So up front, this isn’t going to be particularly long.  It felt like eons ago that college football ended and so it’s been hard to reestablish that attachment.  It’s been coming back in recent weeks but with everything else going on in the world, getting super-excited about what will likely be a perfectly fine-if-unspectacular year just hasn’t taken hold.  I’m still not nearly as dour as others about the 2021 season, just trying to let the experience happen organically and not get prematurely hyped.  For real in-depth analysis of each position group and their season outlook I’d direct you to the always-amazing HTTV, this year’s edition being particularly impressive seeing as it was cobbled together with a threadbare staff yet was as thoughtful and enjoyable as ever.  I do think the weekly post-game breakdowns will be easier to write, so I hope to keep pumping those out this year.

Also:  If anyone knows how to configure Open Live Writer to work with the new site please let me know; the instructions don’t seem to work.

Worst:  2020

So last year was … not great.  After a fun, if perhaps somewhat foreboding, win over Minnesota the Wolverines proceeded to go 1-4 the rest of the way; that sole win being, again, a fun-if-foreboding triple OT (!) victory over Rutgers in which Cade McNamara threw approximately half of UM’s total passing TDs (4)(!!) in about 30 minutes of football (!!!).  Perhaps fittingly, UM’s season ended two weeks later as undefeated COVID-19 spread across the team, robbing Michigan of a chance to end the year with a win over OSU but otherwise sending a rough season out with a whimper.  That 1-4 skid included losing to an awful MSU team when Rocky Lombardi connected with Ricky White 8 times at an average 24.5 ypc, going down 28-0 to Wisconsin for the second time in a row, and losing to previously-winless PSU by 10 at home.  Along the way, Michigan also suffered through a series of debilitating absences and injuries, starting from preseason opt-outs by their best corner (Thomas) and WR (Collins) to season-ending injuries to guys like Hutchinson and Mayfield, to others starters like Paye  and Milton missing stretches throughout the year.  And even when they were reasonably healthy they still looked lost at times, from the aforementioned struggles at corner (especially Vincent Gray early on) and on both lines to breaking in multiple new QBs and receivers in a passing game that could never get into much of a cadence. 

I don’t want to dwell on 2020 too much, but I also want to put in perspective just how bad the year went for Michigan on both sides of the ball.  On defense, 2020 featured these lowlights:

1. Michigan allowed every team to score first in all 6 games, and each time it was a TD.
2. They also allowed teams to score quickly – 3 teams scored on their first possession, 2 on their second, and 1 on their third possession (Rutgers). 
3. As a team Michigan allowed 4.2 ypc and 7.4 ypa, the latter number coming against exactly zero (!) teams ranked in the top-50 nationally in yards-per-attempt (Minnesota and PSU were 53rd and 54th).  As for rushing defense, the 4.2 ypc was a full yard worse than last year’s 3.2 ypc and came against the nation’s #57, #83, #86, #99, #116, and #124-ranked rushing attacks.  Also, if you’re wondering he helmed that #116 ranked attack, guess what he’s the new RB coach at Michigan.
4. For the year UM generated 3 turnovers, which ranked 120th in the nation.  The fact two of them occurred in the first game of the year (including Jeter’s fumble recovery TD) and the other was the last play of the Rutgers game, I guess, shows they were were instrumental in wins but, um, UM played 4 more games last year and didn’t force a single TO.

As for the offense, check this list out:

1. The rushing attack was reasonably sound (4.6 ypc), but their 7.1 ypa was only a smidge ahead of MSU (6.9) and Indiana (6.9) and equal with Army and Purdue.  And it wasn’t like UM didn’t try to throw the ball; they attempted 35.5 passes a game last year, which likely was in part due to them typically trailing in games but also seemed to be somewhat the by-product of a QB-focused offense with a QB (Milton) who struggled, for myriad of reasons, to run it optimally. 
2. The rush offense also took a long time to get going; after gashing what turned out to be a really bad Minnesota defense for 8.26 ypc they didn’t get above 4.5 ypc until PSU to end the game.  Along the way they put up games of .72 ypc (IU), 2.47 (Wisconsin), and 3.42 (Rutgers), though with the latter two games you did see Hassan Haskins emerge as the lead back, recording back-to-back 100 yard games.  But until those last two games Joe Milton actually led the team in rush attempts with 32; the next closest ball carrier was Hassan Haskins with 21.  Again, probably not a recipe for success especially since a lot of those rushes were likely scrambles.
3. Discounting the Minnesota game in which Michigan led for good midway through the first quarter, the Wolverines didn’t lead in a game until the start of the 4th quarter against Rutgers (!), and then never again.  So in a span of 5 games Michigan’s offense secured the lead for about 12 minutes of gametime. 

All of this led to an offseason replete with drama, from people calling for Harbaugh to be canned to him returning on a “it’s not you, it’s me”-style contract extension.  Once that was settled, Don Brown was shipped off to Arizona and there was significant staff shakeup, particularly on defense.  Mike MacDonald was brought in from the Ravens to helm a defense for the first time in his career, assistant coaches came and went (some in the same offseason), a pretty good recruiting class was hauled in, athletes started getting paid for promoting MMA gyms, energy bars, pet food, and basically anything else you can imagine, and all the while the usual slew of players entered and exited the transfer portal.  When the dust settled Michigan had a revamped defense, a new QB, and a lot of questions around if Jim Harbaugh was just keeping the seat warm, if this was the beginning of a rebirth with a newly-focused Harbaugh, or something in between.  Where you fall on that spectrum is likely going to dictate how enjoyable the rest of this year is for you. 

Best:  Fewer Nametags

Oh yeah, 2020’s entire college football season was in doubt from the jump due to a global pandemic that wreaked havoc on schedules, coach-player interactions, player availability, and even such basic questions as “will games be played”.  Now, I’ll save some of you the time and effort rushing to the comments and post this here.

Up front, Michigan was probably not going to be great last year even if they had enjoyed a “normal” offseason in non-pandemic times.  Even before both Thomas and Collins opted out, Michigan was poised to enter last year with less than 43% of their returning production from 2019, which ranked 125th in the country.  For those counting at home, there are only 130 FBS teams in the country.  And even that number is misleading as it assumed both Collins and Thomas were back, which in hindsight was foolish for UM fans to expect because that would have been a positive for the Wolverines and, as the universe demands, not allowed.  Historically, teams that return that little production struggle the following season, and it really didn’t matter if you were a consistently-elite program or a team from the lower rungs of CFB. 

As part of a home data scraping project I’ve been working on for some months, I’ve been pulling college football data from a number of sites and trying to identify patterns or interesting takeaways.  One of my big takeaways, and this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to most, is that unless you’re a service academy or a hyper-elite program (mostly Alabama, a bit less OSU and Clemson), losing a bunch of production year-to-year tends to have a negative impact on your on-field performance the following season, while the inverse (lots of returning production) tends to be a harbinger of a good year.  Case in point – I pulled Bill Connelly’s returning production rankings from 2016 to 2020 and compared that to the teams’ records that year.  Here’s the yearly breakdowns for winning percentage of the 20 teams with the least returning production:

1. 2016 – 49.6%
2. 2017 – 48.5%
3. 2018 – 51.7%
4. 2019 – 42.3%
5. 2020 – 34.5%

By comparison, the top 20 teams in terms of returning production had this level of success:

1. 2016 – 46.6%
2. 2017 – 54.8%
3. 2018 – 57.3%
4. 2019 – 58.4%
5. 2020 – 54.2%

If you’re wondering about 2016 (as I was), that was the year OSU and Wisconsin both won 11 games while a bunch of bad teams returned a lot of production, in this case Rutgers, Kansas, and UConn slap-fighting their way to 7 wins and 29 losses.  I also believe that was the first year Connelly released his returning production numbers so perhaps there was just something off with that season.  2018’s least-productive teams had 12-2 Oklahoma replacing one Heisman Trophy winner with another in Kyler Murray (the Sooners also went 4-1 in 1-score games that year), so perhaps not a pattern one can hope to replicate year-in/year-out.  As for 2020, it’s particularly divergent because Texas State went 2-10, Kansas went 0-9, UL Monroe went 0-10, and Northern Illinois went 0-6 while Coastal Carolina went 11-1 and Texas A&M went 9-1.

So as you can see, unless you’re just  loaded or have the fortune on replacing the best player in college with the next best player in college, you’re likely going to be looking at a rocky season.  And on top of that, limited practice time due to COVID restrictions seemed to wreak havoc on the younger teams more than the older ones.  For example, LSU may have finished 2020 at 5-5 but they were 3-5 before a late-season surge against Florida and Ole Miss, likely spurred on by a lot of these young, inexperienced players getting more comfortable with each other and the play calls as the year progressed.  Similarly, Tulane finished 6-6 last year but was 2-4 after 6 games. 

This year Michigan is ranked 49th in returning production per SP+, which historically points to a halfway-decent year.  Pulling the teams ranked between 40 and 60 over the years, we get these results:

1. 2016 – 62.2%
2. 2017 – 55.6%
3. 2018 – 50.1%
4. 2019 – 53.9%
5. 2020 – 55.6%

And in each of those seasons playoff-level teams, including a national champion, emerged from this group.  In 2016 you had 14-1 Clemson, 13-1 WMU, and 10-3 Michigan, 2017 you had 13-1 Wisconsin, 12-2 OU, and 10-4 Auburn, 2018 you had 10-3 UK and 10-4 Texas, 2019 you had 14-1 Clemson again, 12-2 OU, and 10-3 Iowa, and in 2020 you had 11-1 BYU, 8-2 Georgia, and 9-3 Iowa St. So if you’re looking for some optimism right off the bat this year, not being one of the least experienced teams in the country is a great place to start.

Best:  The Floor

I’ve noticed that I’ve slowly turned into a bit of a Joe Milton detractor, so I want to say up front that the improvements he made from his HS tape to the guy who stepped onto the field against Minnesota was incredibly impressive and he deserves immense credit for that transformation.  He completed less than 50% of his passes in HS and even after 2 years on campus looked at times like a guy who had exactly one speed and that was “this direction”, coverage be damned.  By all accounts he beat Dylan McCaffrey for the starting spot last year, and while we can debate how good a sign it is that your higher-rated, once-anointed heir apparent then quit school to go play for his Dad at an FCS school, a win’s a win.  And the fact he won the job at Tennessee, caveats and all, shows that at least two P5 programs saw a quality starter in him.  You absolutely can’t and shouldn’t take that away from him.  The fact he didn’t work out at Michigan, and was somewhat emblematic of last year’s immense promise collapsing into uninspiring reality, was not remotely his sole doing; he was let down by a disjointed offensive line, a porous defense, and questionable offensive strategizing.  And when it was clicking, he looked really good.

At the same time, Milton’s struggles reading defenses and executing the offense played a big role in his struggles.  This highlight from the spring game was repeated a couple of times during the season, wherein he either didn’t see the defender or tried to throw it through them, with predictable results.  Heck, even when it sorta worked it was hard to tell if he planned it or just got lucky.  And yes, I’m sure I could clip some errant throws from anyone’s season to make them look bad.  But there was absolutely a pattern here that can be a problem for guys with big arms – they sort of trust they can get the ball into tight spaces and before defenders can react, and while that may work against bad defenses (Minnesota and MSU, for example), it absolutely won’t against the better defenses in the league.  While his accuracy suffered as a result of an injured thumb that required offseason surgery, the mistakes he was making reading and responding to defenses wasn’t due to ligament damage.  I do think he’ll be fine at Tennessee and Josh Heupel did some solid work with Dillon Gabriel last year so it’s not out of the question that Milton reaches closer to his potential than he did at Michigan.  But his limitations at QB are real and I’m not sure going to new a school with limited time to learn yet another playbook and compete in the best conference in college sports is a recipe for success. 

But without Milton, the starting job naturally fell to Cade McNamara.  Rutgers caveats and all, but as noted earlier Cade wound up leading the team in TD passes on the year in no small part due to his performance in the one extended stretch of playing time he received all year against the Scarlett Knights.  Entering the game down 17 and UM reeling, McNamara led scoring drives on 4 of his next 6 real drives (I’m ignoring the 9-second drive they had to end regulation).  He wasn’t perfect but the offense just looked more in-sync and organic once he was at the helm.  And it wasn’t necessarily flashy – McNamara’s YPA was only 7.2, and other than a blindingly wide-open bomb to Johnson to open the scoring he wasn’t benefiting from breakdowns by the Rutgers defense.  And yet, the offense flowed so much easier with him out there, with a lot of the wrinkles UM wanted to exploit, such as their tight ends (Erick All and Nick Eubanks picked up 9 of their 22 completions on the year in this game) and Chris Evans (4 of his 9 catches on the year) in the passing game as well as a more consistent, if less dynamic, rushing attack (Hassan Haskins had a season-high in rushes and carries in this game, and he followed it up with another 101 yard outing against PSU with McNamara at the helm to start).    And before getting hurt against PSU he had the offense moving reasonably well, going 4/5 for and generally executing a coherent offensive system.

Coming into 2021 the sense seems to be is that McNamara is just keeping the seat warm from J.J. McCarthy, the 5* heir apparent to the role.  And in the long term, McCarthy should emerge as the best QB on the roster and assume the role.  But I also feel like UM fans are severely underselling McNamara for reasons that feel illogical.  I’ve heard him be referred to as “physically limited”, which is weird since he’s listed at 6’ 1” and 212 lbs, putting him at the same size as a slew of successful QBs from last season, including Zack Wilson, Sam Howell, Ian Book, and Dillon Gabriel, to say nothing of guys like Shea Patterson.  And while guys like Speight and Rudock were bigger neither had what I’d describe as a “cannon” for an arm or were particularly mobile, yet they were both effective at Michigan.  Matt Weiss has said he’s got more than enough arm strength to win with and his recruiting profile generally painted a guy with a strong arm and decent mobility.  If the argument is “he’s not that fast”, sure (a 5.01 40 time from HS is the only number I’ve seen), but Michigan has also now tried for years to “run the QB” and in the process got them hurt and/or discovered they could not, in fact, read a defensive end to save their lives.  If McNamara can run the ball a bit and keep defenses honest, that’s more than sufficient for the offense to keep humming along, especially if the backfield is as strong as it looks coming into the year. 

And while I recognize the sanctimony in the comparison, I remember 1998 being the year where the incumbent QB (Tom Brady) was expected to cede the starting spot to the athletically-superior Wonder Kid Drew Henson, and fans wondered for 2 years how Brady was able to hold off his successor.  McCarthy isn’t Henson and McNamara isn’t Brady by any means, but successful college QBs come in all shapes and sizes, and assuming the #7 QB in his recruiting class three years out couldn’t possibly succeed while hyping the #9 guy in his third year because he is big and had a good arm feels like an exercise in hyperbole.  The fetishization of arm strength has always struck me as weird, and as I wrote elsewhere:

Michigan's offense is not going to be successful because 3 times a game the QB can uncork a 50+ yarder in the air; it will be successful if the QB doesn't throw it directly to the defender at least twice a game because he thinks he can muscle it to the WR.

Cade McNamara may not have the highest ceiling of recent QB prospects at UM, but he absolutely seems like someone who can be successful and, given some of the other concerns on the offense, the best option right now.

Best:  The Floor 2, Crawlspace

The other saving grace offensively for this team is that the running backs are poised to have a breakout campaign.  My biggest complaint the past couple of years offensively is that they tried too hard to “spread” the touches around, resulting in nobody really getting any momentum or consistency going until injuries and ineffectiveness inevitably led to ta pecking order that should have been in place weeks ago.  Case in point: in the first 4 games of 2019 Michigan’s top-5 rushing attempt leaders were Zach Charbonnet with 48 (33 of which came against Army), Christian Turner with 31 (!) including the only back to get more than 9 carries in 2 games, Shea Patterson with 24, then Hassan Haskins (12) and Dylan McCaffrey (11), the latter of which probably would have had more had Wisconsin not tried to one-shot him the minute he stepped onto the field.  Hassan Haskins didn’t break double digits in terms of carries until the 6th game of the year (Illinois), in which he averaged 10.4 ypc on a bunch of physical runs through, around, and over defenders.  He was stymied somewhat against PSU in the following game (Charbonnet shone with 2 TDs but UM was in catch-up mode much of the game nobody carried the ball much) before exploding again against Notre Dame for 149 yards on 20 carries.  The rest of the year Haskins and Charbonnet handled most of the carries, and that seemed about right in terms of effectiveness. 

So when 2020 rolled around, I sort of assumed that those two guys would lead the way, with similar distribution.  But instead, Joe Milton led the team in rushing attempts the first two games of the year and Charbonnet, outside of his first carry against Minnesota where he ran through a massive hole for a TD, failed to really produce.    Haskins was the only back who did much against MSU in that loss but 4 backs touched the ball at least 3 times, all behind Milton’s 12 carries.  Indiana and Wisconsin got away quickly but you still saw the offense try to get everyone involved even when their effectiveness varied significantly.  But those last two games Haskins received the lion’s share of the carries and while they weren’t always flashy, the running game seemingly had some flow to it, a sense that it might not be pretty but it could be effective.  My hope is that 2021, whether it be due to roster subtractions to a change at position coach, will lead to a more cohesive and consistent running game, with Haskins the lead back and guys like Corum and freshman Donovan Edwards getting their touches organically.  Because while Haskins is far from a perfect back, his combination of size and athleticism has proven effective against any defense he’ll see in this conference and also gives a base from which the offense can toss in wrinkles when the situation calls for it.  Similar to my concerns above the QB spot this year vs. last, this line from Haskins’s HS coach feels quite apropos:

“We had a Big Ten school that comes in and watches him jump 6’7 and practice, and the guy told me, ‘Well, he can’t break 60 yard runs. Maybe he’ll break a 30.’ And I looked at him and said, ‘Well, give it to him twice.’ ”

I’m not going to go crazy and predict Haskins leads the league in rushing or anything, but I suspect he’ll lead the team in rushing by a healthy margin and that will, in turn, will help open up the other aspects of the offense while taking a bit of pressure off a talented-but-inexperienced offensive line.  My big concern is that the switch to Hart from Jay Harbaugh seems more a shot at nostalgia than a necessary change; the running backs were perfectly fine last year and look poised to be better this year, and the guy they have coming in just oversaw a team that averaged fewer yards per carry than the year before in consecutive seasons (from 4.4 ypc to 3.7 to 3.3 last year) despite having a pretty good passing game and an experienced offensive line.  Again, my hopes are still high but I really hope there isn’t any unnecessary meddling.

Worst:  Big Hype Men

I know the joke around Michigan preseasons of yore is that Donovan Jeter typically gets hyped to the moon and then the season plays out much differently, but honestly it’s been happening since 2017 and every year it follows the same general pattern.  The coaches talk about how he’s got good feet for a man his size, we then realize he’s gained or lost about the weight of a baby bison, there’s some chatter about how he’s rounding into shape after some nagging injury, and then 4 weeks in he’s got 3 tackles and we all sort of memory-hole those expectations until the following year.  The one silver lining, if there is one in this case, is that Jeter seems to be at a happy weight and the last 2 games of the year he came on a bit, picking up 8 tackles and scoring a +7 in UFR-points against Rutgers.  So perhaps it’s finally all coming together for Jeter exactly when UM really needs him to at least be a serviceable big man in the middle.  He may well have started breaking out last year had the pandemic not halted the season, and the fact he’s very self-aware about how long this hype train has been stalled in the station might be a good sign his uptick in performance is getting closer to matching it.

And yes, I realize that a lot of my positive examples throughout this preview are against Rutgers – well, you gotta dance with the one who brought you, and so please let me introduce you to Chris Hinton, who may have “turned in the most impressive play of his career to date on a sack” against the Scarlett Knights.  I know Mazi Smith has been getting more offseason hype as the guy poised to make a leap, but in general I always get nervous about a guy’s fitness and consistency when he gained 21 pounds in an offseason.  Hinton seems to be at a good weight (310) and has the pedigree to perhaps capture some of the promise he showed as a 5* recruit.  Concerns about motor and consistency have been mentioned but…I don’t know, I want to believe that good things can happen for UM and big guys just take time to develop.  Similarly, Smith was a highly-regarded prospect who has consistently been called out as a breakout candidate by the coaches; some of that may well be motivational but college coaches also aren’t usually playing 12D chess with their words; if they like you they’ll say it and if they don’t they’ll just ignore you.  The fact Smith has come in for praise from everyone does feel genuine, and if so that gives this team 3 largish men for a defensive front that will need at least 2 of them to play a lot of snaps. 

All that said, the fact I had to spend 2 paragraphs trying to convince myself that this might all work out sort of proves the danger of hype, but even 1/3 from this group would feel like a win after last year.

Best:  Coaching Not Brought To You By Zoom

The pandemic changed the nature of work for a lot of people.  Suddenly, many office workers were sitting at home, spending hours on video calls and telework as cities ground to a halt.  What was once considered the work style of freelancers and Sandra Bulllock became the new normal for large swaths of people worldwide, and for the most part people adjusted.  But there were obviously still jobs that could only be done successfully in person, as they required a certain tangible engagement in order to maximize the productivity.  One such position, I have come to realize, is safeties coach on a college football team.  I’ll admit my sample size is small, but in 100% of the cases I saw of someone trying to Zoom his way through player development the end result was a completely frazzled and disastrous part of a bad defense.  Bob Shoop came on late to UM’s staff as a short-term fix due to the departure of Chris Partridge, the idea being that his experience would help steady a talented unit in need of direction while giving him a spot to look for another DC job.  Michigan had done something similar to Jim McElwain as a WR coach and that paid off pretty well in 2018.  But apparently Shoop rarely, if ever, stepped foot onto the field or meet with his players in person, and was basically getting paid to sit at home by the end of the year as a GA tried valiantly to coach Hill, Hawkins, Page and everyone else. 

I know the conventional wisdom is that the corners were the worst part of the defense, crystalized by Ricky White torching Vincent Gray for nearly 200 yards, but by the end of the year both Gray and Green had gotten better while Daxton Hill was letting guys get behind him easily and missing easy tackles.  I assume Zordich was also helping out coaching safeties, but it was an untenable situation for all involved.  So as part of a near-complete defensive overhaul, Ron Bellamy has now taken over as dedicated safeties coach while Steve Clinkscale will likely be providing insights as defensive passing coach.  Bellamy comes from West Bloomfield HS and has never coached safeties before but did play WR in college so shouldn’t be completely unaware of how defenses try to stymie the passing game, and his defenses at WB were pretty solid.  At the very least, he 100% will be coaching his players in person, and in 2021 that will be significantly different than last year.  I have hopes that the secondary, featuring guys like Hill and Green, will be a strength of the defense and allow Mike MacDonald to throw different formations and looks at offenses in the hope of creating more turnovers. 

Quick Hits:

1. The receiving corps will be one of the best in the Big 10, especially if the Daylen Baldwin hype turns into reality.  The conference really doesn’t have a ton of defensive backfield talent; Seth half-joking that Green may be the 4th-best corner in the conference is likely true, and both Johnson and Bell have shown they can make plays downfield if given a chance.  If a TE also steps up as a safety valve for the QB, this offense will be in business.
2. I generally don’t put a ton of stock into defensive coaches talking about creating “havoc” and introducing “unpredictability” because it’s (a) extremely hard to teach guys to be confusing as much as “play our system well”, and (b) every coach talks about making the other team make mistakes.  There’s little magic or secret sauce in how you generate interceptions; have athletic guys in your defensive backfield and generate a lot of pressure on the QB.  Indiana picked up 17 interceptions in 7 games last year because they had 3 All Big-10 defensive players in their backfield and were one of the best teams in the country in generating sacks.  Michigan had neither of those attributes last season and that’s why they finished 112th in the country with 2 picks.  If MacDonald’s defensive front 7 figures out how to generate pressure on the QB I think we’ll see an uptick in turnovers forced, and that will go a long way to helping UM’s defense bounce back from 2020.
3. I know Harbaugh has been disappointing compared to expectations, but consider this – Scott Frost would need to go 37-1 to match Harbaugh’s current record at Michigan.  Sometimes it’s better to just not go home, I guess.

Predictions:

I said at the beginning of the summer that this team feels like 8-4/9-3, and I’m sticking to it.  A lot hinges, as it usually does, on health.  If Michigan can largely miss the catastrophic injuries they suffered from last year they have enough talent to hang with anyone.  Do they beat OSU this year?  Probably not.  But at some point OSU is due a “bad” season for them and people forget that had they not gotten Justin Fields 2 years ago they’d have been starting Tathan Martell, who may or may not be competing for the QB spot at UNLV after getting passed twice at Miami  (YTM).  I won’t believe it until it happens, but OSU’s offense had issues last year that were covered up pretty well by Fields and so who knows what happens with a new QB.  As for the rest of the schedule, Washington went 3-1 last year with 4 home games but also went 2-1 in 1-score games against the likes of Oregon St, Arizona, and Utah, whose combined record was 5-12 before losing to Stanford.  They’re probably going to be pretty good on defense but they also haven’t played a game outside of the state of Washington since November 2019.  I think people are overrating Wisconsin a bit this year; the Badgers weren’t all that good on offense last year (43rd on offense) and their rushing attack averaged less than 4 yards a carry behind a very experienced offensive line.  Jalen Berger will be solid but Michigan’s defense made a lot of guys looks good last season and Wisconsin’s passing offense still seems somewhat limited.  It’s a road game for UM so I don’t love their chances, but Wisconsin isn’t a juggernaut.  Similarly, PSU got better as the year progressed but Sean Clifford still looked lost and their offensive line remains shaky even though they have a bevy of high-quality backs to compensate on the ground.  The defense should be good, though, especially in the secondary.  These teams meet to open the year and I think we’ll get a good sense of both early on.  Indiana is probably the most variable team in the conference – they return a ton of talent and have solid coaching, but I can’t quite shake the memory of them barely able to move the ball against Ole Miss once Penix went out, and that INT rate I referenced earlier might be hard to sustain two years in a row.

All that said, Michigan will absolutely stub their toes a couple of times this year; they might survive one but undoubtedly not them all.  If things break right and the QB position is solid and the defense rebounds to top-25-ish range, that’s a recipe for 9+ wins and renewed hope.  If everything goes pear shaped then the coaching search will begin anew.  It’s a bit of a cop-out but I think we’ll know by the first week of October where it all stands, but I’m excited for the journey regardless.