[LOCKED 🔒] College Football Nerds - Penn State Vs Michigan Preview

 

College Football Nerds Posted their preview earlier this week.  It was a generally positive outlook on Michigan, they and their model all picked Michigan to win.  However I still struggle with some of their takes on Michigan.  Last year they had PSU 17 UM14 & UM 20 PSU 14.  We all know how that went, we gave up a pick 6 and still blew them out.  The narrative on our offense getting into rock fights in these games still persists and I don't know why.  They are again thinking its a low scoring game expecting us to score about 27 and using the model to justify that.  I think there is a long record of CFB nerds model doing a poor job predicting what Michigan does in these marquis games.  40+ against PSU last year, as well as the last two OSU games, and in the playoff loss.  All of those games the talk was about whether or not Michigan could 'win in a shootout'. I have even heard negative arguments both saying we are too reliant on big plays (last year) and that we dont get enough big plays (this year).

 

Now to be fair, I agreed that michigan had a limited offense in 2021. We had a slightly above average QB in Cade and leaned on our run game.  Last year we also tried to protect Mccarthy.  But there is not reason to think that this offense isn't going to get 30 on PSU.  For all of Harbaughs tenure really what has been missing is JJ McCarthy.  Speight, Okorn, Shea, and even Rudock were all limited to a degree that made us one dimensional in big games.  Michigan is NOT that anymore. 

 

Michigan has all but shut down their offense by the end of the 3rd quarter if not earlier.  Now as much as that is evidence to say they haven't been tested, its also a reason that a model including all of our offensive possessions, or statistics like frequency of explosive plays is likely to be off.  

 

Next Michigan does an elite job of having game plans for these types of games.  It was blatantly obvious to anyone who actually watches the game (looks at CFB Nerds and clears throat) that Michigan had no intention of running JJ last week or in several spots throughout the season so far.  You simply can not look at the rushing total in the Purdue game and use that to predict what we will do against PSU.  

 

Finally I see PSU as a worse version of what they were last year.  You had CFB Nerds literally saying that Clifford was better than JJ Mccarthy last year.  Ok they were wrong, not trying to pile on, but JJ is clearly the better QB this year and I think an objective look at the numbers would say Allar is worse than Clifford last year. I don't see how this is going to be close other than being at PSU.  

If Michigan takes care of the ball this will be a blow out.  

 

[Edit @8:15 pm] I removed the link ---we're NOT going to help the College Football Turds get clicks on their YouTube channel. I'm going to skim thru the thread and remove it shortly.  -rob f

[2nd edit @8:45pm] I will leave the locked thread on the board along with the remaining comments, a representative sample of the mood of the MGoBoard towards the CF Nerds.

REMINDER:  DO NOT POST LINKS TO ANYTHING GENERATED BY COLLEGE FOOTBALL NERDS 

---rob f