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Essentials

WHAT	#4 Michigan (7-0) vs Michigan State(3-4)
WHERE	Michigan Stadium Ann Arbor, MI
WHEN	7:30 Eastern
THE LINE	M –22.5
TELEVISION	ABC (McDonough/Blackledge)
TICKETS	From $221.
WEATHER	clear, 0% chance of rain minimal wind mid 50s dropping to 40 by 11 PM

Overview

Your author takes no pleasure in reporting this, but Michigan State is bad. So bad that Michigan has been installed as more than a three-touchdown favorite despite the recent history of the series. Before last week's double OT win over a flailing Wisconsin program, Michigan State had not been in anything resembling a competitive game against P5 opposition.

After a couple of MAC walkovers to open the season, here is Michigan State's season:

• @ Washington: 39-28 loss that was 39-14 with 9 minutes left despite two different goal-line stands by MSU.
• Minnesota: 34-7 loss in which total yards are 508-240.
• @ Maryland: 27-13 loss featuring another goal-line stand; total yards are 489 to 321.
• Ohio State: lol
• @ Wisconsin: A win in which MSU actually outgains Wisconsin 389-283.

That is four hideous blowouts that are not as close as the scores indicate—even when those scores are lopsided—and then a competitive game against a Wisconsin team that just got its coach fired.

If you squint you can see some reason for MSU's improvement in that game: they got a couple of key defensive contributors back. But given all the other results that game feels like the "how bad is Wisconsin" moment.

So, like, gird thyself. Anything short of defeat without dignity is going to be annoying, and if there's a fluky half like Penn State game people are going to be watching from open windows, ready to plummet.

Run Offense vs Michigan State

woop [Fuller]

This is the spot where you might say "Michigan State has been respectable in this department, at least," but they have not been. Minnesota, Maryland, and Ohio State all bashed out five yards a carry. Moribund Wisconsin approached that number. Hell, once you account for the seven sacks WMU gave up the Broncos put up 5.6 YPC, which is easily their best performance on the year. Teams are more or less paving MSU.

Injury has a lot to do with this. MSU has been hit hard in the front seven. LB Darius Snow is out for the year. Star DT Jacob Slade, who gave Karsen Barnhart the business in last year's game, returned from injury against Wisconsin. Edges Khris Bogle and Jeff Pietrowski have also been out for most of the season. Slade is back and played well against Wisconsin; Bogle and Pietrowski were not dressed two weeks ago, FWIW.

If those guys aren't back—and probably even if they are—the prescription for Michigan is likely to be the same as it's been most of the season. Dump a boatload of tight ends on the field and challenge the edge guys do do something about it. MSU is no longer the Dantonio-era pro-style offense they once were; they are now almost exclusively a three-wide shotgun team. That means they aren't as drilled on weird run game stuff, and since they've got two or three solid DTs aside from Slade the weak points in the rush defense will be off tackle. Alex:

…in contrast to the DTs, the EDGE players are just guys. I liked Brandon Wright okay in this game, but he's not yet a difference maker. Maybe they'll get Khris Bogle or Jeff Pietrowski healthy for this one, but it's hard to know what sort of an impact they'd have. Zion Young may have promise as a youngster, but he's inexperienced and prone to getting sealed off.

MSU moved UNLV transfer and early-season PFF fave-rave Jacoby Windmon from DE to LB, probably to get former Michigan fullback Ben VanSumeren off the field, but that's trading one 250 pound guy who's not going to change direction fast enough for another one, and it weakens the DE spot. Windmon's likely to put his nose in the wrong gap from time to time.

MSU's deficiencies in the secondary means that it'll be hard for them to truly go bonkers against the run. They are mostly a cover three team and they play a soft shell. It is possible that they radically change their approach given that it's a rivalry game and everyone's coming off a bye week—Iowa spent much of the OSU game running cover zero(!)—but that might not even matter that much if Michigan's optioning off a guy with McCarthy's legs and a dude playing a new position isn't in the right spot.

Still, I'd bet on MSU trying to load up early in the hopes of getting Michigan to burn some downs.

KEY MATCHUP: MICHIGAN TIGHT ENDS vs JUST GUYS. Gonna be a lot of tight end block opportunities; Michigan will hope for a better performance from Bredeson in that H-back role.

Pass Offense vs Michigan State

this was the Andrel Anthony game last year [Fuller]

It turns out that when touted defensive backs wash out of power programs it's for a reason. MSU has imported the huddled masses yearning to breathe free and all it's gotten them is 10 YPA allowed against people not named Graham "Smertz" Mertz. MSU passing defense against P5 teams:

• Washington: 24/40, 397 yards, 9.9 YPA.
• Minnesota: 23/26, 268 yards, 10.3 YPA
• Maryland: 32/41, 314 yards, 7.7 YPA
• OSU: 23/28, 377 yards, 13.5 YPA
• Wisconsin: 14/24, 131 yards, 5.5 YPA.

MSU has five sacks across this period, three of which were given up by Wisconsin. That is brutal, and follows on from last year's miserable performance. MSU is actually much worse this time around; they're dead last in the conference in YPA allowed at 8.2. They have just two interceptions on the season (Michigan is second to last in the Big Ten with four, FWIW.)

So it's no surprise that Alex issued the cyan circles to both starting cornerbacks, their box safety, and the nickel corner. The other two guys are a true freshman and returning star safety Xavier Henderson, who played significant snaps for the first time against Wisconsin. Said nickel corner is a D-II transfer, and we saw what happened when there's a D-II transfer in a unit of five guys when the Indiana offensive line took on Mike Morris and company. This is the same kind of matchup. Alex:

The problems are primarily that everyone is open on every play.

Ah. Care to elaborate?

In some ways, the MSU pass defense is one of the least interesting things I've had to cover at FFFF because there isn't much to say. Ameer Speed and Charles Brantley are the starting corners but are they any different than Ronald Williams or Chester Kimbrough? Not really. There are no particularly weak points or great guys in coverage to point out. Everyone is bad and they're all about equally as bad. Receivers are open on every play and if you have a QB who knows how to survey the field or throw the football accurately, you will likely dice them up. End of story.

Ah.

This will be more Iowa than PSU/Indiana. Michigan State plays soft. Butter soft. They've given up 87 passing plays of 10+ yards, worst in the conference, but they're quite good at limiting longer plays given the context. They will give you the underneath stuff all day every day and hope you get down to the one yard line, whereupon the MSU defense turns into the '85 Bears.

This fits quite neatly with what JJ McCarthy has been asked to do to date. McCarthy's completing approximately 90% of his throws under ten yards. If MSU is going to load up against the run and play soft behind it, the Spartans are unlikely to get bailed out by Michigan dorfs. Michigan has driven the field metronomically against Iowa and Penn State, which are far better defenses. They have kicked a lot of field goals against those teams, though, and bend-but-don't-break may well be Michigan State's best approach here.

KEY MATCHUP: OL vs BLITZ PICKUP. Keep McCarthy clean and he will find one of the various open guys. With no edge dudes extant for MSU it'll be more about organization than one on one pass rush matchups.

Run Defense vs Michigan State

ROBBED [Fuller]

Kenneth Walker should have won four Heismans last year. It was obvious that Walker was carrying the MSU run offense then and it's even more obvious now. Football Outsiders line stats on the 2021 Spartans weren't pretty—85th in line yards, 78th in opportunity rate, 83rd in stuff rate—and that somehow translated into the Doak Walker winner. Hell, rename the award after Kenneth: dude put up 6.2 YPC last year. My man is the king of chicken salad.

This year? Not so much. Alex:

The problem was that these running lanes were not open often enough and when they weren't, I never saw an instance where any of these players displayed the vision and shiftiness that Walker possessed. I said about last year's Michigan-MSU game that if Ty Isaac were MSU's RB that the Wolverines likely win by two TDs. Well, these RBs show a lot of Ty Isaac in them. 

Without Walker popping in from the Wake Forest two-deep production has collapsed. The Michigan State offensive line is the Chinese real estate industry of college football: propped up by external factors for a brief, pleasant window, surrounded by bogus statistics, and imploding at a high rate of speed. Top backs Jalen Berger, who got kicked off a suddenly horrible Wisconsin rushing offense, and Jarek Broussard are both averaging under three yards a carry against FBS opponents. Elijah Collins, somehow still around, has been getting more playing time of late but in his first extended run against Wisconsin (14 carries) he barely crested 3 YPC himself.

What is MSU bad at? Everything. MSU's line stats—which generally describe what happens near the line of scrimmage—have dropped to 100th, 87th, 111th, and 92nd. Meanwhile they have just three runs of 20+ yards all season, which is worst in the Big Ten. IE, behind Iowa and Purdue. The only one of those to come against a P5 team was a 21-yard Payton Thorne scramble against Washington. They can't stay on schedule down-to-down. They can't get two yards when they need two yards. And they can't break off a big play. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln?

None of this has filtered down into the mind of the Michigan State offensive coordinator. Against Wisconsin Alex charted a 30-19 run-pass split on first and second down. That is after the re-integration of a fully healthy Jayden Reed, about whom more in a second, and seems entirely unjustifiable.

Last year this matchup was incredibly frustrating, as Michigan would bottle up Walker and then he'd somehow manage to bounce outside of contain and rack up a chunk run. Without those MSU would have averaged about two yards a carry. That's the baseline expectation here, as M brings in a defense that's 13th in line yards and first nationally in 5+ yard runs allowed. Michigan does a superior job of preventing chunk runs. Combine that with the MSU offense and we're looking at a steady diet of 0-3 yard runs whenever MSU decides they need to keep the Michigan pass rush honest.

KEY MATCHUP: KENNETH WALKER vs AIDAN HUTCHINSON. Taking a cue from the Michigan State message boards here, as they've decided the most important thing going on this football season is the performance of two NFL rookies.

Pass Defense vs Michigan State

***RECORD SCRATCH*** [Fuller]

Michigan's already passed the Maryland test here and probably won't quake at the prospect of a fully functional MSU passing offense, but this will be something of a test. The aforementioned Jayden Reed is back, Keon Coleman is a pretty interesting up-and-comer, and MSU has a couple of athletic tight ends. Reed missed (or was limited for) much of the season prior to the Wisconsin game, and his return was crucial:

Reed was targeted 9 times against Wisconsin to lead the team, and was targeted 7 times the week before, also the team lead. When Reed is healthy and functional, he's often the first read on a passing play. When it was time to go win the game against the Badgers, you knew who the ball was going to:

…Reed's good at making tough catches, he's fast enough to hit a big play, and he's agile enough to get yards after the catch. An easy choice this year.

If MSU gets down, or just decides that they're not going to set many downs on fire with the ground game, we're looking at an Aaron Burbridge level of targets. He famously had 19 in his Jourdan Lewis showdown. I'd set the over/under there.

Quarterback Payton Thorne is Sean Clifford before the universe broke him. He's relatively mobile, produces when in improvisation mode, and drops in some dimes:

On the downside his accuracy is questionable. Alex had multiple clips of balls that were just off, and a couple where his ability to read a defense resulted in near-INTs. It's noteworthy that Thorne's game against the Badgers was by far his best of the season relative to the opponent. He averaged around 5.5 YPA against Minnesota, Maryland, and OSU; his 7.7 YPA against Washington was heavily padded by garbage-time drives that led Michigan State back to Defeat With Dignity land. Is Reed's return that much of a season-changer for Thorne? Probably not.

One reason it's not: MSU is clearly playing around their offensive line. The heavy run focus on early downs and extensive screen game is designed to keep Thorne from getting battered. Their sack rate drops from 30th on standard downs to 71st on passing downs, and Thorne is pretty good about mitigating pass rush. Guys are getting through on the regular. Not hard to see Mike Morris or Eyabi Okie replicating this:

Michigan is a much more effective pass rush defense on passing downs, too, so for MSU it'll be imperative to stay ahead of the chains and prevent Okie/Moore rush packages from teeing off. Given the rush offense that means a lot of safe dink-and-dunk on early downs.

KEY MATCHUP: MICHIGAN LINEBACKERS vs COVERING SOMETHING OTHER THAN GRASS. In re: dink and dunk, Michigan's LBs have not been very good in coverage this year and will likely be asked to look up Reed underneath quite a lot.

SPECIAL TEAMS

A tale of two cities here. If punter Bryce Baringer maintains his current pace he should win the Ray Guy award. MSU is #1 in FEI punting efficiency and #1 in Jared Lee's punting metrics. (Those metrics have Brad Robbins third and thus pass the "is this better than net average" sniff test.) He's a beast; he's averaging 51 yards a kick and opponents have a total of 88 return yards on 30 punts. That's nuts.

Everything else is rather bad. MSU is about average returning punts, and is in the 90s or worse in every other metric.

MSU has attempted just four field goals this year, and they've made one of them. Auburn transfer Ben Patton is the only guy with any track record after going 5/6 in 2021, but he's only attempted one FG this year, which he missed. Freshman Jack Stone has the other three attempts; he's made one. MSU was about to attempt a fifth field goal late in the Wisconsin game but was foiled by a bad snap. Stone has also missed an extra point. He kicks off and has only gotten eight touchbacks on 31 attempts, FWIW.

Kickoff returns have been a whole bunch of nothing. That's par for the course these days. Punt returns have also been meh, but a big chunk of that is the absence of Jayden Reed. Reed took two back last year and if he's fully healthy MSU will get him every touch available; punts will be his deal. That's unlikely to be a major factor during the Pax Robbinsica; I would not entirely discount the idea that MSU breaks something there.

KEY MATCHUP:  AHHHH YOU CONTINUE DOING EVERYTHING THE BEST

INTANGIBLES

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if…

• We're Playing Michigan State Bullcrappe continues to happen.
• PFF's OL grading is remotely accurate.
• Jayden Reed is glowing ominously and is 7'6", 500 pounds by the third quarter.

Cackle with knowing glee if…

• MSU is still running 60% of the time on early downs.
• In Soviet Paul Bunyan Rivalry, Michigan July-drives you.
• Michigan's scoring redzone touchdowns.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 3 (Baseline: 5; +1 for Recent History Of Series, +1 for Respekt, +1 for Rivalry Juju, –1 for 9 Ain't Walking Through That Door, –1 for Trenches Mismatch, –1 for Worst Pass Defense Ever, –1 for Can You Even Field Goal, –1 for Four Score Spread, +1 for Ye Gods That's A Punter, +1 for Getting Some Key Guys Back, –1 for Blake Corum, –1 for Oh You're Asking JJ McCarthy To Complete Short Throws To Open Guys?)

Desperate need to win level: 11 (Baseline: 5; +1 for TFGs, +1 for Championship Aspirations, +1 for Hashtag Containment Now, +1 for These Bozos, +1 for Oh God Could You Even Imagine, +1 for The END OF TIME)

Loss will cause me to… hahaha you guys I'm gonna set myself on fire

Win will cause me to…  IZZO! YOU'RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRE NEXT 

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict:

I mean, this is a very bad team playing a very good team and in the history of this rivalry when you get to the end of the season you look back and you see one of three things. One: MSU was better overall. That's always an MSU win. Two: Michigan was slightly better overall, say within about 10 fancystats points. Those are tossups. Three: Michigan was way better. Those are always Michigan wins. So there is something to the Throw Out The Records talk… just not with a matchup this lopsided.

MSU cannot consistently move the ball, ends up in lots of passing downs, and gets crunched. Michigan drives the field over and over again, kicks too many field goals, and eases away.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid on Saturday:

• It's not a stupid game. Michigan doesn't punt backwards, or fumble six times, or take 55 penalties. It's just a normal football game.
• McCarthy 300+ yards at an 80% completion clip.
• Cheapshot comin'.
• Michigan, 29-10