Michigan Football: 3 best reasons Wolverines are the Big Ten favorite

A new offense will be game-changing

Nothing was more frustrating than watching a 10-1 Michigan football team head to Columbus last November and get demolished.

The Wolverines ran into a buzzsaw. Meyer was on his way out and that probably served as motivation for his team. Meyer was obsessed with beating Michigan and that focus paid off again in 2018 as UM headed into The Game overconfident.

But the one thing the lopsided defeat accomplished, was showing Harbaugh how outdated his offense was. The loss to Ohio State and the one against Florida showed once and for all that the Wolverines could only win with an elite defensive effort that isn’t always possible against the elite competition.

Alabama for instance, had a damn good defense last season, however, it looked pretty helpless to stop a pair of high-powered offenses in the College Football Playoff. With spread systems and all the rules favoring offenses, it made sense for Michigan to move to a modern system and with Josh Gattis calling the plays, this offense won’t be defined by its conservative approach anymore.

It’s time to see what guys like Shea Patterson, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Nico Collins and Tarik Black can really do and this offense will help reveal that.