Michigan Football Has More Legit Wins Than You Think

Would it surprise you to learn that Michigan football actually has more than one quality win this season? Either way, that truly is the case.

There’s only been one legitimate win on the Michigan football schedule through six games, right? That was against No. 8 Wisconsin.

Turns out, that’s not exactly true. In fact, you could argue the Wolverines have two more quality wins under their belts, meaning half of the schedule so far has consisted of fairly legitimate wins.

The other two teams: Colorado and Penn State, which are ranked No. 19 and No. 20, respectively, in the updated S&P+ rankings. Wisconsin is ranked No. 13; Michigan is ranked No. 1.

I imagine there aren’t too many people surprised to see Colorado up there, considering the Buffaloes are off to a 5-2 start and have been ranked as high as No. 21 in the AP Poll. It’s Penn State that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to people, especially considering the Nittany Lions never stood a chance against Michigan in a 49-10 loss.

But Penn State is also 5-2 this season, and its only loss outside of Michigan is a three-point loss to an also-5-2 Pittsburgh. Also, contrary to a large chunk of what the typical polls are, S&P+ is breaking down each play of each game, looking for things like what’s expected statistically and how efficient a team is.

Colorado has been equally impressive on offense and defense this season, ranking No. 23 and No. 27, respectively. The average FBS team could expect to score 23 points on the Buffaloes, while it could expect to surrender 37 points. For comparison, Michigan scored 45 points (well above average) and allowed 28 points (below average).

The same is true for Penn State. The Nittany Lions score 33 points and surrender 21 points against the average FBS team. But they only managed 10 points against Michigan and allowed 49.

I think I can safely assume there aren’t too many AP voters checking out S&P+ ratings, but it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Michigan isn’t rolling into the second half of the season with only one quality win. That’s what we expected to be true in the beginning of the season, but with the emergence of Colorado and Penn State, half of the Wolverines’ wins have come against good opponents.

Looking to the second half of the season, Michigan’s schedule doesn’t figure to get too much tougher on average, but it also isn’t getting weaker.

Here’s what the Wolverines have left (S&P+ rankings in parenthesis).

vs. Illinois (No. 82)
@ Michigan State (No. 73)
vs. Maryland (No. 59)
@ Iowa (No. 36)
vs. Indiana (No. 44)
@ Ohio State (No. 3)

With the exception of Iowa and Indiana, each game theoretically is getting tougher down the stretch of the season, culminating in the regular-season finale with Ohio State.

If Michigan stays unbeaten and then wins the Big Ten title, it won’t matter how tough those first six games were.

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However, let’s say Michigan loses one of these next six, and then either doesn’t make it to the conference title game or wins it—because it’s hard to see a conference title game loser getting in—perhaps the College Football Playoff committee would look back at that first batch of games and give the Wolverines a little bump.

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