 days younger and Zeb Jackson 56 days younger).
They played on Friday night so that seems incredibly unlikely. Saturday definitely seems possible.
Even if he were eligible to play against Michigan you're talking about someone that just missed 3 weeks of practice including all of the prep for the week of the Michigan game. I would doubt he would start in that scenario.
Dave Revsine of the Big Ten Network was on The Audible podcast with Bruce Feldman and Stu Mandel and Revsine said he heard from Paul Chryst that it was a broken foot and he was out 4-10 weeks.
I would think there is a chance he plays against Michigan if Mertz is indeed out, but not a very good one.
I know it's just one game, but their backs look worse than Ibrahim to me. No doubt that Wisconsin offensive line is going to pave some holes, but I'm not that worried about a performance much different than tonight.
Mertz looked great, but they don't have a Bateman either.
1. Zach Charbonnet score a TD from outside the 20 yard line.
2. Vincent Gray stick with Bateman on a fly/fade route and at least make him need to make a contested catch.
3. A defensive line with both Jeter and Hinton on the field not get blown off the ball.
4. Run plays that mess with Minnesota's young linebackers see Michigan running backs shoot into the secondary untouched similar to the ND game last year.
I have Comcast and I can confirm there are multiple 4k games per week. Big Nude Saturday on Fox, ESPN QLED 4k game of the week (usually an afternoon or night game) and ND home games. You have to turn to the channel the game is on and hit "info" on your remote and it will switch over to the 4k feed, but they are standalone events and not channels dedicated to 4k feeds.
The thing that stuck out to me when watching the various versions of the Joe Milton every snap videos out there is that the most recent look we got at Milton was against Rutgers last year.
Milton was a raw recruit that needed a lot of refining coming into Michigan. Then we saw scattered snaps as a true freshman and in those snaps his arm strength really popped and his athleticism was maybe a notch above expected as Brian notes in his post above. Then after a true freshman season where he was likely learning more about the finer points of just being a QB and learning some portion of the playbook thrown in, Michigan hired a new offensive coordinator and totally revamped its offense. That revamped offense looked pretty terrible and disjointed for the majority of the first 6 and a half games of the season. Joe Milton didn't take a snap after week 4. He never even got a look in the offense that was "On the cusp of scratching the surface of doing something special."
Milton is now here and offers something that Michigan hasn't had since 2017 - a QB that has spent more than one year in a system (though that in of itself is kind of a scary precedent). A raw QB in his third year on campus now in his second year in the same offense is about the time you could expect a jump to be made. The hype levels and pushing McCaffrey out of the starting job has me believing that Milton is going to be the real deal. Not Heisman level performance or anything close, but third team All B1G as Ace predicted on the season preview podcast seems well within reach.
This is a crazy amount of movement in one day (Michigan was +1.5 at BetRivers IL yesterday at least) so I wouldn't be surprised if this was more of a COVID induced flip than money coming in heavy on Michigan.
I've been thinking about it the past few weeks and I think Felipe Franks is a pretty reasonable comparison. Big frame, huge arm, athletic enough, and some room for improvement when it comes to touch and decision making.
That's at least my baseline comparison of not trying to get my hopes up too much based on hype.
What do we know about Joe Milton? Well, from his scarce playing time we know he has enormous arm strength, but also two terrible interceptions in only 11 pass attempts. He also had one impressive run against a banged up Wisconsin defense and not too much else on the ground. I think it's fair to call him a mobile quarterback, but I don't think defenses are going to be particularly scared of him running the ball.
What we know about Dylan McCaffrey is probably more informative about what to expect from Joe Milton. He's a guy with adequate tools both throwing and running that made the right reads in the run game and mostly took care of the ball with one exception I can think of in the Maryland game last year. McCaffrey was very likely to be at least an average B1G quarterback, with the upside of being more than that mostly coming with his running ability. Maybe something along the lines of Brian Lewerke when he wasn't injured and terrible. If Joe Milton has passed Dylan McCaffrey, which I think is fair to assume at this point, then that means Milton is probably making fewer mistakes in practice than he had been when McCaffrey was ahead of him on the depth chart and has raised his floor to at least average B1G quarterback (mobile Nate Stanley?).
At this point all we can really expect from Milton is that he's not going to be a guy that's going to cost you games. By passing McCaffrey on the depth chart that's the bar he's cleared in my opinion. Of course that could be massively underselling what Milton is going to do this year, that's the real intrigue with Milton at QB. I think a realistic upside comparison would be Ben Roethlisberger.
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Didn't you hear? Michael Barrett is already the new LB coach.
Also, this guy's name is Tim Smith! It's a lot harder to pin multiple ticket purchases to the same game in different locations with a common name like that as opposed to Connor Stalions. No one really ever thought this through at all. It's incredible.
Apparently this man is not aware that today is Shut The Fuck Up Friday.
I understand OSU and Maryland being more recent and therefor relevant matchups to scout Penn State, but I watched a good portion of their game against Illinois and Johnny Newton destroyed them. I don't think Michigan has any one defensive lineman as good as Newton, but on the aggregate I have to think this goes the same way.
I just looked it up and Penn State is 95th in country in yards per play on offense (against FBS opponents) that is one spot ahead of Rutgers and two spots behind Nebraska. These guys have been threading a fine needle of dinking and dunking their way past teams they could out talent.
I know you say that Penn State doesn't run much tempo, but they have run the 6th most plays of any offense in the country this year. I would like to see a higher possession game than Michigan has been happy to play so far this year, because it limits the impact one explosive play or turnover would have in a lower possession game.
In conference games only Purdue ranks 12th in yards per carry allowed and last in passing yards per attempt allowed. I'm a little surprised this write-up isn't a little more grim.
Yes, they have played Ohio State, but that is also balanced out by playing Iowa. Their other games are against Wisconsin, Illinois, and Nebraska. Not exactly a murder's row.
It is the second most plays in a game Michigan's defense has faced this year.
Congrats to Georgia closing the gap this week, but using this model they are still projected to lose to Air Force 27.4 to 26.9 this week. Try again next week Georgia!
This model has Air Force (29.1) favored over Georgia (25.8). I'm going to go ahead and ignore this as useful in any manner whatsoever.
Obviously these are small samples so getting obliterated by Penn State's defense is going to tank your numbers a bit, but the yards per play rankings for the FBS teams Penn State has played so far this year:
West Virginia - 125th, 4.35
Illinois - 50th, 5.85
Iowa - 125th, 4.35
Northwestern - 120th, 4.56
Like you guys said, they have a bye week and UMass before the Ohio State game so that defense is going to look like the best in the country going into the Ohio State game. I do not doubt that it is an excellent defense but they are cleaning up against scrubs right now.
As a cheapskate that won't subscribe to ESPN+ I am curious if the bottom of the sport has moved closer to the median as well. The #1 team has fallen back 6-7 points, has the number #133 team (or maybe the bottom 5 if there is a true anchor) moved up at all? I'm curious how much of this is due to the shortening of games and how much of it that the top end just isn't quite as dominant as usual.
I'll be sure to always keep a lookout for Noah Stewart in blowouts or on the FG team now. Always happy to see a fellow type 1 person thrive.
Maybe this is crazy, or maybe it's not because they've come out and said they have a "Beat Georgia" period in their off-season practices, could repping so much Outside Zone be a plan of attack they see as a weakness for Georgia?
If they do for some reason see that as a weakness then they've got a whole bunch more time to rep it.
A special shout out to AP voter Kirk Bohls, who has Michigan #1 and Ohio State #11.
I was surprised that Zeke Berry's INT in the spring game didn't get clipped for his section, but then I looked at the TV angle and it doesn't look very impressive from there. From the stands he closed a ton of ground in a hurry and leapt up and made a nice catch high pointing the ball.
Hard to tell from the TV copy how much ground he covered, but you can see he starts shaded towards the opposite hash at the snap of the ball.
No mention of Roman Wilson getting the #1 jersey this year? I guess it means less than it used to (thank god), but it still has me irrationally excited for him this year. If JJ makes 'the jump' I think it's going to portend great things for Wilson above all others.
Vegas Insider has the opening line as Nebraska -8, but that was almost certainly a typo. The line is currently Minnesota -7.5. It is basically impossible for a line to move that much before the season has even started.
Only 14 years and 8 months for me. I registered at some point to make what I'm sure was as riveting a comment as this one is.
It means it was copy+pasted from the last 27 tickets that was posted before Nyckoles Harbor committed and Michigan still had a chance at getting him.
I said this on umhoops after the Illinois game and I was only half joking - my main takeaway from that game was that every single player on Illinois' roster would start at the 4 for Michigan.
I was also somewhat surprised by the Purple Theory assertion that Michigan ain't played nobody. I also found it interesting that they were far more dismissive of Michigan's offense and the success they would be able to have and were not as sure TCU's offense would be able to handle Michigan's defense. I have pretty much the exact opposite belief looking at all the stats. I don't think TCU has much of a chance of slowing down Michigan's offense, but I am more worried about TCU being able to hit big plays.
The way I'm looking at this game though is through the lens of previous CFP semi-final games. If Michigan is a real title contender I think they will treat TCU the way most upstart teams that have made the playoff have been treated. I do think TCU will be able to score some, but maybe something like 34-17 where the game isn't really in doubt.
Man that is a bummer about Donovan Edwards.
The drive from Kankakee to West Lafayette is about 20 minutes longer than the drive from Kankakee to Urbana-Champaign. The close to home factor is about the same.
I would still guess this mostly bodes well for Michigan's chances though.
That was the Mills concept that Steve Spurrier ran. It's a post route run behind a square in. It's supposed to be a shot play. The post was open so he threw the post.
It does seem pretty likely that the loser of ND vs OSU would drop below Michigan in the polls, but if Utah beats Florida on the road I could see them jumping us. Oregon is probably the only other team with a shot to move up ahead Michigan, but Georgia would likely drop below Michigan if they were to lose that game.
Come on, everyone knows when you Create-A-Recruit you make him a punter with 40 Kick Power and 40 Kick Accuracy and a god at the actual position of need. Then you can easily win the recruiting battle with as few points as possible and change their position to the one of need in the off season.
He ended up at #129 overall on Rivals. The 2018 recruiting recap profile paints a more complete picture of him as a recruit. He blew up late in the cycle.
https://mgoblog.com/content/2018-recruiting-aidan-hutchinson
I understand the confluence of events that lead to this being the case, but it is just sucks that this team could legitimately win a national title and end up with like the 12th best class in the country.
This is nitpicky for sure, but what better place to be picking nits. On the throw in the flat to Schoonmaker I would call that marginal instead of catchable. The throw is not far enough outside and requires Schoonmaker to adjust inside to catch it and he loses all momentum. Maybe All scores on this anyway so a -1 is in order, but if the throw is further outside I think Schoonmaker has the speed to take it to the corner for a TD.
I'm old enough to remember Joe Spivak turning down an MSU offer to walk-on at Northwestern. Bless that young man.
My wife is having surgery on Friday. Wife day is taking a back seat to kids weekend while she recovers. I have a 3 year old and a 1 year old. Please keep me in your thoughts in these trying times.
Torvik currently has Michigan with a 28% chance at winning an outright B1G title. If you input a Michigan win on Tuesday that goes up to a 38% chance at an outright title and 56% chance at a title share.
I know this was mentioned a lot by you guys last year, but I feel like it is getting lost in the shuffle some this year - another reason to believe Franz can take a big leap this year is that he is still the third youngest guy on the team this year (Jace Howard 23 days younger and Zeb Jackson 56 days younger).
Everyone with an NFL future should opt out. We're going to lose to Rutgers.
They played on Friday night so that seems incredibly unlikely. Saturday definitely seems possible.
Even if he were eligible to play against Michigan you're talking about someone that just missed 3 weeks of practice including all of the prep for the week of the Michigan game. I would doubt he would start in that scenario.
Dave Revsine of the Big Ten Network was on The Audible podcast with Bruce Feldman and Stu Mandel and Revsine said he heard from Paul Chryst that it was a broken foot and he was out 4-10 weeks.
I would think there is a chance he plays against Michigan if Mertz is indeed out, but not a very good one.
https://twitter.com/jaypo1961/status/1320483400294215681?s=19
I don't know how to embed tweets, sorry. If this is true he will miss the Michigan game in his 21 day sit out window.
I know it's just one game, but their backs look worse than Ibrahim to me. No doubt that Wisconsin offensive line is going to pave some holes, but I'm not that worried about a performance much different than tonight.
Mertz looked great, but they don't have a Bateman either.
On the plus side there is a very real chance that is the best offense Michigan will face until Ohio State.
1. Zach Charbonnet score a TD from outside the 20 yard line.
2. Vincent Gray stick with Bateman on a fly/fade route and at least make him need to make a contested catch.
3. A defensive line with both Jeter and Hinton on the field not get blown off the ball.
4. Run plays that mess with Minnesota's young linebackers see Michigan running backs shoot into the secondary untouched similar to the ND game last year.
5. One or fewer interceptions by Milton.
ND vs Pitt is the ESPN 4k game this week, bummer.
https://espnpressroom.com/us/press-releases/2020/10/abcs-saturday-night-football-features-no-18-michigan-at-no-21-minnesota-as-big-ten-returns-week-8-sees-a-dozen-ranked-teams-highlighted-on-espn-networks/amp/
I have Comcast and I can confirm there are multiple 4k games per week. Big Nude Saturday on Fox, ESPN QLED 4k game of the week (usually an afternoon or night game) and ND home games. You have to turn to the channel the game is on and hit "info" on your remote and it will switch over to the 4k feed, but they are standalone events and not channels dedicated to 4k feeds.
I have my own modem but a Comcast box for TV.
Chris Evans is going to be the best player on the offense this year.
The thing that stuck out to me when watching the various versions of the Joe Milton every snap videos out there is that the most recent look we got at Milton was against Rutgers last year.
Milton was a raw recruit that needed a lot of refining coming into Michigan. Then we saw scattered snaps as a true freshman and in those snaps his arm strength really popped and his athleticism was maybe a notch above expected as Brian notes in his post above. Then after a true freshman season where he was likely learning more about the finer points of just being a QB and learning some portion of the playbook thrown in, Michigan hired a new offensive coordinator and totally revamped its offense. That revamped offense looked pretty terrible and disjointed for the majority of the first 6 and a half games of the season. Joe Milton didn't take a snap after week 4. He never even got a look in the offense that was "On the cusp of scratching the surface of doing something special."
Milton is now here and offers something that Michigan hasn't had since 2017 - a QB that has spent more than one year in a system (though that in of itself is kind of a scary precedent). A raw QB in his third year on campus now in his second year in the same offense is about the time you could expect a jump to be made. The hype levels and pushing McCaffrey out of the starting job has me believing that Milton is going to be the real deal. Not Heisman level performance or anything close, but third team All B1G as Ace predicted on the season preview podcast seems well within reach.
Yeah, must be why the notoriously huge Indiana football fan base has moved the line in Indiana's favor against the tiny Penn State fan base.
Michigan went from an implied ~45% chance at winning to an implied ~60% chance at winning. Betting lines aren't made on a whim.
This is a crazy amount of movement in one day (Michigan was +1.5 at BetRivers IL yesterday at least) so I wouldn't be surprised if this was more of a COVID induced flip than money coming in heavy on Michigan.
Michigan is now -3.5 favorites at BetRivers IL and opened up -2 at Circa for whatever that's worth.
https://twitter.com/CircaSports/status/1317893395478679552?s=19
I've been thinking about it the past few weeks and I think Felipe Franks is a pretty reasonable comparison. Big frame, huge arm, athletic enough, and some room for improvement when it comes to touch and decision making.
That's at least my baseline comparison of not trying to get my hopes up too much based on hype.
What do we know about Joe Milton? Well, from his scarce playing time we know he has enormous arm strength, but also two terrible interceptions in only 11 pass attempts. He also had one impressive run against a banged up Wisconsin defense and not too much else on the ground. I think it's fair to call him a mobile quarterback, but I don't think defenses are going to be particularly scared of him running the ball.
What we know about Dylan McCaffrey is probably more informative about what to expect from Joe Milton. He's a guy with adequate tools both throwing and running that made the right reads in the run game and mostly took care of the ball with one exception I can think of in the Maryland game last year. McCaffrey was very likely to be at least an average B1G quarterback, with the upside of being more than that mostly coming with his running ability. Maybe something along the lines of Brian Lewerke when he wasn't injured and terrible. If Joe Milton has passed Dylan McCaffrey, which I think is fair to assume at this point, then that means Milton is probably making fewer mistakes in practice than he had been when McCaffrey was ahead of him on the depth chart and has raised his floor to at least average B1G quarterback (mobile Nate Stanley?).
At this point all we can really expect from Milton is that he's not going to be a guy that's going to cost you games. By passing McCaffrey on the depth chart that's the bar he's cleared in my opinion. Of course that could be massively underselling what Milton is going to do this year, that's the real intrigue with Milton at QB. I think a realistic upside comparison would be Ben Roethlisberger.
To be clear, this in reference to collegiate football and the likelihood of it taking place.