Key changes, thoughts on Michigan Football’s 2022 schedule

In case you missed it, the Big Ten finally ( I shouldn’t say finally as this was actually much earlier than last year’s release) released the Big Ten’s 2022 schedule and now Michigan football knows who they will face next season.

Michigan football will play a total of 12 regular-season games (per usual) and has eight home games with four away games:

There were some noticeable changes made to the schedule.

• First off, the Penn State game was changed and moved back a week from October 8th to October 15th
• Next, Michigan now has to play at Rutgers, which is only fair, because Rutgers played Michigan at home last year
• Michigan will now play at Indiana because, again, like Rutgers, Indiana played Michigan at the Big House last year, although they did play Michigan in Bloomington twice in a row from the ‘19-20 season to the ‘20-21 season
• The most important change though is that now, Michigan will play at home versus rival “Little Brother” Michigan State. There was some confusion regarding whether or not this game would be switched back to Ann Arbor, but that has all been cleared up now
• Speaking on that further, Michigan football will now have a bye week before they face off against Michigan State (Michigan State will too). Hopefully, this added rest will allow Michigan the time they need to get properly prepared because last year, Michigan had their bye after playing Nebraska before playing Northwestern

Some very early thoughts

To put it simply, compared to last year, this year’s schedule is very favorable for Michigan. Michigan will pretty much have all cakewalks for four straight weeks to begin the season until they play their first road game at Iowa at the beginning of October.

If you’ll recall last year’s schedule, in Week 2, Michigan had a test almost right off the bat against Washington. While we obviously didn’t expect Washington to be as bad as they were last year, it still was a game against a team that could’ve caused Michigan some trouble, especially early in the season.

This didn’t even include the first game which was against a Western Michigan team that ended up winning eight games and their bowl game at the end of the season.

Iowa in Kinnick is very concerning for the first road game, which will probably be at night. Crazy things always seem to happen in Kinnick Stadium at night time, as Michigan’s 2016 team learned the hard way, so that game will be a huge measuring stick game to see whether Michigan can stay alive in the CFP race.

It’s good that Michigan gets to play Penn State and Michigan State at home this year, as anytime you get two major rivals at home is good. It seemed every important game was away last year, as Michigan had to play at Wisconsin, at Nebraska, at Penn State, and at Michigan State last year.

Michigan gets Nebraska at home this year, which is cool. Former Nebraska QB and seemingly ageless Adrian Martinez is gone and has since transferred to Kansas State.

Scott Frost has been very active in the portal this offseason, adding Texas transfer QB Casey Thompson, LSU WR transfer Trey Palmer, and Texas A&M RB transfer Deondre Jackson, with more to follow, so we’ll see how they look after their pieces have been assembled.

I’ll save my comments on Nebraska for another day because Scott Frost hasn’t done much of anything, no matter what type of roster he has had in Lincoln.

Final Thoughts

I couldn’t conclude this article without at least mentioning “The Game.” Obviously, Michigan’s season will continuously come down to that final game. It is what it is at this point. It is THE rivalry game, against the same team that has stood in the way of Michigan’s aspirations seemingly forever.

This time, unfortunately, it’s in The Horseshoe, and that stadium is always super hostile and raucous, but we’ll find out exactly how good this OSU team is in due time. I expect they’ll be favored to win the conference again.

Just from an extremely early glance, I’d say the floor for next year’s Michigan football squad is 8-4, with the ceiling of 10-11 wins.

Michigan needs to go through the usual suspects to get to at least 10 wins, like Michigan State and Penn State, but the schedule is definitely way more favorable this year than last year, as Michigan gets almost all of their most important games at home this year, unlike last year.

Michigan fans, what are your way-too-early record predictions? Tell us in the comments below!