Michigan Football: After Tough Loss to Iowa Hawkeyes, Are the Wolverines Done?

Okay, perhaps it looks scarily similar to last year's 5-7 debacle, but there's still no reason to go all "Chicken Little" on anyone about Michigan football.  To be honest, Michigan is right about where everyone thought they would be (this is pre-Denard Robinson and 5-0 hype).

Prior to the season, the consensus was anywhere between 6-6 and 8-4, a trip to a bowl game, and a "We'll wait and see" attitude toward Rich Rod.  Somewhere along the way—be it hype about Denard and the 5-0 start in general—Michigan fans lost perspective.  Suddenly, it appeared as though Michigan was destined to go 12-0 and earn a berth into the BCS title game.

Perhaps people didn't go that far, but it illustrates my point that expectations simply got outlandishly (and erroneously) high.  This season, Michigan has beaten the teams it was better than and lost to the teams that were better than them.  It's really not panic-inducing.

Furthermore, Michigan just faced two of the three best defenses it's going to face this season (OSU is the third).  And out of that, Michigan managed to put up 377 yards against what, dare I say it, could be the best team in the Big Ten (Michigan State).  More surprisingly, Michigan managed 522 yards (including 187 on the ground) against one of the best defenses in the nation in Iowa.  Stephen Hopkins' two-yard TD run marked the first time any team had scored a rushing TD against the Hawkeyes since last year's Orange Bowl versus Georgia Tech.

This is against Adrian Clayborn and the rest of what, at least until Saturday, was considered the best defensive front in the nation.

Michigan State and Iowa rank No. 5 and No. 9 in turnover margin, they rank No. 3 and No. 17 in INTs gained, and they rank No. 17 and No. 6 in scoring defense.

The offense worked against them—even with Forcier in and Denard out, the offense worked.  Yes, the Wolverines failed to come out with a "W" both tries, but the offense worked.  Michigan is ranked third in the nation in total offense (despite playing, as established, two of the three best defenses the Wolverines are going to face all season) at 532 yards per game. 

Against State, Michigan put up the second most rushing yards, second most total yards and most yards per carry this season. Michigan more than doubled the rushing output of teams Iowa has faced previously, scored the second most points, gained the most passing yards and most yards per play.  Reminder: Iowa's D was a top-five defense going into the game.

Michigan's future opponents look like this in terms of turnover margin:

(National FBS rank where TOM = turnover margin, INT = interceptions gained and FF = forced fumbles)

	TOM	INT	FF
Penn State	71st	52nd	114th
Illinois	108th	100th	65th
Purdue	62nd	89th	2nd
Wisconsin	49th	71st	102nd
Ohio State	4th	3rd	23rd

This corroborates the earlier claim that Michigan has already gone up against two of the three best defenses it is going to face this season.

Basically, don't expect the turnovers to doom Michigan nearly as much in the future as they did in the past two games.

Furthermore, while Michigan's defense has been nothing to write home about, they've done what they've been asked—don't get blown out.  Michigan State scored 2.6 points above their average of 34.4 PPG and Iowa scored 3.7 points above their average of 34.3 PPG.

The defense wasn't spectacular, but managed.

The future schedule for Michigan has opponents scoring like this:

	PPG
Penn State	18.2
Illinois	21.3
Purdue	22.5
Wisconsin	36.3*
Ohio State	39.6*

Only OSU has a better scoring defense than State, so Michigan can likely put up at least 17 PPG over the next four games.  It's even more likely that we score in the range of 28 points based on our scoring offense—which gives Michigan three wins at least, provided the offense and defense do what they've been doing so far.

Also, if Michigan can manage a positive turnover ratio—the outcome of the final two games against Wisconsin and OSU become much bigger toss-ups.

So, perhaps, just maybe the sky isn't falling...yet.

*With the extreme outliers being removed, (i.e. Wisconsin's 70-3 blasting of Austin-Peay and OSU's 73-20 performance over Eastern Michigan), Wisconsin is averaging 30.7 PPG and OSU is averaging 37.2 PPG