History vs. Michigan:
Michigan leads all-time series 7-5
Last meeting: 2002 at Michigan - 31-29 Michigan
This Season:
vs Montana (FCS) - L 7-13
Morris was 27/46 (59%) with 226 yards, 0 TDs and 3 INTs last week with a long of 25. He's had 4 TDs to 6 INTs in his career.
Running Backs: Richard Newton 6'0" 215 lbs (RS Jr.) & Cameron Davis 6'0" 205 lbs (RS So.)
Against Montana, Newton had 17 rushes for 62 yards (3.6ypc) with a long of 13. He also had 1 catch for 10 yards. Davis had 4 attempts with 8 yards (2.0ypc) with a long of 4. He had 3 receptions for 29 yards and a long of 13.
Wide Receivers: Rome Odunze 6'3" 200 lbs (RS Fr.), Taj Davis 6'1" 195 lbs (RS So.) & Giles Jackson 5'9" 185 lbs (Jr.)
Odunze was one of the top 3 WR's Washington was missing last week. He may be able to go this week. He played in 4 games in 2020 where he had 6 receptions for 72 yards and a long of 25 yards. Davis saw his first career action last week and had 6 catches for 59 yards with a long of 15. Jackson had 4 catches for 15 yards with a long of 7 and added 19 yards on the ground on 2 carries with a long of 12. Sawyer Racanelli will likely be the 3rd WR if Odunze can't go. He's a redshirt Freshman who has yet to record a statistic in his 3 games played.
Tight End: Cade Otton 6'5" 250 lbs (RS Sr.)
Otton will be the Huskies biggest receiving threat given their WR woes. He led the Huskies last week with 8 catches for 82 yards with a long of 25. He's had 71 catches and 8 TDs in his career.
Left Tackle: Jaxson Kirkland 6'7" 310 lbs (RS Sr.)
30 career starts.
Left Guard: Julius Buelow 6'8" 330 lbs (RS So.)
1 career start.
Center: Luke Wattenberg 6'5" 300 lbs (RS Sr.)
37 career starts.
Right Guard: Henry Bainivalu 6'6" 330 lbs (RS Sr.)
7 career starts.
Right Tackle: Victor Curne 6'3" 315 lbs (RS Jr.)
5 career starts.
Nose Tackle: Tuli Letuligasenoa 6'2" 300 lbs (RS Jr.)
Last week, Tuli had 4 tackles with 1 for a loss.
Defensive Tackles: Sam Taimani 6'2" 330 lbs (RS Jr.) & Faatui Tuitele 6'3" 305 lbs (RS So.)
Taimani had 5 tackles against Montana. Tuitele had 2 tackles.
Outside Linebackers: Ryan Bowman 6'1" 280 lbs (RS Sr.) & Cooper McDonald 6'3" 245 lbs (RS Fr.)
Bowman totaled 6 tackles last Saturday. McDonald had a total of 2 tackles including 1 for a loss and a sack.
Inside Linebackers: Jackson Sirmon 6'3 235 lbs (RS Jr.) & Edefuan Ulofoshio 6'1" 235 lbs (RS Jr.)
Sirmon finished with 9 tackles and 0.5 for a loss last week. Ulofoshio had 5 tackles, with 1 for a loss and 1 pass breakup.
Cornerbacks: Trent McDuffie 5'11" 195 lbs (Jr.) & Kyler Gordon 6'0" 200 lbs (RS Jr.)
Against the Grizzlies, McDuffie had 2 tackles and 2 pass defelections. Gordon finished with 7 tackles and 1 tackle for a loss.
Safeties: Julius Irvin 6'1" 185 lbs (RS Jr.) & Kamren Fabiculanan 6'1" 190 lbs (RS So.)
Irvin made his first career start in game 1 and finished without recording a stat. Fabiculanan also had his first career start with 1 tackle. Both safeties have a combined 7 tackles in their career.
Punter and Kicker: Race Porter 6'3" 190 lbs (RS Sr.) & Peyton Henry 6'0" 195 lbs (RS Sr.)
Porter had 5 punts with an average of 45 yards and a long of 52 against Montana. 2 were fair caught and 2 were downed inside the 20 with no touchbacks. Henry was 0/1 from 50 last week. He's 41/53 on field goals with a long of 49 in his career.
Returners: Giles Jackson 5'9" 185 lbs (Jr.) & Trent McDuffie 5'11" 195 lbs (Jr.)
McDuffie has returned 4 punts in his career for an average of 16.3 with a long of 45. Jackson had 2 kick returns last week with an average of 19 yards.
Players to watch:
LT - Jaxson Kirkland
TE - Cade Otton
ILB - Edefuan Ulofoshio
Prediction:LT - Jaxson Kirkland
TE - Cade Otton
ILB - Edefuan Ulofoshio
I'm not really sure where the preseason hype was coming from in terms of Washington. Not only were they disappointing on the field in both 2020 and 2019, they brought back a QB who had been average at best and while they returned a lot of players, they did not return a lot of production, especially on defense.
Obviously, the receiver situation is not ideal for the Huskies. This is of course, a good thing for Michigan, especially considering our secondary play is still a question mark. We should feel a bit more confident about them after last week but they weren't amazing and still showed a sliver of potential big play ability for the better QB/WR combos in the country. The Huskies rushing offense was terrible against Montana. The run blocking was not very good, despite the pass blocking being about what you'd expect against an FCS opponent most of the game. Sadly, the pass protection seemed to be neutralized by the subpar receiver play and in a handful of plays, just bad decision making by Morris at QB. If Michigan can play well enough against the undermanned receiving unit and keep tight end Cade Otton in check, they should have success in keying in to stop the run as well, something that wasn't neccesarily encouraging against Western Michigan but we are to expect different looks from the Michigan defense this week given the contrast in QB/WR play from WMU to UW as odd as that may sound.
Defensively, Washington did their job against an FCS team. The Grizzlies were only 2 of 13 on 3rd down and only managed 232 yards of offense and 13 points even with 2 Montana drives that started within Washington territory (both of which only resulted in field goals). Montana's running backs did average 4.7 and 4.3 yards per carry respectively on 24 carries and each had runs longer than 15 yards with longs of 37 and 17 for their backs. This is a potential area Michigan can expose, especially with someone like Blake Corum if he gets some runs into the second level. Montana's passing game was nearly non-existant. Their QB didn't make many mistakes but there wasn't much downfield and Washington got decent pressure. How much of this is Washington's secondary being good and Montana's offense being an FCS team is not yet known but it's worth noting that this was their strongest unit of the game on paper with Montana completing less than 50% of their passes for just 105 yards and a measely 4.6 yards per attempt and 8.75 per completion. The Huskies however, were unable to force any turnovers. McNamara looked very composed and seemingly never came close to making a mistake. If McNamara can play like that again, I'm not sure there's much Washington can do about it with defensive playmakers and I imagine our receivers have at least slightly more success at creating separation than Montana's and Washington's safeties remain very inexperienced.
I had a sneaking suspicion that Michigan wins this game big as far back as June. Under Harbaugh, Michigan steps up and often dominates ranked opponents in the Big House not named Ohio State and barring 2020 of course, where I'm not sure playing in the Big House meant anything. We saw it in 2015 with #22 BYU and #13 Northwestern (and a combined score of 69-0). We saw it in 2018 against #14 Penn State and #15 Wisconsin (combined score of 80-20) and we saw it when we rolled #8 Notre Dame 45-14 in 2019. The only other non-OSU ranked teams we've welcomed to the Big House in that time was #14 Iowa in 2019, #8 Wisconsin in 2016 and #7 Michigan State in 2015. None were blowouts but still two rather convincing wins on defense and one well... Should have won.
I also didn't think too highly of Washington and the Pac-12 to begin with. Couple in a night game and what we've seen so far, albeit very limited, I'm more confident in this type of game, however I've not seen enough to predict such a game and with Washington crapping the bed, they of course, are no longer ranked. But I don't think or expect that to take the big game stigma off of this for our team. It shouldn't.
I think we take care of business but I don't think it will be as smooth as last week. Washington is still a solid team with the ability to get off the field on defense at the very least.
Michigan wins 31-20
This years predictions:
41-17 vs WMU (47-14 actual)
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