sp+

9/18/2021 – Michigan 63, Northern Illinois 10 – 3-0

Fortunes change quickly in MAC (and, er, Pac-12) bodybag season. The aftermath of last week was a lot of people pointing and yelling about one half of an equation when both halves were true. The aftermath this week is a lot of people considering maybe thinking about proposing to run at the football Lucy is holding. Transitive football has been invoked.

You see, Rudy: Michigan hammered Northern Illinois like it was not there, and Northern Illinois beat Georgia Tech, and Georgia Tech was a yard and a two-point conversion away from overtime with Clemson. Therefore Michigan should be a ~53 point favorite over Clemson. It's science.

Add in Washington getting off the mat and Western Michigan beating Pitt and things get stupid fast.

I almost never share this because people overreact to it and it has no predictive value, but I CAN'T HELP IT, THIS IS THE WORLD I WANT TO LIVE IN.

SP+ top 5 if all preseason projections were taken out:
1. Michigan
2. Georgia
3. Ole Miss
4. Texas Tech
5. Florida

— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) September 19, 2021

You probably skipped over the "no predictive value" bit as you look longingly at that football poised under the girl in the blue dress's finger. Even if you did, it's little defense. The things that are supposed to have predictive value are also inviting you to have a run. SP+ with priors—ie, Connolly's baby—has Michigan sixth. ESPN's other predictive ranking system, FPI, puts them at the same spot.

This is a far cry from rampant 7-5 predictions preseason. MVictors' "Mood" has shot up in a few short weeks:

I'm not going to tell anyone how to feel. I am merely going to suggest that you are all fools and we are doomed. Okay, yeah, Blake Corum. Okay, yeah, Ohio State's running around demoting their defensive coordinator mid-season. Okay, sure, the defense is checking in well above expectations.

A rational person would be experiencing cautious optimism at this point… if he could block out the entire recent history of Michigan football. A rational person who cannot do that would measure the potential upside of investing versus the downside and hoard all his emotional chips on the sideline. Or maybe whatever, life's for living. Let's open up the possibility of ruining a weekend again. Maybe that is your decision, if you are a fool. A person with no ability to judge risk. A straight-up innumerate weirdo.

Yes, I'm talking myself out of it.

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Even your author—high up on the list of skeptical Michigan fans and thus high up on the list of skeptics worldwide—has to admit there is a tremor in there.

You can get a sense of how much stupid your team contains even against the dregs of college football—ask FSU. Every college team has some, just waiting for the right moment to come out of its cage and do just fine in its quest to make heads explode and surrender cobras bloom like so many wildflowers. Nobody is immune; some teams veritably drip with it. Many Michigan teams of recent vintage have.

To date, Michigan's level of stupid is shockingly minimal. There have not been guys handwavingly wide open. The running backs are perfect metronomes. They haven't turned the ball over. The punts are fair caught. The kicks go in the endzone. The offensive line has been creepily efficient at preventing opponents from blitzing into the backfield.

This is coming off a season so rife with stupid stuff that the NIU quarterback, who had 18 passing yards for most of this game, had 323 in his Michigan State incarnation, more than half of them to a guy who was also in a famous Vine. They deep-sixed the defensive staff and made Sherrone Moore the OL coach, displacing Ed Warinner with a guy who'd never officially coached the spot. One of the new, touted defensive coaches left for Buffalo a couple weeks into his Michigan career.

In short, this makes no sense. No amount of offseason turnover should result in this drastic reduction in stupid, let alone the seemingly chaotic turnover of 2021. So I don't trust it. But I am, like, looking at it. I look at it and I see it and I wait to be informed I am on an acid trip and the squirrel is actually a fox.

I look at it, and don't trust it, but it is there. Resolving into something. Maybe this is a weird season and Michigan will benefit. In a year more reminiscent of chaos seasons of 15 years ago than the usual Alabama trudge of late, Michigan looks remarkably unchaotic. For now. I'm still squinting.

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

hey let's make pancakes [Campredon]

you're the man now, dog

 

#1 Your Offensive Line. I mean, four different backs averaged at least 6.2 YPC. McNamara was not sacked and had eons of time to hit Johnson on the long TD. OL got out in front of Henning's edge plays, and obliterated everyone on the interior.

#2 Hassan Haskins, Blake Corum, and Donovan Edwards. Combine for 267 yards on 30 carries and you might make it up in this section. IMO Corum remains a nose or six ahead of the pack but the ability to keep everyone fresh and not make anyone in particular Chris Perry in that one MSU game is hugely valuable. 3 points each! Sure!

#3 AJ Henning. 70 yards in punt returns and two explosive offensive touches slides him in front of a couple other candidates.

Honorable mention: There was so much rotation on the D that nobody got a ton of time to stand out, but both Nikhai Hill-Green and Josh Ross came up with sticks; Gemon Green grabbed a deflection; Dax Hill had a drive-ending PBU. Cornelius Johnson's double move was rad.

KFaTAotW Standings.

(points: #1: 8, #2: 5, #3: 3, HMs one each. Ties result in somewhat arbitrary assignments.)

16: The OL (#1 Wash, #1 NIU)
11: Blake Corum (#2 WMU, T3 Wash, T2 NIU)
8: Ronnie Bell (#1 WMU)
7: Hassan Haskins (HM WMU, T3 Wash, T2 NIU)
6: Aidan Hutchinson (HM WMU, #2 Wash)
4: AJ Henning (HM WMU, #3 NIU), Dax Hill (#3 WMU, HM NIU)
3: Donovan Edwards(T2 NIU).
2: Josh Ross (HM Wash, HM NIU)
1: Andrew Vastardis (HM WMU),Mike Sainristil (HM WMU), Brad Robbins (HM Wash), Jake Moody (HM Wash), Mazi Smith (HM Wash), Nikhai Hill-Green(HM NIU), Gemon Green(HM NIU), Cornelius Johnson(HM NIU)

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

Michigan executes a two-minute drill with one 87-yard pass to Cornelius Johnson, adding another data point to the "Cade McNamara has a deep ball" column.

Honorable mention: More or less any running play. Michigan forces a turnover.

​MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

The one drive NIU had in the competitive section of the football game.

Honorable mention: Uh, Henning let a couple punts bounce? The holding call that brought back Franklin's touchdown.

[After THE JUMP: more SP+ madness]

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Back on the court. Basketball is practicing again:

After two weeks of forced quarantine, the Wolverines had their first official practice on Sunday. For 90 minutes at Crisler Center, things were back to normal for the No. 3 team in the country. …

Livers said conditioning could be a concern. “We know that game shape, basketball shape, is different than just running miles and miles,” he said. But he also said he’s “a thousand percent confident” Michigan can pick up where it left off.

“It’s not going to happen overnight,” Howard said of his team’s conditioning. “There’s nothing like playing five on five. That will be part of our conditioning as well, to get our rhythm back.”

Wisconsin on Sunday is Michigan's first game off the layoff. They'll have five games to make up—it's unlikely all of them get rescheduled. Per Brendan Quinn, the Big Ten's first priority is getting everyone to play each other at least once so the Illinois game will get back on there somehow; Michigan has either played or has games scheduled against Northwestern, PSU, Indiana, and MSU.

More from that Quinn article about the daunting task facing anyone trying to reassemble the schedule in full:

Michigan would need to shoehorn 11 games into a 22-day window in order to play a full 20-game schedule. Nebraska, meanwhile, has to make up six postponements. Illinois and Michigan State each have three games needing to be rescheduled. Indiana and Penn State have two apiece.

Quinn broaches the idea of teams signing off on two games in three days or back-to-backs. If I had a dollar I'd bet that the MSU game that needs to get made up ends up being immediately before or after the currently scheduled M-MSU season finale at Breslin.

Bafflingly, the conference commissioner Quinn talked to could not confirm what would happen to the regular season championship in the event of uneven numbers of games. Just do winning percentage. There's no other sane way.

[After THE JUMP: Denard!]