5 Things we learned from Michigan Football’s win vs Minnesota

Michigan football made a statement Saturday with a dominating victory over Minnesota and here are five things we learned.

Even the most optimistic Michigan football fans didn’t expect the Wolverines to go into Minnesota and put a 25-point win on the 21st-ranked Golden Gophers.

But armed with a new starting quarterback and an offense that finally lived up to the speed-in-space moniker, the Wolverines put together their best season-opening game of the Jim Harbaugh era, with a convincing rout of P.J. Fleck’s team.

That was certainly rewarding in its own right because people have often said since last season that Fleck is better than Harbaugh and that he should be Michigan’s coach.

That hype will be silenced for one weekend at any rate. As far as the Wolverines, most analysts have expressed surprise at Michigan and it’s hard to blame them.

It was just the second win on the road against a ranked team in Harbaugh’s tenure, although he’s now 9-2 against teams ranked 11-25.

Following the win, Michigan football got a modest bump in the rankings, going up to 14th in the coaches poll and 13th in the AP poll. While it doesn’t really matter in the long term, the win does put Michigan in a good spot and that’s where we will begin with our list of five things learned:

Michigan announces itself as a Big Ten contender

If you looked at a lot of projections, the ESPN FPI is one in particular that comes to mind, the Wolverines weren’t expected to do much in 2020, other than hope for a .500 season or slightly better.

Well, after flat-out dominating Minnesota on the road, the Wolverines have not only started to garner a little respect. Trevor Matich of ESPN ranked Michigan sixth in his own version of the playoff rankings and the win puts U-M in a solid spot in the Big Ten East.

Penn State was the team expected to challenge Ohio State and that could still be true as the Nittany Lions host the Buckeyes this week. If Penn State wins, the race is on. If not, it will be an uphill battle.

For U-M, I’ve said the goal should be to make that final game for the Big Ten East title and this first weekend helped. Obviously, the next two weeks are huge with Michigan State at home and Indiana on the road.

Consider this though: If Michigan can win those next two games, which is by no means a given considering what the Hoosiers did to Indiana, the Wolverines could split with Wisconsin/Penn State at home and still go into the finale with one loss, which is all it needs to have hope for the division title.

One defeat changes everything, but the first week was a good one in the conference race for Michigan. That’s one thing we learned, here are the rest.