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Sep 5, 2026
Michigan FB
Game day

Western Michigan Won 10 Games And A Conference Title. Michigan Is Favored By 27.5.

Kickoff is 7:30 p.m. Eastern, 4:30 Pacific, at Michigan Stadium, on NBC. It is Kyle Whittingham's first game as Michigan's head coach after 21 seasons at Utah, and the visitors are the reigning MAC champions. DraftKings has Michigan by 27.5 with a total of 49.5, pulled Saturday morning.

WF
Wes FerrySep 5, 20265 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Jordan Marshall, number 23 in Michigan's white road jersey and navy pants, tucking the ball under his right arm and running to his left at Northwestern in 2025. A teammate wearing 19 jogs in the background and a Northwestern player in purple is out of frame to the left.

Michigan plays Western Michigan at Michigan Stadium tonight at 7:30 p.m. Eastern, which is 4:30 Pacific. NBC has it, with the stream on Peacock. Michigan Athletics lists it as sold out. Michigan is 16th in the AP preseason poll. Both teams are 0-0.

DraftKings has Michigan by 27.5 with a total of 49.5, read off ESPN's odds feed at 5:15 a.m. Pacific this morning. That is the market's estimate of the gap between these two teams.

It is also 4 touchdowns against a team that won a championship 9 months ago.

What Western Michigan actually did last year#

The Broncos finished 2025 at 10-4. On December 6 they beat Miami (OH) 23-13 at Ford Field in Detroit for the MAC championship. On December 19 they beat Kennesaw State 41-6 in the Myrtle Beach Bowl. That is a conference title and a 35-point bowl win to close a season, and Lance Taylor brings the whole thing 100 miles east tonight.

Across all 14 of those games Western Michigan allowed 243 points, or 17.4 a game. They held Ball State to 0, UMass to 3, Toledo to 13 and Miami (OH) to 13 in the title game. They also lost 38-0 at Illinois and 23-6 at Michigan State, which is what Big Ten offenses did to them.

Michigan finished 9-4. Counting the Citrus Bowl loss to Texas, that is 358 points across 13 games, 27.5 a game, and 265 allowed, 20.4 a game. Michigan's 2025 scoring average and tonight's spread are the same number and they are two different quantities. One is a point total, the other a margin. Nothing follows from the collision except that Michigan would have to roughly double its 2025 output, or hold Western Michigan near zero, for the number to be right.

The men to watch, with the numbers to find them by#

Bryce Underwood, No. 19, quarterback. He threw for 2,428 yards in 2025 on 202 completions in 335 attempts, 60.3%, with 11 touchdowns and 9 interceptions, and he was sacked 20 times. He also carried 88 times for 392 yards and 6 touchdowns. He is a captain and a sophomore, and the interception and sack numbers are what a new coordinator would most want to move.

Jordan Marshall, No. 23, running back, and Trey Pierce, No. 95, defensive tackle, the other 2 captains. Rod Moore Jr., No. 1, safety, who missed all of 2024 with a torn ACL and got 3 games into 2025 before the knee went again. Michigan says he is the first player in its history voted a captain 3 times. Whittingham said this week that Moore is not quite back to where he was and will still play a lot.

John Henry Daley, No. 90, edge. He tore an Achilles at Utah last November and is 100% now, per Whittingham, who has now coached him at 2 schools and said this week that Daley has not missed a thing and is more explosive than ever. Dom Nichols, No. 8, edge, missed practice time in camp and is expected to start. Smith Snowden, No. 3, cornerback, out of Lehi, Utah.

Snowden is not the only one. Michigan's official roster lists 118 players, and 5 of them went to Utah high schools: Snowden, Daley, Aisea Moa, Salesi Moa and Max Alford. Jason Beck, the offensive coordinator, ran Utah's offense in 2025. The pipeline is not subtle and tonight is the first time anybody sees what came through it.

The X factor: whether the sixth lineman plays at all#

Beck's offense uses a sixth offensive lineman as a personnel package, the one Utah ran on close to half its snaps in 2025. Andrew Babalola, No. 65, was reported to be the man, and Babalola is out. Whittingham ruled him out at Monday's press conference, saying he was still on the shelf and unavailable for this week, and pointed at the conference's reporting process rather than name the injury. Babalola missed all of 2025 with a torn ACL suffered in fall camp.

So the package has a designed role and no designated body for it. Watch whether it appears anyway.

If Michigan lines up 6 linemen tonight with somebody else in the spot, the package is structural, it belongs to the scheme rather than to a player, and Beck intends to run it in Ann Arbor the way he ran it in Salt Lake City. If it does not appear at all against a 27.5-point underdog, then the most distinctive thing about this offense is waiting on one man's knee, and it waits at least until Oklahoma next Saturday.

Injuries#

Out tonight: Babalola. Out for the season: Ace Hamilton, No. 52, offensive lineman, and Micah Ka'apana, No. 25, running back, both from injuries suffered before the season began. Available: Daley, Moore and Nichols.

That list is as good as it gets tonight. There is no mandatory injury report: the Big Ten's availability reports cover conference games, and Michigan's first conference game is Iowa on September 26. Everything above comes from what a coach chose to answer on Monday. Nobody outside the building knows who else is limited, and an absence of information is not an injury.

The prediction#

Western Michigan's defense is the best thing in this game that is not wearing maize, and a MAC champion opening on the road at night is not a team that folds in the first quarter. Michigan has more talent at every position. It also has a staff coaching its first game together and a package missing its intended body.

Michigan 34, Western Michigan 13. The talent gap is real and it shows up by the third quarter, but it does not show up by 4 touchdowns against this defense.

Sources: mgoblue.com schedule and roster pages, opened Saturday morning; the CollegeFootballData schedule feed; ESPN's odds feed and 2025 box scores; the Associated Press preseason poll; Kyle Whittingham's September 1 press conference as reported by All About Ann Arbor and Maize n Brew.

Filed under Michigan FB

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Michigan is 19th, and the team it beat to get there is 24th

Michigan returned to the AP Top 25 at 19th with 382 points, having gone 2-0 with a win over then-11th Oklahoma. It was 16th with 718 points in the preseason ballot, so the same voters now give it 53% of the support it carried in August. Oklahoma dropped 13 places to 24th, which lowers the value of the only ranked win Michigan owns. The schedule ahead moved further than Michigan did: Ohio State lost 24-23 at Texas and fell from 1st to 6th, Oregon lost 39-31 at Oklahoma State and fell from 6th to 21st, and Minnesota lost 38-13 at home to Mississippi State. The five ranked teams left on Michigan's schedule were worth 5,524 AP points last week and are worth 4,280 now, a loss of 1,244 points in a week Michigan played none of them. Ohio State sits 6th at 1-1, ahead of 16 teams ranked below it that have not lost. There is no College Football Playoff ranking until November. Michigan hosts UTEP on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Big Ten Network, with Evan Link and Carter Meadows both expected back and Andrew Babalola out.

Wes FerrySep 16, 20265 min read
Michigan is 19th, and the team it beat to get there is 24th
The line

Michigan Has Played Eight Of The Nineteen Offensive Linemen On Its Roster

Michigan beat eleventh-ranked Oklahoma 17-10 on September 12 with an offensive line that its own Player Participation release lists one deep at every position. Evan Link, the opening-day left guard, is not on that document anywhere, and nobody said why until Kyle Whittingham's Monday press conference, where he said the staff shuffled the lineup due to injury and nothing else. Link should return this week and may share left guard with Nathan Efobi. Andrew Babalola, a five-star who has still never played a college snap, had a setback and will not be available in the near future. Michigan lists nineteen offensive linemen. Eight have taken an offensive snap.

Grant LombardSep 15, 20265 min read
Michigan Has Played Eight Of The Nineteen Offensive Linemen On Its Roster
Game week

Michigan Would Not Name Its Two Starting Guards Because Three Seniors Are Going To Split The Job

Michigan's offensive coordinator held his final press conference before the opener on Wednesday afternoon and was asked the question that has followed this offensive line since camp opened. Jason Beck answered it with a number rather than a name. Evan Link, Nathan Efobi and Brady Norton will all play at the two guard spots, at what Beck called fairly similar snaps, and Clayton Sayfie of On3 reported that the rotation may hold for more than one game. The three tackles-and-center jobs are settled: Blake Frazier on the left, Jake Guarnera at center, Andrew Sprague on the right, the last of those hardened by Andrew Babalola's injury. Michigan's own roster still lists nineteen men as OL and nothing else, while it breaks the defensive line into ends and tackles, and on Wednesday the defensive coordinator named starters at both.

Grant LombardSep 3, 20265 min read
Michigan Would Not Name Its Two Starting Guards Because Three Seniors Are Going To Split The Job

On the record

Called Shots →
Held upAug 11, 2026

Michigan has not publicly identified all five offensive line starters by name and position on or before August 22, 2026.

Harding's target was internal solidification rather than an announcement, and that gap is the whole basis of the call: programs settle a line in the building weeks before they say so, and Michigan has published no depth chart. There are three spots open, one of them left tackle, where Kyle Whittingham said on Monday that Andrew Babalola, Evan Link and Blake Frazier are splitting the majority of the reps, and Babalola did not play in 2025. Whittingham's own marker is looser than a date: about 10 practices before definitive decisions, and five were in the bank on Monday. It fails if coaches or the program name all five spots on or before August 22, including a released depth chart or a coach confirming the five in an availability. Reporters projecting a five does not resolve it, because the claim is about what Michigan says rather than what anyone predicts. A partial naming, four of five, does not resolve it either.

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Iowa week

Michigan owes the Big Ten a status for Andrew Sprague before it has a diagnosis

Andrew Sprague, Michigan's junior right tackle, told Kyle Whittingham late on the Friday before the UTEP game that he could not play, and missed the 52-17 win. At his Monday morning press conference Whittingham said there was no update and that the staff hoped to know more later that day. On the Monday night radio show he said Sprague's return could be anywhere from this week to several weeks and that the medical staff did not yet have an exact diagnosis. The Big Ten's expanded availability rule, announced August 28, requires Michigan to file a status for him by 8 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, three days before the Iowa game. The midweek vocabulary has five entries and the game-day vocabulary has three, and the published table has no column for what is wrong with anybody. In the rule's first week, across 39 players listed by the four teams in the two September 19 conference games, 11 of the 21 who were not listed Out on Wednesday were Out by kickoff. Two takes filed.

Grant LombardSep 22, 20267 min read
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Deep dive

UTEP forced one Michigan punt all day, and it came in the first quarter

Michigan beat UTEP 52-17, and the drive chart says the offense was never actually stalled. UTEP's defense forced one punt, on fourth-and-2 from Michigan's own 33 with 4:52 left in the first quarter, and never forced another. Of the ten possessions Michigan was trying to score on, seven produced points, and the three that did not were that punt and two Michigan fumbles. The six touchdown drives covered 68, 75, 52, 46, 62 and 51 yards, an average of 59, and three of Michigan's 11 possessions began in UTEP territory. On the other side, UTEP had five straight possessions from 1:31 of the second quarter to the end of the third: 14 plays from scrimmage for minus 5 yards, four three-and-out punts and a pick-six. Five first downs in that span gained 1 yard and five second downs lost 15, which left UTEP needing 6, 11, 11, 20 and 21 yards on its five third downs. Michigan's 13 third downs averaged 4.3 yards to go and UTEP's 12 averaged 10.2. Michigan's three opponents have now had 11 possessions each, 33 in all, and have scored three touchdowns.

Wes FerrySep 21, 20267 min read
UTEP forced one Michigan punt all day, and it came in the first quarter
Takeaways

UTEP led Michigan by a touchdown, then gained 28 yards the rest of the way

Michigan beat UTEP 52-17 at Michigan Stadium in front of 110,668 people to finish nonconference play 3-0. The Wolverines trailed 7-0 and then 14-7 and did not lead until Trey Butkowski's 49-yard field goal with five seconds left in the first half. After UTEP's second touchdown, Michigan outgained the Miners 308-28 and outscored them 45-3, per Michigan's own postgame notes. Michigan scored 28 points in the third quarter after scoring none in the third quarter of its first two games. Bryce Underwood carried six times after carrying 18 against Oklahoma, and completed 19 of 25 passes for 223 yards and two touchdowns. Michigan punted once, made 27 first downs and converted 9 of 13 third downs. Both UTEP touchdowns came directly off Michigan fumbles. Jordan Marshall left in the third quarter, and Andrew Sprague and Zeke Berry did not play at all.

Wes FerrySep 20, 20266 min read
UTEP led Michigan by a touchdown, then gained 28 yards the rest of the way

Earlier on the Michigan FB

The money

To Find Out What Michigan Football Pays, Ask Ohio

Michigan Athletics announced two future non-conference games on August 28: Bowling Green at Michigan Stadium on August 25, 2029, and Charlotte on September 9, 2028. FBSchedules had published the Bowling Green game and its $1.6 million guarantee on August 19, off a copy of the contract obtained from Bowling Green State University through an Ohio open records request. The Charlotte story, by the same writer on the day of the announcement, carries no figure and is sourced to Michigan. The pattern holds at higher stakes: Utah's August 3 suit against Michigan tight ends coach Freddie Whittingham put a $525,000 salary, a 75 percent liquidated-damages formula and six departing assistants into a public record on August 20. Michigan's own account of what the coaching change cost is one clause in the FY2027 budget presentation: salaries, wages and benefits up $2.53 million, due in part to football staff transition costs and annual salary increases, not broken out.

Grant LombardSep 3, 20266 min read
To Find Out What Michigan Football Pays, Ask Ohio
The secondary

Michigan Lists Eleven Cornerbacks And Their Position Coach Says He Intends To Start Four Of Them

Michigan's cornerbacks coach said Tuesday that he is probably going to start four cornerbacks, with Shamari Earls the fourth alongside Jyaire Hill, Zeke Berry and Smith Snowden. The number came out of the coach's mouth. The names and the word cornerbacks were supplied by the reporter who wrote it up. And Michigan's own biographies say Berry has 16 career starts outside and seven at nickel, while Snowden made 11 starts at nickel for Utah in 2024, so a Michigan defense that starts three corners and a slot defender is already starting four cornerbacks by the roster page's own definition.

Grant LombardAug 27, 20265 min read
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Camp

Michigan Named Its Two Running Backs In May And Fall Camp Has Not Moved Them

Michigan's running back room is the one place on this roster where fall camp is a formality. Whittingham named Jordan Marshall the starter and promised eighteen-year-old Savion Hiter carries in game one, both in early May. The man whose carries those are, Justice Haynes, averaged 7.1 yards a carry for Michigan last season and is now at Georgia Tech. The game log says the staff can probably live with that, and the reason is volume rather than talent.

Grant LombardAug 13, 20264 min read
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