What Are Michigan's 3rd, 4th, and 5th Toughest Regular Season Games Next Year?

What a crappy home schedule. Only one game worth going to, and you'd have a hard time giving away the rest of the tickets for lack of willing takers.

OSU and at PSU are the 1,2 in my opinion. 

I do not think MSU is going to be good next year, so I'm not using them.

Maryland is a complete trap game. They bring back their QB, and are much better than they were years ago. 

At Nebraska could be interesting. Still early in the year, the first away game. Rhule looking for a signature win. 

Rutgers. First Big10 game. I do NOT think Rutgers is any good, but we will still have early season jitters. 

I do not think Maryland, Nebraska, and Rutgers are the best teams outside osu and psu, but I think their position in the schedule makes them interesting. Maryland is the game before OSU. Another to watch is Purdue, which we will be coming off a bye. 

For some reason it is still strange to me that we don’t play so many teams I. Our conference.  Yes, I’m starting to yell at clouds. 
 
My first reaction was Illinois taking another step forward or Wisconsin being active in the portal with their new offensive identity. Maybe Iowa with their new B1G championship winning QB. But, then I realized we don’t play any of them in the regular season. 

I guess I’d keep an eye on Indiana and their portal activity. Tough telling if portal players will make a difference but as a team they rank very high in On3 net portal rankings.  But my vote is…

3) @MSU - really mad now. 
4) @Maryland - one of these years they will be healthyish 
5)  @NE  - New coach, new motivation? 
 

My honest expectation is that the team we lose focus on will be the toughest (ie. TCU, too soon I know) and road games are always more susceptible to that distracted factor.  

Top 5 most difficult games for Michigan next season:

1) National Championship game

2) National Championship semifinal

3) OSU

4) PSU

5) MSU

I’ll put the B1G Championship game somewhere in the middle. That’s more of an exhibition game anyway.

#3 - Sparty.  Not because they'll be great, because they're Sparty and it's THE game to them.

#4 - Minnesota.  Yeah they lost some pieces but they'll have a solid running game and return a couple good receivers.  And the defense is perennially underrated.

#5 - Nebraska.  Lincoln being a tough place to play being most of it.  Rhule will have some things sorted and they will not be an easy out.

My guess, at PSU, at Minny, at Maryland,  in that order.

@PSU, @Minny and @Neb. Whiteout games are always tough and damn near all road games.

@maryland will be a tricky game. sandwiched between big games and on the road.. they gave us trouble this year, no reason to think they wont next year. That said, us locals fill it up with UM fans, so hopefully thats a 10-0 getting ready for an 11-0 ... 

3. @ Maryland

4. @ State

5. tie, @ Minnesota / vs. Purdue

Not liking our schedule next year, home games are horrible and the last 5 are our toughest.  smh

Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska IMO.

Trick question. There is no 4th or 5th hardest team. OSU, PSU (will be the White Out and possibly hardest game for us), MSU (always hard to win the other teams super bowl at their house). After that they should all be comfortable margins.

• Minn was meh last year and has a lot to replace
• Indiana is back to being very bad
• Maryland loses a lot of WR talent and tapers off hard by Nov.
• Purdue is going through a rebuild and new HC
• Same for Nebraska
• Rutgers is Rutgers (and we get them at home)
• Non Con are cupcakes

3) Maryland 

4) Nebraska 

5) Minnesota

1) PSU  road game, probably white out

2) OSU -Ryan Day coaching for his job?

3) MSU -meh team, Sparty Super Bowl 

4) Nebraska -tough environment

5) Purdue -spread passing attack 

3: @ Minnesota

4: @ Maryland

5: @ Nebraska

So the first three are sleepers.  Rutgers, you never know what you're getting the first five of the season.  Could be a bit tough with a convincing victory but they play tough before the depth wears down.  

Imo this schedule will have challenges, esp if we don't open up our passing game and simply insist that we ground every team in the dirt.  Imo every single game should open a track meet till osu.  They should not be able to contend with our offense and by virtue allow our defense to get stops, the ball back and score another td and game out of reach before halftime.  

The obvious 3 imo are @msu, @psu and osu to close out.

Msu, as usual we have a ton more talent but it's a dog fight, and we need to open the passing game up.  

Psu, ton of talent, on the road and a maturing run game!  

Osu, one two, you know what to do!  

We have 5 tough road games and home vs osu gonna be a tough year, however, most teams will under achieve so just win 2\3 vs Msu psu osu

Road games with an obviously biased crew. Pattern repeats.

MSU... off the field. 

What a perplexing question.

Let’s agree that 1 and 2, in either order.. are @Penn State and the Buckeyes.

Then.. 

3. @ East Lansing…

4. @ Nebraska

5. @ Minnesota 

and.. just for fun..

6. Rutgers,

7. Purdue

8. @ Maryland

9. Indiana 

10. East Carolina

11. Bowling Green, and

12. UNLV

1. OSU

2. @PSU

3. @MINN

4. @MSU

5. @Marlyand/@Nebraska?

Purdue looked AWFUL without Aidan O’Connell, so I don’t see a home game with them next year being too difficult. 

at Staee, at Nebraska and at Minnesota

I'm going for Staee first because they have a grass field (the only other game on natural turf is Penn State).  Nebraska will likely be at night and we barely won there in 2021.  I left off Purdue because it is at home and they lost quite a bit of talent.

#3 @MSU

#4 @Maryland

#5 @Minnesota

I don't think any of the home opponents outside OSU are good enough to justify putting them above a road game. I had a hard time deciding on #5 as I think it might depend on which team can pull in the best transfer class from the portal. @Nebraska will depend on the transfers they bring in this year, and I was thinking about putting them at #5 because Lincoln might be a tougher environment than Minneapolis.

#1  ohio

#2  Penn State

#3 Staee <-- not because they will be any good, staee plays dirty, and it's their bowl game and have won 2 out of the last 3.

#4  MD... simply because road game and Michigan looking ahead to ohio -- kinda like Illinois last season.

#5 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ <-- are there 5 tough games on this sked?

I think it'll probably be 3. MSU 4. Nebraska 5. Maryland, maybe flip Nebraska and Maryland. It's definitely not the toughest slate outside of OSU/PSU. 

All the @'s  - Nebraska, Minnesota, MSU, PSU, Maryland - will be tough and can not be overlooked.  We can beat all of them, but that does not mean we will beat all of them.

Even mighty Georgia struggled @ Mizzou.  It's hard to stay at the top of your game through a full season, meanwhile your opponent is playing out of their minds at home.

The toughest games will be, as is tradition, the Bowl game, and the game before The Game, as our coaches strangely decide to take those games off for prolonged stretches, I'd say our 3rd toughest game will be The Game, 4th @ Penn State, 5th @ Maryland, 6th @ Minnesota. Not saying those games will necessarily be tough, merely in the correct order of relative toughness.

I'll go with Minnesota and then two of MSU, Maryland, and Purdue. I think Purdue is likely to be better than MSU or Maryland, but we get them at home while MSU and Maryland are on the road.

Boy that @Maryland looks like such a trap game. 

(EDIT: skimmed the rest of the thread now, it seems 1-2 other people think the same) :D

I was surprised that Illinois isn't on the schedule next year. Thought for sure we'd have a return trip to Champaign, given that we hadn't played them in years prior to this past season...

I think people are underrating ECU. They have given big schools trouble, beat some. Not sure how good they are next year but last time we took a small Carolina team lightly they celebrated on the field. I'd put them at #5.

Assuming regular season games only:

1. @Penn State - on the road and it will almost certainly be a prime time white out game
2. Ohio State - because it's in Ann Arbor, I gave the nod to Penn State
3. @Maryland - sandwiched between giant games @Penn State and vs Ohio State, this has the potential to be a major letdown. Taulia returning was another factor
4. @Minnesota - rivalry game on the road, usually fairly tough
5. @Michigan State - see above, but also I think Minnesota is a touch better than MSU
6. @Nebraska - rounds out road games, our only truly tough home opponent is OSU
7. Purdue - defending B1G West champs, but with a new coach
8. ECU - Can be a pretty solid mid-major and known to give superior teams some fits
9. Rutgers - Schiano has to get something going in Piscataway, no? First conference game is always a little jittery, at least at first
10. Indiana - the 1st half last season was rough, but I think they're handled pretty easily in Ann Arbor
11. Bowling Green - hey they made a bowl game
12. UNLV - they did not make a bowl game

I think @Maryland so high and @Minnesota over @MSU are probably controversial. I would love to hear why you think I'm wrong.

I think the road schedule is going to be tougher than people think.  I believe you are plugging in OSU and MSU as two toughest games.  In order for me would be :

@ PSU

@Nebraska

@Minnesota

@MSU is 3, @ Maryland is 4, and I don't have a strong opinion on 5, lot of reasonably challenging games that we should win left over.

The only game on the in-conference schedule that I would be absolutely shocked by a loss would be Rutgers at home. It feels like a consistently difficult schedule honestly. You only have 2 "circle it on your calendar" games, but there are a lot of games in there where you're going to have problems if you don't show up.