Essentials

WHAT	Michigan vs Rutgers
WHERE	Michigan Stadium Ann Arbor, MI
WHEN	Noon Eastern
THE LINE	Michigan –28
TELEVISION	BTN
TICKETS	exist
WEATHER	high 60s, cloudy, 7-10 mph wind, ~75% chance of rain, possible thunderstorms

Overview

Ready or not, the season marches on. Michigan has a sorely needed get-right matchup with 1-2 Rutgers, whose only victory on the year thus far came against UMass, possibly the worst team in the FBS. The losses haven't been complete hamblastings, but they're still pretty Rutgers-y: a 30-0 shutout at Iowa and a 30-16 home loss to a Boston College squad that was fresh off an embarrassing home defeat of their own against Kansas.

The Wolverines limp into this game in more ways than one. As is his wont, Jim Harbaugh isn't saying much at all about injuries, but it's clear his team is far from 100%. Dylan McCaffrey (head) and Sean McKeon (leg) are almost certainly out; Zach Charbonnet has been practicing but Josh Gattis says the team is "managing his situation"; Donovan Peoples-Jones and Tarik Black both played through injury last week; and there's no word on Mike Dwumfour that I could find. This is probably a game to be cautious with injured guys, regardless.

[Hit THE JUMP for rutger]

Run Offense vs Rutgers

please be healthy [Barron]

The Rutgers defense has been generous, allowing a healthy 4.9 yards per carry on very high volume—that number would probably be higher if their last two opponents weren't spending much of the game grinding out the clock. UMass has cracked three YPC once (a whopping 3.8) since going for 5.4 a pop against this defense in the opener.

Seth did note some improvements, mostly at the formerly disastrous linebacker level, even while watching Rutgers get worn out by Iowa. Michigan transfer Drew Singleton has been an immediate upgrade, enough so that he's raised the quality of the unit as a whole without them getting much from the other guys. The defensive line, meanwhile, can be moved around as long as you block the one dude:

Rutgers is taking an interesting approach to their defensive line, rotating all three guys between the positions. I think this is to keep the nose from getting too worn down because backups are not great. Far and away the best player on this defense, Willington Previlon is listed at the 3-tech position but spent the most time rotated to nose, for quite obvious reasons. Nominal NT Julius Turner and his backup Jaohne Duggan are zero-pass-rush guys liable to get blown off the line. Turner in particular is a Kempish sort who will occasionally get into the backfield on a loop but won't stand up on a regular basis. I might have been too harsh on DE Mike Tverdov because he was going against Tristan Wirfs, but once we got to –10 in my charting I had to throw up the cyan circle.

Previlon will move around the line and do his best to make up for the general Rutger-ness of things by timing the snap and at least disrupting the play—his total of two TFLs this season suggest his teammates can't always clean up.

After Gattis didn't even attempt to incorporate a run game a week after they struggled to grind out yards against Army, most of the intrigue here is about Michigan simply executing on a regular basis. Shea Patterson doesn't have to look over his shoulder at Dylan McCaffrey for the time being; he still needs to be much, much better with his reads. The offensive line needs to bounce back from a rough performance. Zach Charbonnet (health permitting) and Christian Turner need opportunities to display what they can do in open space. The goal line offense, uh, needs work. Everyone needs to stop dropping the damn football. Many of these things are opponent-independent; if you can't do them against Rutgers...

KEY MATCHUP: BALLCARRIERS vs THE BALL. Hold onto the dang thing, please.

Pass Offense vs Rutgers

Collins mossed this dude so bad he changed his number [Barron]

The raw numbers aren't bad at all here, as RU has faced Iowa and a couple bad passing offenses, plus head coach Chris Ash—a defensive backs specialist—has managed to keep the skill level at a relatively acceptable level in the secondary. As long as Patterson can keep calm in the pocket, though, and the offense's approach makes sense, this looks like a major advantage for Michigan.

Stick with me here.

The Scarlet Knights can't generate any sort of pass rush. Two of their three sacks this year were against UMass. As Seth mentioned, that can be particularly problematic when, like Rutgers, your defense runs a lot of quarters coverage:

The big thing is the safeties have to be involved in run fits because the front is concerned with interior gaps. That's a great thing to have if you're stopping spread to run games because those guys are always facing the play, but it also puts them in some run/pass dilemmas that athletic teams have learned to punish with deep routes from very fast slots. This means a team with multiple tall and fast athletes who's willing to send them deep and able to hit them there can do some real damage if the pass rush doesn't get there, and with Rutgers the pass rush doesn't get there.

Field corner Damon Hayes, who started at strong safety last year, got a dangerman tag largely by default. The other starting corner, Avery Young, is pictured above; he has since switched to #2 but that hasn't stopped him from getting picked on by opposing offenses. He got torched on Iowa's long touchdown pass. Third corner Tre Avery transferred from Ohio State to Toledo to Rutgers before playing a collegiate snap; he had a pick against UMass but at 5'10" he may have trouble with Michigan's bigger receivers.

The safeties are both new starters. They'll be tasked with covering the slot a fair amount of the time. Please, for the love of all things sacred and holy, test this.

KEY MATCHUP: SHEA PATTERSON vs WHATEVER IS PREVENTING HIM FROM THROWING DOWNFIELD. Patterson should have all day to stand in the pocket, survey the field, choose the future NFL receiver with the biggest mismatch, and unleash the dragon. He has been frustratingly unwilling and/or unable to do that this year. If Nico Collins only ends up with five targets, it'd better be because his three spectacular long touchdowns staked M to a huge lead.

The other key matchup here is obviously JOSH GATTIS vs. HIMSELF. Unleash the Deep State offense.

Run Defense vs Rutgers

hey it's the one guy who did something against michigan last year [Barron]

There are actually a couple threats here, although their talents overlap a little more than is ideal given they're the offense's only two threats. You may remember Isaih Pacheco galloping past the Michigan defense for an 80-yard touchdown last year. It turns out that wasn't a fluke; he averaged a hair under five yards per carry last year and is at 5.2 YPC this season, and he's getting the vast majority of traditional running back carries. He took that role from last year's offensive centerpiece, Raheem Blackshear, who's now in the Ohio State H-back role with some extra blocking responsibility, for some reason. Seth:

RB/Slot Raheem Blackshear (+12/-1, –2 pass pro in my charting) remains on the field as a slot receiver/jet dude when he isn't the running back, and is asked to do all sorts of true receiver things he's pretty good at, and tight end things he's not. That's to get RB Isaih Pacheco (+7/-0, –0 pass pro) starter's minutes. You may remember Pacheco from such bad moments as "that Rutgers running back who outran our entire team one time." Brad Hawkins Apologists like me will be happy to know Pacheco is legit. Thus ends the list of Rutgers offensive personnel who would start on literally any other Big Ten team.

Blackshear hasn't been able to do much on the ground, netting only 77 yards on his 23 attempts this season. He's been much more productive as a receiver, though without going through the two games against crappy teams I can't tell if his running stats are getting shorted by jet sweeps that technically count as touch passes.

The offensive line is bad. Seth listed four of the five starters as sore spots, though center Mike Maietti at least had some fringe preseason all-conference hype, for whatever that's worth. Add in the fact that their block-only tight end, Matt Alaimo—who's essentially working without a backup after Kyle Penniston went down—is a 237-pound redshirt freshman and you can see why we respect Pacheco so much. That guy has to grind. 

KEY MATCHUP: MICHIGAN FORCE PLAYERS vs PRE-SNAP MOTION. Rutgers uses a lot of pre-snap motion and most likely took notice of the way Wisconsin screwed with M's run fits by running a receiver across the formation. They do that a lot with Blackshear anyway. As we saw last year, Pacheco has the wheels to break off big chunks if M can't figure out a way to react to motion without losing contain on the running back.

Pass Defense vs Rutgers

still a lot of this [Barron]

Despite the best efforts of Rutgers themselves, Artur Sitkowski is the starting quarterback, probably. Sitkowski has had quite the few years. He was a touted prospect as IMG's starter in his junior year of high school, with Michigan among the many top schools after him. Programs started backing off when he didn't perform well in camps, however, and he dropped to three-star territory when he lost his starting job to Minnesota walk-on Zach Annexstad as a senior. Pretty much every major program bailed; Rutgers stood by, because how often do they have a chance to add a quarterback considered an All-American at any point in his career?

Then they threw him into the fire as a freshman, which produced some historically awful numbers. Ash brought in Texas Tech transfer McLane Carter over the offseason. While Carter managed to unseat Sitkowki heading into the season, he performed no better, and then he got concussed against Iowa; as of Monday he remained in concussion protocol and there's no guarantee he gets his job back even if healthy.

That's in part because Sitkowski looked like an actual quarterback against BC last week, hitting 23-of-33 passes for 302 yards with a TD and an INT. He looked, uh, much less so in Iowa, going 4-of-11 for 19 yards and a pick. He's almost certainly better than he was last year, when he averaged 4.2 YPA with 4:18 TD-to-INT ratio.

How much better is still very much an open question, especially since their passing game is largely predicated on getting the ball out before the quarterback gets murdered. Anything downfield tends to be a prayer. These are some ugly numbers after the checkdown/screen options:

The running backs don't stay in to pass protect either since they're the main receiving targets. Blackshear's numbers (9.4 yards per target, 81% catch rate, 255 yards and 2 TDs) are legit for a receiver, especially considering he has more than twice as many targets (22) as the next guy. The next guy is WR Bo Melton (10.9 YPT, 53% catch rate, 186 yards and a TD), who got bumped outside to keep Blackshear on the field and has been effective on long comebacks but otherwise shut down. Freshman WR Isaiah Washington (4.7 YPT, 36% catch rate, 52 yards) is the recipient of a lot of desperate chucks and throwaways because he's 6'3" and sorta fast.

Just keep things in front of you and it'll be fine.

KEY MATCHUP: THE BACK SEVEN vs TACKLING ANGLES. Rutgers is gonna throw a ton of quick-hitting stuff to their few playmakers in the hopes that Blackshear/Melton/Pacheco can make some guys miss. Given the complete lack of deep threats, Michigan should key on this, and at that point it just becomes about tackling the guy when you get there.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Junior kicker Justin Davidovicz is 14-for-16 over the last two seasons; he's reliable but doesn't have a huge leg. There isn't much of anything to note in the return game as nothing has broken big one way or the other. The main guy to point out here is punter Adam Korsak, who's won consecutive Ray Guy Punter of the Week awards, pinning an incredible 12 of his last 15 punts inside the opponent 20, including a 69-yarder against Iowa that settled at the one. He'll flip the field a few times. He'd better be on the field a lot.

KEY MATCHUP: AHHHH YOU PUT IT THROUGH THE UPRIGHTS

INTANGIBLES

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if…

• it's still like that.
• and that.
• also that.

Cackle with knowing glee if…

• it's not like that.
• it's not like that at all.
• nico collins.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 2 (Baseline: 5; -1 for is Rutgers, -1 for couldn't replace one of the worst starting QBs in recent memory despite trying, -1 for offensive line is too abject to attack M's biggest weakness, -1 for is Rutgers at home, +1 for the universe is definitely trying to make this fanbase as miserable as possible)

Desperate need to win level: 10 (Baseline: 5; +5 for oh god can you even imagine)

Loss will cause me to… get very dedicated to basketball season preview content.

Win will cause me to… wave flag of to-be-determined tininess, depending on the style.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

Rutgers is 105th in SP+. MTSU is 109th. This is essentially a chance to hit the restart button, albeit without resetting the team's record. I suspect we could see some ugly moments as Michigan tries to use this game, and what I sure hope will be a comfortable lead, to work through some of their early-season problems instead of trying to put up the most possible points against Rutgers. (I also suspect this because it's been an ugly-ass season.)

This could get slightly uncomfortable if, like in the MTSU game, Michigan can't hang onto the ball while they work through it. Also like in the MTSU game, it'd be a debacle if this stayed close for very long. I'm not ready to consider Michigan reaching a new low, and last week hopefully served as a wake-up call.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid Sunday:

• The defense picks off Sitkowski twice even though they can't get much pressure.
• There's an overwhelming sense of frustration when Nico Collins hauls in his second touchdown of the first half.
• Michigan, 34-11