Iowa @ Michigan, Saturday, October 5th, Noon, FOX/Fox Video.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Ask me about my take later today. I need to watch some video of Iowa.

[lineygoblue]

I think you'll see a typical Iowa team.

Well-coached, sound team discipline. Ferentz will have a solid game plan that exploits Michigan's deficiencies on defense.

They'll have a QB that makes good throws and is a good team leader. They'll have a RB that can pick up tough yards when needed. Their OL will be big, strong, and moves well.

They'll have a stout defense that features an absolute wall against the running game from tackle to tackle. If they have any defensive weakness at all, it will be in covering the long ball.

They'll probably have a TE with good hands, that is close to leading the team in receiving yards.

If Michigan plays anything like its first 3 games, they'll lose to them. If they play more like they did against Rutgers, they have a chance to win.

[Jeff Buchanan]

What I'm seeing so far ........

Iowa runs a pretty standard pro-style offense and, in limited review on my part, nothing exotic on defense. They rolled MTSU last Saturday 48-3 and did most of the damage with an efficient run game. They struggled on the road against Iowa State winning a close game 18-17. Iowa State's offense torched Iowa's secondary with a couple of big plays but they couldn't sustain long drives.

Iowa is missing a couple of DBs due to injury. Not sure how that will play out on Saturday. They also lost a starter on the OL to injury and he is questionable for Michigan.

Right out of the box, on offense, look for Iowa to try to punish M's interior DL - again, I'm not so sure this is the weakness it has been made out to be in that Brown is not alone with the use of the 2-4-5 concept on defense that I've thought is a wide spread trend in CFB. Mo Hurst types don't grow on trees and heavy fronts tend not to do well v. spready type teams. So, I get it. Of Course, Iowa isn't one of those so, I guess we'll see. Just keep in mind that while defending Wisconsin's Taylor led running game behind 330+ O-Linemen beefing their way through M's DL was a disaster, that disaster was due in large part to failures of execution of whatever you want to name the defensive scheme Brown is running........

On a fair number of plays, Michigan had the correct schematic approach, just missed execution.

https://mgoblog.com/diaries/film-ana...sive-struggles

The point here is that Iowa is not Wisconsin and M isn't playing on the road or in Madison.

When M is on offense, pretty sure Gattis will roll out the run plays and these won't go well. They might be OK if both Charbonett and Turner are healthy and play and the OL gets its blocking assignments right and can pick up stunts and blitzes - a chronic problem. That is TBD. Anyone watching M football for the last 4 years knows that opponents will do whatever to stop M's running game. That usually includes schemes that work to outnumber M in the box. It's been unfortunately effective v. the Gattis offense. It was harder to do that against Harbaugh's offense in 2018. I'd sort-of expect that running out of the gun. I'll go back to an analysis I saw by SpaceCyote after the Wisconsin game that pointed to the "timing" in the back field of the Gattis offense's run game being off and that is affecting run blocking. I'm seeing the end result but not sure I can understand what these so called "timing" problems are. I do not think, if these "timing" issues are a thing, that they got fixed v. Rutgers. By the numbers M's run game was pretty anemic.

Suffice it to say, the Gattis offense can't be optimized without a better run game. I liked what Gattis did v. Rutger's to optimize Patterson's skill set in the passing game and Iowa may have issues on the back-end of their defense, so, yeah, keep it up. OTH, this is a ZR/RPO offense not AIr-Coryeel or Mike Leache's Air-Raid. The run game has got to be better for M to beat Iowa.

Iowa's kicking game is solid.

At this point, I have no idea which team is going to win this game. I like the Chryst like consistency of Iowa's Ferentz. They do basic stuff well and will beat you doing it. In comparison, M still doesn't have consistency on either offense or defense. If they find it, they can win. If they don't, obviously they won't. I'll pick scores later on in the week after I have a look at this week's fancy stats and, of course, what the odds makers think about this game.

[Hannibal]

[iam416]

The ship is righted.

[lineygoblue]

I know, Hanni. It would be hard for me to believe that Vegas would establish Michigan as the favorite, even at home for homecoming.

I'd take the points too. Iowa will be Wisconsin 2.0. Only difference will be its being played in Ann Arbor. I'm don't think that will be enough to make a difference.

[WingsFan]

Harbaugh is 41-15 and has only lost 4 games at home - Ohio State and 2 fluky Michigan State games.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Michigan opened at -7. Consensus is down to -5. Jeff Sagrin's rankings give Michigan a 3.34 point advantage at home (worth +3 by itself). Sagrin's predictive model essentially sees two equal teams.

Iowa is built to stop the run on defense (in bold, per game averages: total rushing yards/Yards per play/TDs):

4

17.0

28.8

59.1

172.5

1.0

22.8

78.5

3.5

0.0

51.5

251.0

4.9

7.8

4.3

0.3

12.0

7.3

57.8

0.8

0.8

1.5

Michigan's rushing offense through 4 games (In bold, per game average: total rushing yards/yards per play/TDs):

4

19.0

33.3

57.1

261.5

1.8

37.5

130.5

3.5

2.5

70.8

392.0

5.5

12.5

6.3

4.3

23.0

6.5

48.3

1.8

0.8

2.5

I put the passing attempts (33.3) and rushing attempts (37.5) per game in red. This is 70.8 plays per game compared to 2018's 69.0 (42.2 run, 26.8 pass). Not a lot more plays per game but a huge difference in pass v. run plays with the 2019 numbers so far about 30% greater passing attempts.

If Iowa's vulnerability on defense is it's back end. We'd expect for Gattis to at least match the 2019 pass/run allocation if not shade slightly to the pass. I think Harbaugh and Gattis went in to Madison trying to dictate a shootout. That failed because M couldn't execute that strategy early and then looked like the coaches and the players panicked. This time around, M will try to get up early but not completely abandon the run game like they appeared to do v. Rutgers ..... and I think that was a strategic choice to help Patterson regain his confidence and work on the passing game overall. If Gattis can't mix the run and pass game in efficiently moving the chains with that approach, I expect a pretty quick change of focus to the passing game.

Michigan's vulnerability is in stopping the run game:

4

14.5

21.5

67.4

127.8

0.5

43.5

168.5

3.9

2.3

65.0

296.3

4.6

6.5

8.5

1.5

16.5

8.5

67.8

1.0

0.5

1.5

If M is going to win this game, that has to improve ...... by a lot.

But Iowa is not Wisconsin. My take is that Iowa is not going to be able to dictate how the game is played and they would like a balanced offense that get's long scoring efficient drives, wears M's defense down and keeps M's offense off the field; an O/U around 45 would please Kirk.

I think Gattis and the M offense would be best served by having Patterson come out firing trying to get up early, give the offense confidence and put Iowa on it's heels. He should test the edges and the middle of Iowa's defense with scattered runs providing he can get Iowa to play some cover-2 zone to slow Patterson to DPJ, Collins, Black, Bell.

Stanley is good. At a shootout? Don't think so. I don't think Ferentz has the receivers at his disposal that Harbaugh has so, advantage Michigan if they can dictate that kind of game with Ferentz out of his element playing catch-up trying to pass.

Two outcomes:

M does a bit of, I'll call it, Hybrid - Air Raid, gets up early and answers any long scoring drives by Iowa quickly. M wins 41-37.

M and Patterson lose confidence in the passing game early due to turn-overs and in-completions but don't completely abandon what turns out to be an improved running game to stay in it. Iowa wins 24-21.

[Jeff Buchanan]

72% of the money is going to Iowa at +5. 28% for M at -5. The line has moved from -7 to - 4.5 in Iowa's favor since the lines came out. The pre-season line was M -13.

[AlabamAlum]

[froot loops]

I think it might be trouble for the Wolverines because it will become a rock fight.

[lineygoblue]

Michigan needs to forget any idea of running the ball up the gut. Iowa will give up other things on defense but they will not give up the TnT area.

And it won't surprise me to see Iowa run some option-style plays on offense. I'm sure they will have watched the Army video and have seen how a smaller, less talented team took them to the brink of defeat. Thank goodness Jake Moody didn't go to the US Military Academy to play football.

I just have that uneasy feeling I've had in my gut for nearly 15 years. This one isn't going to go well.

[AlabamAlum]

I like M by 10.

[hack]

Harbaugh is 41-15 and has only lost 4 games at home - Ohio State and 2 fluky Michigan State games.

To be fair, the O'Korn game was just an incredibly weird insane strategy in which a team constantly guilty of criminial neglect of its WRs suddenly decided to pass to them in a rainstorm and with a backup QB who just couldn't throw at all. That was an earned loss.

(Not that it has any bearing on this weekend unless the weather's the same, but it's still a reminder of what headscratcher offensive gameplans we've seen in the past five years.)

[Jeff Buchanan]

....... and you support the initiation of a coaching search, in part, because of that?

That position is so far out in left field within any group of reasonable fans, it's laughable. You'd fit right in at mgoboard although decreased after the Rutgers win what ever that implies. Plenty of that type there. Standby to get massively negged if you post taking that position though.