Try to win a shoot out or drag the game into the mud?

I feel pretty comfortable saying that, OSU isn't punting more than twice in this game regardless of the number of possessions. Slow or fast I don't think matters. We have to force turnovers, FGs, and most importantly score TDs. 

OSU is going to score points on, guessing 75% of their possessions. If OSU gets 12 possessions or something like that, they're getting close to breaking 50.

Michigan is not putting up 50. That doesn't mean run the ball for 3 yards every single down and don't take shots. It means don't burn downs that put you behind the chains and go 3 and out multiple times. MSU had 3 straight 3 and outs and it was over (it was over before then too). Maintain possession, take the easy yards when you can and don't put your defense in bad situations.

The clock is by far the least relevant part of the equation.  What people think of as "clock" is more a matter of the defense playing for yards or possessions. 

Playing for yards involves making the opponent grind for them, execute down the field, and make a high volume of plays.  When it works, most plays will be 1-10 yards.  This inherently takes a long time, so people talk of "bleeding the clock".  It's not about the clock.  It's about minimizing variance.

The opposite approach is to go "to hell with field position" and play a high-risk, high-reward game. Blitz from everywhere, try to confuse, go for broke.  When you win, you'll kill the drive entirely.  When you lose, you'll get pantsed.  You tend to get more TFLs and turnovers, but also more 50-yard TDs because you're unsound.  This is a fast-paced approach so the result is a shootout, but the real goal is to increase variance, to force and then capitalize off mistakes.

OSU's passing attack can execute all day and probably can't be contained anyway.  You could force them into ten straight plays of 3-4 yards, gas your starters, and then they'll blow up all that effort with a single big play.  So in a vacuum I'd go with the latter -- gamble and get off the field quickly.  You can run whatever kind of offense you want when you have the ball.

The problem with gambling is that football is never a vacuum, so it's a great way for a coach to lose his job just with crummy luck.  Sure, win a few dice rolls and you score a monumental upset.  But if your gambles don't pay off, they could be the right call and you still lose by 35 and everyone here will be howling.  It's not just a matter of score; it'll look ugly.  Put it this way:  we got a sack against Maryland by blitzing Gray.  Now, Gray won't be able to keep up with Olave or Wilson or whoever, so if you're MacDonald going up against OSU, you can see Gray get burned by three yards every damn down or occasionally take a chance and maybe get a sack -- OR Stroud might throw over that to an Olave who's now open by twenty yards.  In tactical terms, it makes no difference whatsoever if he's open by three or twenty, burned is burned, so it make sense to gamble and try to kill the drive.  But fans -- stupid, entitled, unhinged, enraged, lunatics -- will see Olave open by twenty yards and immediately start a twitstorm to burn the whole house down all over again, no matter how many words Seth and Ian spend to explain why anything made sense.  This is why coaches turtle and play to lose.

Unfortunately, not only is Harbaugh snakebit, OSU is the luckiest program in the country.  So I don't know what you do here, because there's no way the #FireHarbaugh crowd would even understand, let alone forgive, gambling for the win and losing a blowout.

Can michigan really plan to make it one or the other? If its a shootout, that means M's offense is driving down the field, most likely because the run game is working, which means higher time of possession and fewer OSU possessions. 

If its a rock fight, that means Michigan isnt running well enough, and I'd 100% bet on OSU to get enough explosive plays to win.

Neither.  Not gonna win a track meet, and something slogged down in mud can go either way too easily.

Here's an idea - run the offense you've spent an entire season morphing into the monster that just put 59 on the board at another P5 opponent's field.  You want to stop the run game?  Fine, we'll throw it to the TE.  Take him away?  Okay, we'll throw it to the RB.  Keep that safety tight?  No problem - our WRs are just as fast as OSU's.

There are plays to be had against OSU's defense.  Just need to run the offense we've seen getting better and better in each game.

If PSU had a decent offense, they probably would have won their game.  Michigan's defense is just as good as PSU's, and its offense is leagues better...

I'm saying there's a chance.

We are due …. But we are also asking for the stars and planets to align.  You need a perfect game from Michigan, which is asking a lot.  
 

OSU will score between 40-55 points.  We need to match which is asking for the moon.  Possible.  Not probable.   

Maybe this is the more precise answer...

Use creativity in the offense to open up opportunities to keep the chains moving but always capitalize on big play opportunities. 

On defense...slow the game down! Make them take another snap no matter what. 

There's a talent disparity so you want a low possession game where high variance events (say, a strip sack or punt block) have an outsized influence on the result.

Drag It out. They play two-deep with their safeties and we have an efficient QB who doesn't turn the ball over, great backs, and a strong OL. If we can be efficient and can hit their freshman QB enough to cause some mistakes, I think we can pull the upset. The key is making the errors count. We're the underdogs, so variance is our friend IMO.

Not sure what the style will be, but the only(?) shot we have at winning is if we realize that we (1) can't settle for FG and that we (2) need to have explosive plays.  We can't rely on picking up 5 3rd downs every drive and have a good chance to win this game...the margin for error is too slim.  Open up the playbook, call passing routes that go beyond the sticks, use some play action.  Don't just run it up the gut on 1st and 2nd down!  

We need to make sure half the officiating crew is in the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame and has their Michigan t-shirts on underneath their stripes.

lol Did you watch them embarrass Sparty last week?

Muddy McMuddy Mud.

We just need to clock those Buckeyes:

The answer is somewhere in the middle. Score when the opportunity is there. Stop the opponent on third downs (and get them to third downs as much as possible). Hope and pray are the last things and only be done by the fans. I am sure the coaches have a great game plan. Hopefully, the players can execute it and then some. 

Go Blue!

Why is this a question? Hit stroud, keep the ball, create turnovers, create doubt and try to win the posession game 40-20... and we still might lose by 20. 

Also, unfortunately, we may not have much of a choice since osu is trying to win too. if we run 3 and outs, the game is over before it starts.

I'm hoping for a 0-0 score after 1Q - that tells me 1. we can at least contain the basics of what they do and 2. we dont need to score to keep them off the field out of terror.

They bleed just like we do, and sweat just like we do. They went through two-a-days. We went through two-a-days in 110 degree heat. I want you to hit everything that move!

Nebraska's game plan without the Nebraska breakdowns. They held them to FGS and got turnovers. They found a ton of success down the middle of the field. TE and slot receiver needs to be heavily involved.. 

Teams have shown conclusively that they can stop our running game if they choose to do it.

So, what you can not do is the the classic Big Ten Bo "body-blows-to-soften-them-up-for-the-fourth-quarter" thing against Ohio State.  Ohio State is not Washington or Wisconsin or Penn State.  They will not cooperate by only scoring 10 points while we dork around for 3 quarters running into stacked boxes, punting, and playing defense.

What Oregon did is instructional.  They possessed the ball with a diversified multi-faceted offense that took what the defense gave them and moved methodically down the field.  And then they scored points.

Punts are poison against Ohio State.  You punt twice in a row and the game is over.

Ohio State has only one (relative) weakness, and that is pass defense.  That is where we will need to attack.  We will need to pass to set up the run, not the other way around. 

If that does not win time of possession, so be it.  If we score too quickly . . . at least we score.    

Slog it out, limited possessions, hope for a few high-variance events to all go our way.

That said, like most have mentioned I don't see running into that OSU line all day as a route to success so Michigan is going to have some crazy 3rd down conversion rate to pull off that limited possession game plan.

I think that the rock fight is the way to go.  Rope-a-dope style.  Play soft coverage and keep all their passing plays in front of you.  As the field gets shorter and into the red zone, hope they make mistakes/don't convert.  On offense, just do what you've been doing but let out the wrinkles (e.g., Donovan Edwards in the backfield with Haskins or Corum), but generally dink and dunk until you get to field goal range and then just try to score from outside the 15 yard line.  I think where we bog down is once we get into 12-5 yd line. 

It won't be easy, but there is no way we win a track meet.  Keep it close and hope that the home field advantage is enough to push you over the top.  

Good God man why would we try to have a shootout with OSU?

Our team does not do shootouts.  We need to possess the ball, finish our drives, and keep OSU's offense off the field as much as possible.

Who wants us to try to win a shootout?

Mud.

I imagine that the coaches go in with a couple of alternative plans--one for the early going, a second and third basic plans for getting something of a lead, remaining in a dogfight, or falling behind. They're covering their bases. 

It needs to be a balanced attack. Unpredictable, but not reckless. No team in the B1G has the talent to beat OSU in a shootout, it would be incompetence in a coaching staff to think so. I thought MSU shot itself in the foot early by throwing it too much, creating 3 & outs. They needed to slow the game down, but they felt the pressure & reacted poorly. OSU is a quick strike offense, so you have to find ways to get them out of rhythm. Once they start rolling, it can get bad unless you have Bama/UGA/etc type talent. 

The cynical answer is whatever gets us more than the 7 points that Sparty scored, and does not give up the 56 points that Sparty gave up, so we go to the Rose Bowl over them.

That we can do.

I say Michigan should play ball control to start. 

The benefit of controlling the clock in this game is what this would do to OSUs defense by the end of the game. The more their defense is on the field the easier it will be to move the ball at the end of the game because they will be tired. If OSU plays up tempo going for quick strikes, then their defense will not have time to rest. Conversely, the more rested our defense, the greater the chance that we will be able to make some crucial stops.

Of course, how we play will be determined in part by how close the game is. Get behind early and then it just becomes a game of catch up and ball control becomes less feasible.

Michigan will have to score a lot of points to win. Donovan Edwards looked like a matchup problem vs Maryland and probably still is although not as much vs OSU. On D, Michigan needs to confuse Stroud into throwing INT’s like Nebraska did. I see turnovers as the only way to win.

Lots of passes to our stud RBs. Don’t constantly run into stacked boxes. Run some play action. Do a flea flicker at a key moment or whatever the counter is off the flea flicker. Maybe steal that play Purdue ran against MSU that was so beautiful. Basically be creative on offense while trying to move the chains (so limit the drops but if they happen don’t hang your head) and on defense slow them down as much as possible. Don’t let them score outside the red zone and once there be stout in the red zone.

Only thing I want to add if we find something that works, it's ok to try that play again, and again if it keeps working. We have not seen Harbaugh exploit an edge vs a good team. 

What I cannot stand is to see players just blindly run to the football... this includes Hutchinson.  Need to play as a unit... need to play smart... not just be spazzed and rush QB... expect things you haven't seen, like Stroud running up middle.  There will be designed run plays that will crush us.. crush us, unless we play football with smarts.  Couldn't stand to see our DL under Brown just rush upfield... their first assignment is not to allow the QB to get by them, and then rush accordingly... I feel we are getting set up for it and pray that MacDonald is aware here.

There was one play recently vs I think it was Indiana... where there was a juggle hesitation and run and five players were running at the QB, mindlessly...not one of the five stayed on the wr who was down field maybe ten yards... like automatons.  We will get crushed if we don't play collectively and smart.