11/12/2022 – Michigan 34, Nebraska 3 – 10-0, 7-0 Big Ten

We have acquired First World problems. My main thought while observing this game was "I wish these guys were more interesting." An injury to the opposition's starting quarterback is now a negative. From Michigan's first snap it was clear that if they wanted to they could grind Nebraska into paste without throwing a single time. One Michigan possession started out with consecutive deep balls; that felt like when you get bored playing a video game and try to up the difficulty level by doing something absurd and unnecessary.

When I was a youth playing Tecmo Super Bowl you'd do this by picking Tampa Bay. Tampa had one incredible defensive back, Mark Carrier, and nothing else. The most viable strategy deep into the season when things got harder was to build your offense around running QB Vinny Testaverde six yards at a time. (For the youth, this is like building your offense around running Tom Brady, if Tom Brady only ever said "it'sa me, Vinny Testaverde." This would be a strange thing for Tom Brady to say, but it was just as strange when Vinny Testaverde won the Heisman (seriously! look it up!) and his acceptance speech was merely that. (Don't look up that part.))

Anyway, if you ran ol' Vinny too much he'd get tired and would inevitably fumble. Sometimes he would die.

So you'd have to carefully balance the only thing that would get you yards with not getting any yards at all. This probably sounds familiar to Chubba Purdy.

In the past we have theorized that the world is a simulation, and that it is the worst of all possible simulations: an Akron teenager's NCAA Football save in which he is taking Ohio State to a million national championships in a row. Now we must reconsider. It is possible that the simulation is someone who is bored with his game and is trying to see if he can beat Michigan with Gavin Wimsatt, Chubba Purdy, Spencer Petras, or Peyton Thorne. The answer is no. God no. Hell no.  Play a different game.

---------------------------------------------------

Michigan has now reached the tier of college football teams where their games are largely ignored because they are not interesting. Alabama is playing Mizzou, you say? Ohio State is up against Michigan State? Georgia is playing… uh… the #1 team in the country? Pass, I have better things to do than watch a heavy favorite sit on someone for four hours.

For the neutral viewer Michigan is at least offering up some moderately competitive first halves, but the methods via which they have to do so are increasingly outlandish. Then the third quarter has been ritual sacrifice. For years and years and years Michigan has been the sort of heavy favorite that you always pay attention to because about 40% of the time they get into a game against a team that was supposed to be sat upon, and fairly often they'd actually lose. Michigan was worth your time, because they were good but not boring good. They were schadenfreude good.

This was an emphatic statement that no, you do not have to watch Michigan games against 30-point underdogs anymore. The method via which Michigan chooses to sit upon the opponent is literal. You will not get any whizbang long touchdowns. Every play will be a run that gains somewhere between four and twelve yards. The red hat will come on the field at some point for touchdown-commercial-kickoff-commercial because one Michigan drive ate up eight minutes of the quarter.

Variance has been banished. Players have been sat down for ever-more esoteric injuries because Michigan can throw out eight functional offensive linemen. Blake Corum's largest Heisman hurdle may be an inability to keep neutrals awake for his 28th carry of five or more yards.

It is all very relaxing, football as a Caribbean vacation. We are permitted to save up our panic for the terminator at the end of the schedule.

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

bro [Patrick Barron]

you're the man now, dog

#1 The Offensive Line. Can't really give this to Corum when CJ Stokes, Tavierre Dunlap, and Isaiah Gash all got in and looked kinda like Blake Corum while continuing to brutalize the Nebraska defense. A couple of pass protection hiccups do not override what was probably the worst ass-kicking delivered to a conference opponent since the Big 2, Little 8 days.

#2 Mason Graham. A sack, another hit on the QB that caused an incompletion, a ridiculous split of a double team, and two other solo tackles as a DT, with limited snaps, against a team that couldn't stay on the field. That is a massive amount of impact. True freshman, somehow. Going to be incredible.

#3 Blake Corum. I mean… yeah. Do you know how hard it is to average 5.8 YPC with a long of 12? That's insane.

Honorable mention: CJ Stokes made the most of his eight carries, displaying a Higdon-like ability to get vertical and make good cuts. Mazi Smith and Kris Jenkins both whooped up on Nebraska DL. Andrel Anthony didn't do a whole lot but did rescue a touchdown. Ronnie Bell managed a bunch of yards even in this game.

KFaTAotW Standings.

(points: #1: 8, #2: 5, #3: 3, HMs one each. Ties result in somewhat arbitrary assignments.)

43: Blake Corum (#2 CSU, #2 Hawaii, HM UConn, #1 Maryland, #2 Iowa. HM Indiana, T2 PSU, #1 MSU, T1 Rutgers, #3 Nebraska)
23: The Offensive Line (#3 Iowa, #1 PSU, HM MSU, #3 Rutgers, #1 Nebraska)
21: JJ McCarthy (#1 Hawaii, #2 UConn, HM Maryland, HM Iowa, #3 Indiana, HM PSU, HM MSU. HM Rutgers)
17: Mike Morris (T3 Hawaii, HM Maryland, #1 Iowa, T1 Indiana, #3 PSU, HM Rutgers), Ronnie Bell (HM CSU, HM Hawaii, #1 UConn, #2 Indiana, HM PSU, HM Nebraska)
15:  Kris Jenkins (#3 UConn, T3 Hawaii, HM Iowa, T1 Indiana, #2 MSU, HM Rutgers, HM Nebraska)
14: Mazi Smith (#1 CSU, T3 Hawaii, HM Maryland, HM Iowa, HM MSU, HM Nebraska)
9: Donovan Edwards (HM Hawaii, T2 PSU, T1 Rutgers)
8: Mason Graham (HM Hawaii, HM Iowa, HM Indiana, #2 Nebraska)
7: Gemon Green (HM UConn, T2 Maryland, HM PSU)
5: DJ Turner (T2 Maryland), Junior Colson (#3 CSU, HM UConn, HM PSU), Luke Schoonmaker (T3 Maryland, HM Iowa, HM Indiana, HM MSU), Michael Barrett (#2 Rutgers).
4: Eyabi Okie (HM CSU, HM Iowa, T1 Indiana),  Jake Moody (HM PSU, #3 MSU).
3: Derrick Moore (HM CSU, T1 Indiana), Jaylen Harrell (HM CSU, T1 Indiana), Rod Moore (HM CSU, HM Indiana, HM MSU)
2: Roman Wilson (HM CSU, HM Hawaii), Max Bredeson (T3 Maryland), Joel Honigford (T3 Maryland), Mike Sainristil (HM Maryland, HM Indiana)
1: Braiden McGregor (HM CSU), Makari Paige (HM Hawaii), Rayshaun Benny (HM Hawaii), Cornelius Johnson (HM Hawaii), , AJ Henning (HM UConn), Caden Kolesar (HM UConn), RJ Moten (HM Maryland), Will Johnson (HM Rutgers), CJ Stokes (HM Nebraska), Andrel Anthony (HM Nebraska).

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

God, who can tell when every offensive play is a run somewhere between 4 and 12 yards? I don't know, you pick one.

Honorable mention: Ronnie Bell gets Michigan a Rube Goldberg touchdown. Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant flash next year stuff. More runs from between 4 and 12 yards.

?MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Back to back attempted deep shots fall incomplete, mildly annoying people concerned about the outcome of this game and delivering a deep-seated paranoia to people focused on what happens against Ohio State.

Honorable mention: The other deep shots that fell incomplete. DJ Turner gets hit with a deep shot, see above about OSU paranoia. Officials blow a very obvious roughing the kicker penalty. Late half clock management is abominable.

OFFENSE

[Barron]

The things you can do with this kind of ground game. It was third and six on Michigan's first drive and in the stands I thought "are they going to run this?" Indeed, they did:

This is not a conservative playcall. It is the logical thing to do when you are mashing them off the ball like Michigan was in this game. You can try a pass and maybe you convert. Running almost inevitably sets up a fourth and short, which almost inevitably converts. The math starts to get weird when you can deform a game like this. At times this year Michigan has felt a little bit like a service academy, at least in terms of what the third and fourth down math looks like.

[Bryan Fuller]

Diversifying the redzone. After MSU everyone (read: your author) was all like "manball up" in goal-to-go situations, and then after Rutgers they were like "ok but not like that." This game saw Michigan go away from incessant dives without exposing Michigan to much threat of a TFL. Corum's first TD was a designed cutback—just watch Corum's route to the LOS—that wants to take advantage of everyone piling into the middle and get Corum one on one with a DB:

You can call that belly or windback, whatever. Point is that guys flinging themselves into the middle to stop the dive opened up the edge enough for a routine conversion.

Touchdown #2 was a devastating play action that saw Ronnie Bell act as like he was blocking on an insert play, which caused the guy who is hypothetically in coverage on him to cross the line of scrimmage. When McCarthy threw the ball that guy was about to tackle Blake Corum:

Touchdown #3 saw Michigan run a sweep with McCarthy as the ballcarrier, using his legs productively by adding the extra hat—Corum got the key block after Colston Loveland lost a guy—without the delay of a mesh point or the exposure to a safety who's now at five yards instead of twelve:

This is all very encouraging. Michigan saw that the things they were doing weren't working, decided to manball up against Rutgers and saw that wasn't quite the answer, and now has added some stuff in that addresses earlier issues and also focuses on the stuff they're really good at.

A bit of a concern. Karsen Barnhart got whooped a couple times by Garrett Nelson:

He also came in for a somewhat large dose of pass protection negatives against Rutgers. Barnhart has performed well on the ground, for the most part, and has been very far away from a liability. He probably starts for… uh… literally every team Michigan has played thus far. You still wonder what the situation with Trente Jones is. Jones got in on Michigan's last drive, which either means he was being taken for a test drive as they prepare to re-insert him into the starting lineup next week or that he's healthy and Barnhart has at least temporarily Wally Pipped him.

If I had to bet I'd bet on the former. The offseason competition here was not purported to be close.

cumong man [Fuller]

Just one please. Deep shots are officially Grim. The above went through Cornelius Johnson's hands, and maybe he was running inside the numbers when he should have been running outside the numbers, and maybe that goes through his hands and he should grab it, etc. Apportioning blame is not where Michigan wants to be one game before Ohio State. The results here are legitimately horrifying given the level of opposition and the punishing ground game:

Updated PFF stats on deep passes.

Out of 149 QBs with at least 15 attempts 20+ yards downfield, JJ McCarthy ranks...
94th in completion percentage (34.4 percent)
95th in yards per attempt (11.4)
75th in NFL passer rating (96.2)

— Zach Shaw (@_ZachShaw) November 13, 2022

This includes chunk plays like the Bell waggle on the first play from scrimmage that are somewhere between true deep shots and intermediate passes. Lofted downfield balls are probably grading out significantly worse.

I don't really know what to do with this. Michigan is 96th in 30+ yard pass plays. A year ago they were 24th. Cade McNamara didn't have a whole lot of trouble hitting guys downfield even without Ronnie Bell; all the complaining about Johnson this year was pretty muted last year when he was torching OSU DBs:

I'm not sure I buy the "Josh Gattis is that good as a WR coach" theory since around these parts we talk about the Wile E Coyote year where you don't drop off immediately after the linchpin coach leaves, but a year after that. The WRs are basically the same as they were last year; they didn't suddenly forget all their stuff. Also… I mean… Miami. Not good at offense.

At this point there's enough sample size to believe that this is not good, but also not enough to confirm it. We just have to hope that some of this is randomness and Lady Luck is in Michigan's favor down the road.

[Fuller]

Things that aren't Lady Luck, though. McCarthy does not appear to be making the correct throws much of the time. The above is an attempted fade to Bell where Bell appears to be looking for the back shoulder since his guy is in phase or over the top. The shot at Anthony was a reasonable decision since the underneath guys were covered, but the throw was an attempt to be perfect instead of going for the Jane Coaston All PI Offense approach: punt it up and let your guy go get it.

We've talked about this on the podcast the last couple weeks; it seems like Michigan is philosophically opposed to punting it up. In general, I agree with this—we've seen what building your offense around jump balls looks like for much of this season. But if you've got the ball and you're throwing it deep and there's not a lot of separation the right thing to do is punt it up and let your guy go get it; instead we've got a distinct tendency to try to throw the DO +5 ball instead of letting your WR moss someone.

[Barron]

Flash forward. Colston Loveland broke for an out, got a guy to jump up on it, and then broke deep for a wide open shot that seems like the kind of thing we should get used to over the next couple of years. Dude has the proverbial It. His blocking is even sort of okay despite Loveland's backstory: converted wide receiver, true freshman, out of freakin' Idaho. He's already passed a bunch of guys and will be massively hyped up going into next year.

[Fuller]

Also in It. CJ Stokes got his first extended run since his fumble earlier in the year and continued to demonstrate that he is a savvy cutter with excellent acceleration and a no-nonsense tendency to get vertical. I think he'll be an excellent understudy for Edwards next year.

Injury issues. Still not much clarity on why Edwards was being held out. He got crushed by a Nebraska LB on one of his early carries but continued after that; possible he wasn't feeling well in a way that did not rise to the level of a concussion and Michigan just decided to play it as safe as possible. There was some mention of a hand wrap at some point on the internet, supposedly traceable to legitimate persons who would know, but I have not been able to track down anything definitive.

If he plays against Illinois you have to assume everything is 100%. We might be in for a nervous week here as Michigan shelves anyone with a hangnail and we're left to wonder whether several players will be available for The Game.

DEFENSE

I'm in danger [Barron]

SPRINZONGLE. Never in the history of hurdling fools has the fool refused to be a fool at all and, instead of being hurdled, decide to issue a vote of no confidence to the opposition's swingle mccringles. Then DJ Turner concluded the affair with the closest thing to a powerbomb I've seen outside of professional wrestling. Incredible theater, and since the guy popped right up after, a memorable moment in a game otherwise almost entirely devoid of them.

Do not taunt happy fun Mike Sainristil.

Again we are called to examine the one two things that worked in minute detail. Just under half of Nebraska's 146 yards were one of two things. #1 was this pass:

That's just DJ Turner getting beat; Moten is in centerfield and cannot be expected to get over the top of that. #2 was Chubba Purdy scrambling. The first one was third and fifteen so no big deal, but they moved the ball on their field goal drive primarily through broken contain:

That came to an abrupt end when yet another Baseball Slide Gone Wrong saw Purdy do something funky to his lower body. Both of these are concerns going into Ohio State, which obviously has the dudes to go win downfield and also has a QB with solid mobility.

A theory of why they were able to break contain. Last year the DTs could just sit back and watch the carnage; they did not need to actively rush so they could just hang out and clean up if the QB got flushed. This year there is no one dominant rusher, apologies to Mike Morris, so everyone's trying to get there and when that happens and you don't win you can get pushed out of your lane. Morris had a bit of early Chase Winovich in him in this game where he'd try to get around the corner and when it didn't work he kept trying to get around the corner until he was 13 yards upfield, whereupon the "pocket" became entirely notional.

Not bad for a third string DT [Barron]

Other than that, though. Nebraska's other 45 offensive plays netted under two yards a pop. Well under. Michigan went with their heavy packages for much of the game, forcing Nebraska to single-block multiple DTs on each play. This did not go well for them. Between Smith, Jenkins, Graham, Benny, and Grant five different Michigan DTs could have been said to whoop guys.

Grant got a third down stop when he hurled his blocker so far backwards that he thought he should go try to block Kris Jenkins:

That guy is not even on the two deep. Also he is a true freshman. Also he is not even in the picture when we discuss who Michigan's best true freshman DT is.

Linebackering seems just fine now. Colson's still coming in for some fairly large swings but Michael Barrett's coming off consecutive +5.5 and +9 games; I don't think he could possibly have done anything to warrant large negatives in this one, since the bit where we talk about the successful plays Nebraska managed doesn't mention him and the rest of the day was so uniformly miserable for them. As we theorized earlier in the year, with this defensive line and this add-a-DT philosophy, Barrett's just fine back there. He may be more of a viper, but Michigan has that luxury what with their big big boys at DT.

Very happy for him, since he's been a program guy and these days the portal makes those guys a rarity. Glad to see him emerge into a solid starter, and if there's one guy Michigan will be badgering to take a COVID year it probably should be him.

[Barron]

Michigan's best freshman DT. Mason Graham came in for some discussion above in the KFaTAotW section, but let us re-emphasize that what he is doing is almost completely unprecedented. Mike Martin is pretty much the only other name in the book when it comes to instant impact DTs in recent history. (Mo Hurst redshirted and didn't really make an impact until year three.) Martin had 9 solo tackles and 11 assists in 2008; 4.5 were TFLs and two were sacks. Graham is at 8 solos, 8 assists, 2.5 TFLs, all of which are sacks. Context is fairly similar since that defense somehow had a Brandon Graham/Terrance Taylor/Will Johnson/Tim Jamison defensive line*; Martin was clearly second string behind two good starters.

He's got two more games to match Martin's numbers.

*[If you're wondering how that team could go 3-9 with that defensive line, well, the D was 32nd in SP+ that year while the offense was 90th. Also the leading tacklers on that team: Obi Ezeh and Jonas Mouton.]

Moten wobbles. Did not see a whole lot from Moten in this game except for a potential third down stop on which he could not get a guy down in the backfield. We are seeing Quinten Johnson get some more time with Makari Paige sidelined the last two games, which is nice for depth purposes—always good to have a guy get his feet wet.

SPECIAL TEAMS

[Barron]

Shoot your shot. It may seem like folly to return kicks in 2022 but I still think Michigan should be doing what they're doing here. The EV here is probably negative if you're just looking at the yard line Michigan starts at, but they're probably giving up a yard or three on average overall. In exchange they're getting AJ Henning touches and forcing the opposition to actually give a crap about their kick coverage.

Yeesh. Brad Robbins clearly had his plant foot hit on the running into the kicker penalty. That should have been the personal foul variety; it was not close. Also Henning appeared to have another case for kick catch interference on a fair catch, although that is a silly penalty to exist.

MISCELLANEOUS

[Barron]

Snow makes for some nice pictures. See above. Also:

[Barron]

Return to clock management rabbling. Michigan ended up kicking a field goal from the eleven on first and ten because they ran out of time on a drive that started with 4:10 left on the clock. They also took two timeouts to the locker room with them. This is, of course, a horrible disaster. Michigan was far too focused on running the clock down so that Nebraska would not have another drive, but even that attempt at an explanation starts to fall apart deep into the debacle. Let's pick it up with 1:12 remaining in the half. Michigan has a third and two at the 34:

• Dive play does not convert, Michigan faces fourth and one. Play is over with 1:04 left. Michigan lets the clock run al lthe way down to 37 seconds before Nebraska calls timeout because they can't get lined up. This vaguely defensible because it's fourth down and you'd be giving them a minute from their own 30. IMO it is wrong since 90% of the time you convert and you should not be hedging based on that possibility.
• Corum converts. Clock stops with 32 seconds left. Michigan has three timeouts. They lose four seconds before the snap but at least they go tempo and get it off quickly.
• Run for seven yards, Nebraska penalty for illegal substitution is declined, and then the clock runs from 23 seconds to 14 before the snap gets off. Michigan still has three timeouts.
• Endzone shot to Wilson is well covered and incomplete. 10 seconds.
• Slant to Johnson gets down to the 11, five seconds.
• Field goal.

Michigan could have saved 13 seconds with timeouts even after the fourth down conversion. From the eleven with 18 seconds left you probably have three shots at the endzone.

Clear enough now. Now it is time to talk about Playoff Plan B. A hypothetical 11-1 Michigan is certainly behind the following teams:

1. Georgia.
2. OSU.
3. TCU at 13-0.
4. Tennessee at 11-1.
5. USC at 12-1.

And they may be behind the following teams:

1. TCU at 12-1.
2. Clemson at 12-1.

At this point I assume Georgia and OSU 100% in for our Plan B scenario, and Tennessee is all but locked in. They're a 21-point favorite against South Carolina this weekend and finish their regular season with Vandy. Wins over LSU and Alabama plus a nonconference win over a decent Pitt team give them a distinct resume advantage over 11-1 M.

Things are more hopeful for the other two teams. TCU:

• @ Baylor (TCU -2)
• Iowa State
• B12 Championship, probably against Kansas State

USC:

• @ UCLA (USC –2.5)
• Notre Dame
• P12 Championship, probably against Oregon or Utah.

Both teams are considerably under 50% to make it the rest of the way without a loss, but Michigan needs both to lose and may need TCU to drop two. Even though TCU's nonconference schedule wasn't much different than Michigan's (a horrible Colorado team, FCS, SMU), there's a fair chance the committee will look more favorably at TCU's schedule since the Big Ten is so bad this year, and they'd also have a conference title and extra win as tiebreakers.

Clemson, meanwhile, is likely to get to 12-1 with maybe one ranked win and a demolition at the hands of Notre Dame. If Michigan loses a competitive game against OSU, which beat ND in the opener, the bet here is that Michigan gets the nod since the resumes will be so similar that they'll resort to the eye test, which massively favors Michigan since Michigan is demolishing opponents and Clemson is eking by teams.

One oddity: it looks like the M/OSU winner is in even if they somehow lose the Big Ten title game, because they'd be 12-1 with a win over the other. Also either team could lose this weekend and easily get in at 12-1.

HERE

Best and Worst:

Worst:  Where’s The Explosions?

One of the few consistent complaints about this season, and really for a lot of Jim Harbaugh’s tenure, is that his teams can be a bit predictable in his offensive playcalling, that he tries to impose his will on a game without necessarily taking into account what the opponent’s doing or what future opponents may glean from it.  In about half of Harbaugh’s tenure (2016, 2017, 2022) Michigan has ran for more yards than they’ve passed, and in the years they haven’t it’s typically because he lacks a solid offensive line and running backs, not because he has suddenly fallen in love with the vertical passing game.  But he also doesn’t seem to run the ball out of a prehistoric adherence to tradition or risk-aversion per se; he’s not a Kirk Ferentz-type who lacks offensive creativity.  He just plays to his team’s strength and astutely recognizes that running the ball doesn’t equate to a boring, plodding offense.  Case in point, Michigan was in the top 10 last year in terms of plays that went over 40 yards and this year they’re #45 nationally but are a mere 4 plays outside of the top 10 again.  The difference this season versus last in terms of explosiveness isn’t on the ground, as they’ve got 6 40+ runs on the year compared to 9 last season, but in the passing game where they’ve only got 5 on the season (the same as MSU) while last year they had 14 (again tied with MSU).

State of our Open Threads:

Here's the engagement picture, which was also driven by a sole factor this week:

The overall efficiency was 1.85, which is very consistent with the borderline world of the maddening win / close loss, both of which elicit the same sorts of reactions and general statistics in this study. However, it was driven by this being a smaller thread (1,837 posts) with 276 mentions of "JJ" and 192 mentions of "Harbaugh", both of which are tracked words, in the overall total of 993 tracked instances. If you took just those out, the number of tracked is down to 523 and the overall efficiency becomes 3.52, which is similar to the Penn State game.

So, basically, we're on edge despite being a very good team. We're all very likely on edge for the same reason - we look forward to and dread November 26th at the same time, just like any year in the past where we've been highly touted and highly ranked going into that game.

Would you like to know the Big Ten West scenarios? No? Well, too bad.

ELSEWHERE

Bruce Feldman has a deep dive on Biff Poggi:

He’s a guy even the most die-hard fans probably wouldn’t recognize. His name is Biff. He’s 62, and he may be the most interesting man in coaching right now.

“I think Biff’s presence there is huge,” says Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald, who ran the Wolverines defense in 2021. “He’s kind of like the consigliere. He’s really the only guy that is willing to hash it out with (Harbaugh).”

Andrew Kahn is on the Flavor Flav beat:

“For the first time ever in life, I got to see my favorite college football team play in person,” he said. “I’ve been a fan since I was young. When I was little, their helmets excited me. And then I got into the team, and I found out the team was pretty good.”

Tom VanHaaren's recap has a reassuring quote from Blake Corum:

"I could play a whole another season. No, but, you know, I'm good, I'm feeling great," Corum said. "I feel that I just continue to get better. You know, I treat my body really good."

I ran across this from Peyton Thorne in the AP story about the MSU-Rutgers game when we were doing our Around The Big Ten segment with Jamie:

"Getting three of the last four is really good, and the one that we dropped (at Michigan) it could have been very different, a couple of plays here and there."

Dude. What? Michigan outrushed MSU TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY-SIX TO THIRTY-SEVEN. The final margin was 22 points. What do those couple of plays look like? A meteor landing on the Michigan offensive line?

Speaking of Jamie, jeez:

Michigan Success Rate edge the last 6 games...
Nebraska: 55%-25%
Rutgers: 53%-19%
MSU: 50%-36%
Penn St: 54%-29%
Indiana: 55%-36%
Iowa: 58%-44%

— jamie mac (@justcoverblog) November 14, 2022

Those are giant gaps in the Success Rate world. All Michigan is lacking is some explosion on offense and they're all the way there.

This week's SP+ now has Michigan within 2.3 points of OSU, meaning that the Buckeyes would be about a five point favorite in the Horseshoe. Penn State, incredibly, is seventh in the nation. Your top-ranked West team is #16 Minnesota. Illinois has slid to 26th; they now look like Man Coverage Iowa with the #97 offense and #4 defense.