Know Your Notre Dame Football Enemy: The Michigan Wolverines

We take an early look at the Notre Dame football game against Michigan.

No rest for Notre Dame football, as a week after hosting USC, they travel to Ann Arbor. Before the season gets started, Michigan remains the everyone’s sweetheart sleeper pick to make the College Football Playoff. Once the season begins, we’ll likely see that Jim Harbaugh once again can’t get over the hump, and those same pundits will talk about how much talent he wasted. It shouldn’t be a surprise at this point.

OFFENSE

Michigan does have a highly-talented quarterback in Shea Patterson. His numbers last season, however, were disappointing. He threw for practically the same amount of yards in 2018 with Michigan as he did in 2017 with Ole Miss. He did so on about 60 fewer passes though. Patterson, like every Harbaugh quarterback, was a game manager — not the 5-star talent he should be.

Once again, Michigan is confident they’ve found a way to score more than 20 points a game. I’ll believe it when I see it. A zebra can’t change its stripes, and having an aggressive spread offense is out of Harbaugh’s nature.

The Michigan weapons were all highly-ranked recruits, but again, the production is lacking. Donovan Peoples-Jones is the biggest returning name and most dangerous player. He caught 47 balls for 612 yards and eight touchdowns in 2018.

With turnover at running back, it will leave Michigan with a choice between a former walk-on and a freshman starting. Again, there’s good talent here, but they’ll probably be leaning on an inexperienced running game a little too much.

Jim Harbaugh’s nature is to lean on the ground game. However, his offense’s experience and talent is going to be in the passing game. It could well lead to an identity crisis.

A bet? Michigan still won’t have a good offense. A stone cold lock of the century? There’s no way they have explosive plays against Alohi Gilman and Jalen Elliot.

The best bet for Michigan’s offense is that Notre Dame’s linebacker corp doesn’t replenish and play to the level they did in 2018. In that case, the Wolverines may be able to run on the Irish.

DEFENSE

As usual during Harbaugh’s tenure, Michigan’s true identity will be on display on the defensive side of the ball.

Don Brown is still the defensive coordinator. That means the defense will have the same mentality — ATTACK.

Expect a lot of creative and aggressive blitzes. This means that the offensive line needs to keep heads on swivels to keep Ian Book on his feet. A lot of what goes into keeping Book safe from the blitz falls on the center (Jarrett Patterson) to properly read the blitzes before the snap of the ball. After the snap, Book needs to read and distribute the ball quickly.

Michigan lost a lot of talent to the next level, leaving some questions along the defensive front seven. They’ve got elite pass-rushers to replace. Josh Ross and Khaleke Hudson will likely anchor that new front seven, but it’s unlikely they’ll be as talented as the group from last season.

There’s no reason to think Michigan will be bad, because they’ve recruited too well to struggle a whole lot. However, they haven’t given any reason to believe in their offense putting up a ton of points. There’s also no reason to believe their defense won’t be able to reload and still be great. Expectations for Michigan to change? None.

Prediction: Notre Dame 27, Michigan 17

Notre Dame’s offense will be able to throw into the Michigan secondary on RPO’s, which will also neutralize the pass rush. The Irish will move the ball at least as well as they did last season. Michigan also won’t be able to get chunk plays on the Notre Dame secondary. They’ll have to go for slow drives down the field. Notre Dame is more talented, and Michigan doesn’t win big games in the Harbaugh era.