There's a certain grim pleasure in watching elite college football programs sleepwalk their way through the early part of their schedule.
It's a tradition that might be falling by the wayside in the future with the advent of superconferences and an expanded playoff that will give top teams greater leeway in terms of scheduling opponents, but as a way to dip your toe into the cold autumn waters of college football, beating up on some hapless opponent by a billion points is as good a way as any to get acclimated.
The problem is that it isn't a good barometer of anything. Michigan beat UNLV by an oddly familiar score of 35-7, but it's hard to tell at this point if J.J. McCarthy completing 13 passes in a row or cool shit like this actually means something:
b2b snaps, b2b Jaylen Harrell sacks @jayharrell32 x @UMichFootball
— Big Ten Football (@B1Gfootball) September 9, 2023
: CBS pic.twitter.com/oKxRDiCFOt
At this point, we're all just squinting at tea leaves and hoping that people forget our terrible hot takes by the time games that matter roll around.
THE OFFENSE
Well, the aforementioned McCarthy was again fantastic, completing 22 of 25 passes for 278 yards and two touchdowns. He's halfway to the fabled September Heisman, an award dominated by Michigan Men. But, as per the theme of this week, is that really all that much different than (to pick some completely random numbers with no relevance at all) completing 14 of 20 passes for 258 yards and three touchdowns?
To be fair, an 88% completion rate is impressive against any competition, and wideout Roman Wilson is starting to look like a problem for the rest of the Big Ten. But this is a running team, dammit! The people want to hear about how Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards ground UNLV into dust!
Sorry! They didn't. Even with one of the best offensive lines in college football, Corum was mostly just fine, rushing for 80 yards on 15 carries, and Edwards was hilariously bad, racking up nine yards on six carries. So that's weird but whatever. After two mediocre weeks, I would love to say that the collapse of Michigan's running game is imminent, but I don't believe that (yet) so I won't.
THE DEFENSE
The Wolverines held UNLV to something like 40 yards in the first half, and while it'd be easy (and fun) to point to a few of the semi-sustained drives that UNLV had in the second, by that point it was clear that everyone was bored and just wanted to go home.
Michigan's defensive line did play notably well the entire game, however. That sequence of Jaylen Harrell getting sacks on back-to-back plays was one of the cooler things that a Wolverine accomplished on Saturday, but Mason Graham and Kris Jenkins were similarly unstoppable.
On the other hand, they dropped the bag when it came to the shutout, and it came on UNLV's final drive of the game. Which I enjoyed.
MATT WEISS DRAMATIC REENACTMENT OF THE WEEK
THREAT LEVEL
I'm keeping this thing at HIGH until Michigan decides to cover the spread against one of their garbage September opponents. The Wolverines are favored by 38 against Bowling Green, but something tells me that unless their offensive staff stops doing incredibly stupid manball crap like running Donovan Edwards directly into opposing defensive lines on 4th down, I'm going to be using the same .gif next week as well.
