Week 6 – Michigan at Washington
posted October 4
The Game
WHOA, NELLIE.
We’ve got a classic matchup on Saturday night as Michigan travels to the communist enclave of Seattle to battle the Washington Huskies. Michigan sits with a mark of 4-1 after playing five (!) home games and losing to the only team with a pulse (Texas, L 31-12). Washington has looked better than advertised (3-2) but they get bad marks for failing to seal the deal vs Washington St and Rutgers.
It’s a virtual elimination game in the Big Ten. Let’s goooo!
The Details
Washington -1.5 Michigan (41.5)
MEGALOCKS LINE – Washington -3
“Vegas” Implied Projected Score: Washington 21.5 Michigan 20
Washington offense vs Michigan defense
The Huskies have a been a balanced outfit so far this season as they’ve averaging 173 YPG on the ground and 296 YPG thru the air. Both of those marks put them in the top-seven in the Big Ten. QB Will Rogers has been fantastic (75%, 10-0 TD to INT, 9.2 YPA) and the only bone to pick has been Washington’s inability to SCORE the FOOTBALL once they get into scoring position (#106 FBS TD% in red zone). RB Jonah Coleman is one of the most unheralded backs in the country (521, 7.2, 4 TD) and Rogers has a pair of WRs to throw to that’ve already booked 400Y on the season (Denzel Boston, Giles Jackson). Michigan has been good but not great on defense in 2024. They’re ranked #55 in pass efficiency D (#3 LY), #6 in run D (#6 LY), and #30 in YPP (#4 LY). Texas had no problem navigating the defense, USC did a good job once they woke up from their slumber, and Minnesota of all teams put up 21 points (!) in the 4th quarter last week.
Michigan offense vs Washington defense
It’s time to find out whether or not Michigan can take their one-dimensional offense on the road and be effective vs a very sound defensive team. Michigan has done some good work on the ground (195 YPG, #34) behind star RB Kalel Mullings (540, 7.0, 6 TD) and note that Rutgers RB Kyle Monangai was able to have success vs the Huskies run D (132, TD). The difference is this affair is that Washington has been a bit tougher to run on at home over the last few seasons and Michigan has ZERO threat of a downfield passing game. Even the GREEK RIFLE at Rutgers had to be respected last week. Michigan is HORRIFIC at throwing the ball and they don’t even really try (#130 passing offense; 86/32 yards L2G). In any event, if they try to move the ball thru the air they’ll be going up against a pass defense that’s playing at a very high level (#3 pass efficiency D; 2-3 TD to INT, 46%, 4.4 YPA).
Trends, Intangibles, and More!
One of the most surprising events of this entire calendar year has to be that Michigan is finally forced to play an actual ROAD GAME….Surely this must be a mistake?…..Washington is 17-0 (!) SU at home since the start of the 2022 season but it’s funny how CROWD WILL BE ROCKING GUY never mentions factoids like that when he’s on the road team….Weird…..This is a rematch of last year’s National Championship Game in which Michigan roasted the Huskies 34-13….We don’t believe that “revenge” will have any impact on what happens in the field in this game but believe what you must…..HC advantage?….Ya, we’ll take Jedd Fisch over Sherrone Moore and it’s nice to have DC Steve Belichick on the sidelines if you’re cheering for Washington.
Summary
Michigan is really good, but we’ll roll with who we believe is the much more balanced team at this point in the season.
Conclusion
Official play: Washington ML -120
Sent 5:18pm Oct 3.
-120 was the market consensus at that point in time with about 95% of the shops showing -118 to -125.
‘Official play’ means that this is one of our favorite plays of the week (perceived value, match-up, coaching, trends, etc.). We’re currently investing 25% more on these plays vs our ‘leans’. We’ll normally have two or three of these choices per week.
‘Lean’ means that we’re placing a standard size wager on the game. We’ll normally have about ten of these plays per week. Many members prefer to pick and choose amongst these games when finalizing their weekly investment cards so we’ll continue to refer to them as ‘leans’.
‘No leanage’ means that we won’t have any action on the game.
Team totals – We’ll list the implied number based on the point spread and total when our analysis is posted. If a team total ends up being an ‘official play’ we’ll post a widely available number at the time of pick release.