Michigan's schedule & predictions
Schedule's out now. What's your prediction?
- @Minnesota
- MSU
- @Indiana
- Wisconsin
- @Rutgers
- Penn State
- Maryland
- @OSU
No one knows anything, but I'm gonna say
Lean W: MSU, Rutgers, Maryland
No clue: @Minnesota, @IU, Wisconsin, Penn State
Lean L: Ohio State
I could convince myself of anything from 3-5 to 6-2
September 19th, 2020 at 11:50 AM ^
Here's what I have...including Week 9.
Illinois: 2-7
Iowa: 5-4
Minnesota: 7-2
Nebraska: 5-4
Northwestern: 5-4
Purdue: 3-6
Wisconsin: 6-3 (West Champions)
Indiana: 3-6
Maryland: 3-6
Michigan: 5-4
Michigan St.: 4-5
Ohio St.: 9-0 (East Champions)
Penn St.: 6-3
Rutgers: 0-9
Dec. 19
1: Ohio State vs. Wisconsin (B1G Championship)
2: Penn State @ Minnesota
3: Michigan @ Northwestern
4: Maryland @ Iowa
5: Indiana @ Nebraska
6: Purdue @ Michigan St.
7: Rutgers @ Illinois
September 19th, 2020 at 11:56 AM ^
If there are bowls, that's a Belk Bowl or Music City Bowl.
September 19th, 2020 at 11:59 AM ^
I'd give Illinois a better record and MSU a worse record. Good luck with your Michigan prediction.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:01 PM ^
I had MSU 3-5, but winning that final game makes it look better.
That's the case for a few teams. Wisconsin's record ends up worse than Illinois, even though they're champions...just because I had them both at 6-2 before the final week.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:26 PM ^
MSU could be pretty terrible. An already bad team with a new coach. So many unknowns but I could see them only getting 1-2 wins which sounds low, but when you think about this being conference wins, it wouldn't be too far from this being a 3-9 / 4-8 MSU team in a normal year which seems quite reasonable
September 19th, 2020 at 11:51 AM ^
This will be a lot harder to predict than in about any other year because of the impact of having no home/away fans.
September 19th, 2020 at 11:54 AM ^
Which benefits OSU and hurts us again...because of all years to travel TO Penn State, this would be the one.
No fans. No white out.
September 19th, 2020 at 3:09 PM ^
not really - we are playing AT osu after all
September 19th, 2020 at 11:52 AM ^
4-4. This sets up really hard.
September 19th, 2020 at 11:53 AM ^
We get screwed again with the worst schedule in the Big10 and OSU has no tough crossover games.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:41 PM ^
Never mind- deleted.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:59 PM ^
Do you think that fan predictions have any impact whatsoever on the team's performance?
September 19th, 2020 at 11:55 AM ^
I had to look tis up to verify that Michigan played at Indiana last year. It is weird that Michigan returns to Indiana to play them this year.
Also, 4 home and 4 road games, but since it's all in conference, I get it. We beat them handily on the road last year so it may not be as scary as it looks.
I'll give us a 6 and 2 record with losses to Penn State and OH State. Might be 7 and 1 if we get Nico back.
September 19th, 2020 at 11:59 AM ^
Probably has to do with flipping MSU and OSU not being home games in the same season. Michigan played at home against MSU last season and has another home game with MSU this season.
September 19th, 2020 at 6:19 PM ^
Yep. With the B1G fixing Michigan/MSU, it means we needed to swap another conference game to get back to even. MSU home in back to back years means we had to go on the road against somebody else in back to back years in order for us to not have an additional home game.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:10 PM ^
It’s 2020. Milton turns out be a mix of Vince young and Cam Newton with the accuracy of Tom Brady. 8-0 baby. Or possibly 3-5.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:11 PM ^
4-4 but we win the crossover against Nebraska! FML.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:14 PM ^
I'm going to go out on a limb and say 7-1 with the only loss there at the end to Ohio State. I think Joe Milton will make plenty of mistakes but ultimately be a revelation. there is a real reason why McCaffrey left and it's really because there's a couple guys better than him and probably better than Shea Patterson was... And I think Milton is more talented by a long shot than any of these guys. I'd expect Michigan to be the best they've been on both sides of the ball since I don't know 2016. I don't think this year's Minnesota is going to win over Michigan I don't think Wisconsin will come into Ann arbor and win. I expect some blowouts. Penn State I'm not sure about admittedly this is kind of a coin flip because I think they'll be really good but it's a home game. I think the only loss is to Ohio State and it's closer than the experts think!
September 19th, 2020 at 12:16 PM ^
It's almost impossible to make a prediction when we have no idea how good Milton is. With his potential, the sky is the limit. Hopefully, he's closer to his ceiling than his floor.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:58 PM ^
It will be interesting to watch Milton this year. Did he improve so much that he passed up Dylan or did Dylan just regress and may not have been that great. I hope the case is that Joe just improved so much he was far and away the best QB we had on the team. Joe will be Harbaugh's first recruited QB to start a season.
September 19th, 2020 at 3:19 PM ^
Milton is an unknown, albeit highly hyped, plus there is no proven big play threat at WR unless Nico returns, and four new OL starters. Add in some question marks at corner and we’d better hope Hinton is a revelation at DT.
It’s really difficult to predict and that’s before we factor in any team can lose any number of players for multiple weeks.
You can probably argue anything from 3-5 to 7-1 pretty easily if you wanted to. Factor in some CoVid complications for certain teams and you can realistically have anything happen this season.
An optimistic 7-1 or 8-0 take can get thrown out of the window pretty easily and turn into a 1-7 campaign if you have some of our top players go down with CoVid complications for multiple weeks
September 19th, 2020 at 12:17 PM ^
7 - 1. Unfortunately, another regular season ending loss. Hope that I'm wrong about that.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:17 PM ^
5-3. Also I’d put quite a bit of money on OSU hosting us in front of 20k+ fans
September 19th, 2020 at 12:22 PM ^
You invite predictions but your own tentative response, borrowing from political predictions, seems more reasonable in a world where everything is uncertain: Lean Left, lean (W)right), and No clue.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:25 PM ^
How is Minnesota a loss? Do they have better talent? What am I missing here?
September 19th, 2020 at 1:52 PM ^
Minny has a returning good QB, entire OL, and stud WR. On the road. First game.
Michigan has 4 new OL, QB with 11 passes (and 2 picks), and no stud WR as of now.
Seems pretty obvious to me.
September 19th, 2020 at 2:38 PM ^
Michigan will run the ball down their throat just like they did the last time they played them.
September 19th, 2020 at 3:08 PM ^
Sounds great in theory. But I say again, 4 new OL. Plus with Milton being new, they will stack the box until we make them do otherwise. I hope I’m wrong of course.
September 19th, 2020 at 3:07 PM ^
Is it worse than a QB, a croot #400, with 25 passes, going on the road against a SEC team with a top10 recruiting profile and a top15 defense; plus they had to start a notsowitty left tackle who was croot #1294?
First game.
Only thing obvious to me is how unpredictable it all is.
Until it glitches :)
September 19th, 2020 at 3:24 PM ^
Was that supposed to be coherent?
September 19th, 2020 at 9:01 PM ^
Sorry, only had a few minutes and was really trolling the "add up the numbers" over simplification.
Also ...my bad.... our QB was a second year guy with unrealistic expectations because of a great first year surrounded by upperclassmen, but had thrown many more passes than Milton.
However, it still seems rather unpredictable.
Here's the full:
QB croot #400 = a quarterback who was ranked on the 247 composite as a 3*, the #400 best recruit in the country, = Spieght
SEC team with a top10 recruiting profile and a top15 defense = Florida
notsowitty = reference to the user name of concern poster notsowittyname who thought '17 against Florida was doomed because it looked liked Nolan Ulizio was gonna start at tackle
notsowitty left tackle who was croot #1294 = see above
1st game = https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/boxscores/2017-09-02-michigan.html
Glitch =
September 20th, 2020 at 2:19 AM ^
I question their defense. Does not look top rated and I think we will score on their defense. If Milton is good, this may be a high scoring affair.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:26 PM ^
I see 5 sure wins and 3 tough but winnable games. 8-1.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:29 PM ^
We head to Columbus 7-0, and OSU has to forfeit due to an outbreak of syphilis. 3 more victories after that and win a National Championship. Or 5-3.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:37 PM ^
We have a hard schedule, but it lays out well for having to play 8 games in a row . . . every hard game is separated by an easier game. We're not playing PSU, OSU, WISC all in a row like I thought we would be. So there's that.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:51 PM ^
I think 6-2 would be a good season. At worse our record would be 4-4 at best 7-1.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:55 PM ^
If a team cannot play due to COVID effecting most of the team, would that team have to forfeit and the opposing team would get the win? In this schedule there is no room for makeup games.
September 19th, 2020 at 1:32 PM ^
No way you can give a team a W for a forfeit. That could result in an 8-0 northwestern or something equally crazy.
Im guessing those games won’t count, and win% will he used to determine the conference champs. Best win% with a minimum of 4 games maybe.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:56 PM ^
This is a rough schedule, particularly when you consider how the conference rigged OSUs to easily go undefeated, but it is a good way to test a lot of our young guys and prep them for next year.
We knew we wouldn't be great with a new QB and potentially entirely new OL, so this year they get challenging reps and are ready to roll next year.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:58 PM ^
7-1 or 6-2 most likely. Though with all the new starters on both sides of the ball it's not out of the realm of possibility to drop 3 or 4 games, which would be disastrous, but can't say it's not possible.
September 19th, 2020 at 1:34 PM ^
Our W-L probability curve centers on 5-3 with 4-4 being more likely than 6-2.
September 19th, 2020 at 12:58 PM ^
I predict both snow and the buckeyes will fall on December 12th
September 19th, 2020 at 1:00 PM ^
WIN THEM ALL! GO BLUE. ALL THE WAY FUCK EVERYONE OVER 2020!!!!!
September 19th, 2020 at 1:05 PM ^
7-0 or 6-1 going into the osu game.
Ppl are focusing on Milton and he has to be at least as good as Shea last year. But the RBs and the run game should be good enough to keep the team in all their games but the 8th. There isn’t a better RB room in the conference. With Mayfield back if Milton struggles early the run game should take pressure off.
Key players for the season (in no order):
DTs
2nd Corner
QB
At least 1 RB
September 19th, 2020 at 1:36 PM ^
Lol, how many times have we said QB X can’t be worse than last years QB and been wrong?Milton has thrown 11 passes in college, 2 of which went to the opponent.
Color me concerned.
September 19th, 2020 at 1:53 PM ^
Milton starting is the definition of high risk, high reward.
He’s either starting because the proverbial light switched on during the off-season and he just flat out surpassed McCaffrey, or he’s starting because McCaffrey made a huge regression in the off-season or just never recovered from an injury. There’s no middle ground on this one, because by all accounts McCaffrey was the clear-cut number two guy at the end of last season.
I want to believe it’s number one, but the data we’ve seen from Milton (so far) indicates he’s not at that level. But it’s been a long offseason and a lot could’ve happened so he’s got a chance to prove us all wrong.
September 19th, 2020 at 2:46 PM ^
I heard Milton is a turrible golfer, so this one maybe legit.
September 19th, 2020 at 3:42 PM ^
By “had to” I meant he needs to be in order for the team to be good. Not that’s he definitely going to be good. Optimistic though.
September 20th, 2020 at 2:16 AM ^
We do have a good number of RB! The question will is the OL good enough to block them some lanes to run. Even though our OL is young, I feel much more confident in their ability given the coaching and talent. This is no 2013-14 or 17 lack of talent and depth OL.