Michigan Football: 5 Questions for Hate Week

The Wolverines’ annual rivalry matchup for the Paul Bunyan trophy with Michigan State is officially back again, this weekend, as Michigan football looks to snap a two-game losing streak to Little Brother.

Michigan is at home in a night game broadcasted on ABC at 7:30 pm, against a pretty atrocious Spartans squad, which is the reason why Michigan football is favored by 22.5 points according to Fan Duel.

Despite that (and Harbaugh even acknowledged it himself), this is a classic “throw out the records” type of matchup.

Michigan really can’t afford a misstep this year like last year (at least they shouldn’t want to misstep) because there are several teams below them with similar records and all those teams are also vying for Michigan’s #4 ranking, which would be the last playoff spot if the playoffs were today.

With all of that being said, here are five questions that Michigan football needs to answer against the Michigan State Spartans.

How will Michigan attack Michigan’s State’s defense?

It’s no secret that Michigan State’s defense is pretty horrendous.

The unit did improve a little bit against Wisconsin (due to a slight scheme change and some personnel shuffling) in a double OT win to snap a four-game losing streak, but the unit still gave up 28 points to a Wisconsin squad that’s second-to-last in the West division and has Graham Mertz (a turnover-prone machine) at QB.

Michigan State’s run defense is 78th in the country, allowing opponents to average four yards per rush, and they give up 153.3 yards per game on the ground.

On the other hand, the part of the defense that gets the most attention for its ineptitude for Michigan State is its passing defense, which ranks 111th in the country, allowing 12 yards per completion to opposing QBs, and 269 yards per game through the air.

Don’t be fooled though. Michigan State was right near dead last in college football prior to that Wisconsin game. One game doesn’t drastically improve a passing defense 19 or 20 spots up the ranking.

It’ll be interesting to see what the OCs plan to do in this game because Michigan obviously could eat with Corum and Edwards on the ground and wear down MSU’s defensive line all game, or they could go pass-heavy like last year’s game.

I have a feeling this will be a pass-heavy game, as JJ might finally be allowed to let it rip for the duration of the game.