Around the Big Ten

[lineygoblue]

3rd Quarter score:

Iowa 24
Rutgers 3

Right on schedule.

I expect Iowa to be similar to Maryland, only playing at home.

[iam416]

Two defensive TDs. Only way Iowa scores. They are STILL horrible on offense. HORRIBLE

[lineygoblue]

Michigan showed numerous weaknesses today. Ferentz will take note.

Michigan played too soft of an OOC schedule, and it almost bit them in the butt today. Kicking around 3 tomato cans doesn't look good anywhere but on the scoreboard.

Michigan's defense gave up big yards both on the ground and in the air. Bad tackling, DB's out of position, missed blocks on offense, receivers running bad routes, JJ misfiring on easy completions. M didn't look much better than Iowa today.

I do believe M is better than Iowa, but with the exception of last year's team, they've always been up to the task of handling superior Michigan teams.

I still think its going to be close. Just like M vs the Turtle.

[lineygoblue]

Meanwhile, osu is right on schedule. 45-7 in the 4th. Wait .. Wisky gets a garbage TD .. 45-14.

The only thing wrong with osu is they look like Texas Tech. Why do they do that?

Same with MSU. Why don't they want to look like MSU? Why do they insist on looking like Baylor or Oregon?

/rant

[THE_WIZARD_]

"You can't handle the heat!"

THE_WIZARD_'s misquote of Colonel Jessup

[Tom W]

I expect Iowa to be similar to Maryland, only playing at home.

Maryland > Iowa, because they have an offense.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Notable, just looking at scores: With the exception of osu and Alabama, opponents of top 25 programs showed up and pressed higher ranked teams. T

Locally, the Big is going to be uninteresting, The unanticipated is that the Gophers are probably pretty good and will win the west easily and Spartans under Mel Tucker being not good and likely removing themselves in the race to the top of the BTE . Of the lower tier of the Big East, Maryland is probably at the top of that tier capable of an upset. M just avoided that outcome So that leaves the BTE fighting for a spot in Indy v. Minnesota between M, PSU or osu, nod to osu.

Both osu and PSU face Maryland with a potential upset in the offing so M just has to beat PSU at home and osu, having gotten by the Terps to win the BTE. Tall order.

[iam416]

I'm not so sure Minnesota wins the B10 West "easily" and I'm fairly sure Maryland isn't some sort of huge hump game for either Penn State or Ohio State. I'm 100% sure that no one is touching HARBAUGH!!!

[lineygoblue]

I'm 100% sure that no one is touching HARBAUGH!!!

Your analysis was good until you got here.

What I am 100% sure of is that yesterday, OSU firmly established the pecking order in the Big Ten. They are clearly the best team in the BTE to this point, and PSU is at least slightly ahead of Michigan based on their rout of AwBarn at Jordan Hare. Michigan's victories have been three tomato cans, and a cliffhanger. Maryland had a chance to tie with 5:00 to go.

As of Sunday Morning:

BTE
1. OSU - by a lot. There's a significant gap between them and...
2. PSU - because of the AwBarn win... as of this morning there's another gap between them and ....
3. Michigan - because at least they won
4. Maryland - better than advertised.
5 - 7 Indiana, MSU, Rutgers, .. throw all three in a bag, shake vigorously, dump them out. Any order is reasonable.

BTW
1. Minnesota - Seems to be some distance between them and ..
2 - 3 Pickem - Wisconsin and Iowa
4. Purdue
5. Illinois
6-7 Northworstern and Nebraska - either order is acceptable.

---

These will likely change as the season continues.

[iam416]

M played their first game of the year yesterday. The coaches FINALLY have something to assess the team on and coach them up. They still have the potential best all-around offense in the league. Now, if OSU and M played yesterday on a neutral field, OSU would have steamrolled them. OSU has played real teams. M has not. But, that will change, and M has too much talent not to get things going. The only concern that I think could linger is that there was an obviously reality last year that Hutchinson and, to a lesser extent, Ojagbo covered up defensive weaknesses and without them those cracks would show more. I think that's still a concern, though it's not a concern against Iowa.

Penn State is finding a little bit of a running game -- which they desperately needed -- and some nice WR/TE options. Clifford is like 29, so he's wiley. The defense is solid. They're not an easy out.

The top 3 in the BTE each play 1 home, 1 away against each other. I'm leaning more toward everyone going 1-1 and some random loss somewhere determining the winner.

Sparty can't defend the pass. At all. I knew that going into the Goofer game, but I didn't think Morgan and the Goofer WRs would so ruthlessly destroy them in the air. They also ran the ball, but it was the passing game early on that killed Sparty.

Maryland and Rutgers are total meh. Indiana is awful.

Goofers probably are the favorite right now. I'd still go with Wisconsin as pretty a coin flip alternative -- the Badgers get the Goofers at home.

Beyond that, O'Connell is gimpy -- we'll see if plays this week at Minnesota. But, it doesn't matter -- even if he does, Purdue will find away to fuck that game up. Iowa, Nebraska and nFw are horrible and Illinois is meh.

[klondike]

I'm not so sure Minnesota wins the B10 West "easily" and I'm fairly sure Maryland isn't some sort of huge hump game for either Penn State or Ohio State. I'm 100% sure that no one is touching HARBAUGH!!!

There was a stat the Minny's 3rd down conversion rate through 4 games is like 85%. That is unreal. Does Bucknuts have to play them?

[iam416]

No. Penn State gets them in HV.

[lineygoblue]

The Goofers avoid both Michigan and OSU this year. That's why they look like the favorite for the BTW title. PSU v Minny in HV could be close, but I'd go with 'cryin' eyes Franklin.

[Da Geezer]

The team that avoids OSU and UM is always my pick in the B10 West. These two divisions are so unequal it's pathetic.

Talent nails it. The UM pass rush is far worse than last year and that makes this year's defense far weaker. We need Edwards to get back on the field.

[Jeff Buchanan]

On M's weaknesses on D revealed v. Maryland. There are some of them right where we expected - on the DL. Whereas Hutchinson and Ojabo were beasts on the DL in 2021 and Macdonald leveraged this employing them in aggressive pressure schemes to protect an inexperienced back end - especially the CB - Minter has a stronger back end defense and weaker DL. He has considerably more speed and quickness at LB in 2022 and is leveraging this group - in it's hybrid form - to react and fill gaps on the DL v. runners or unexpectedly show up in the face of the QB.

You could see Locksley knew he could exploit the M DLwith his OL in the run game and the first half demonstrated that but that weakness appeared to get corrected in the second half. I'd want to re-see the game to verify this theory but it looked like Minter changed how LBs were being used. They weren't dropping like they did via Tua 2.0 early in the game and instead, did more filling at the DL, getting pressure with disquized blitzes, letting the CBs and Ss cover the Terp's receivers. Seemed to work v. the run game and Tua 2.0 didn't have a more efficient passing and RPO game after that change.

Going forward, I'm not sure that M's D got their first big test, passed it and will get better in some linear trajectory from here. I think how fans perceive strengths and weaknesses of M's D doesn't account for the reality that how it's deployed by the coaches is highly dependent on the character of the offense they're facing game to game and play to play. There's a tendency for fans to miss the impact on the game of what's going on on the sidelines with the coaches, chalk boards and players.

What I see in Minter as opposed to Macdonald - given that they both ran similar schemes - is the ability to recognize changing blocking or receiver patterns and adjust more quickly to what the opponent is showing and coach up the players. He has to, where Macdonald may not have had to do that. Macdonald would probably be just as good at that other than he didn't need to adjust because he had a CFB best run stuffing, pass play pressure defense in 2021.