Punt/Counterpunt: Indiana 2015

I don't know what Heiko is talking about either –ed

PUNT

By Heiko Yang

Having Indiana on the schedule is a lot like having the Goosebumps books on your third-grade teacher’s bookshelf. They’re frequently entertaining and occasionally good for a cheap scare, but you’re pretty sure there’s nothing there that would cause any kind of lasting damage.

True to form, all season long Indiana has played out the recurring plot where they threaten to upset good teams late in the fourth quarter only to blow it by abruptly returning to ineptitude. It’s like that time Goku and Vegeta fuse to beat the evil dragon but then run out of time just as they’re about to deal the final kamehameha.

(Yes, I’m digging deep for metaphors today. If you thought that was a super geeky reference, you definitely watched the Dragonball series, too, so stop pretending you didn’t like it.)

Against Michigan, though, I have a bad feeling. I guess I usually have a bad feeling about Michigan games, but I’ve been feeling pretty leery about this particular game for some time. I don’t know why Vegas has such a lopsided line favoring Michigan by almost two touchdowns. On the road this season Michigan hasn’t scored more than four touchdowns total. Meanwhile, Indiana has been averaging just a point shy of that in each their losses to Ohio State, Michigan State, and Iowa. My feelingsball take is I don’t expect Michigan to run away with this one unless something bizarre happens. Speaking of, I’m going to go ahead and say that neither their 29-7 loss to Penn State nor their 55-52 loss to Rutgers makes any sense to me, but then again I didn’t watch either of those games because I don’t hate myself.

But what about Michigan’s shut-down secondary vs Indiana’s pass offense? Or Harbaugh’s fancy manball offense vs their flimsy front?

These matchup advantages don’t seem to make much of a difference as often as we hope, especially against competent coaches, which I think Indiana has. Underdogs can benefit from known mismatches, too. Similar to the way the Indiana basketball team knew two years ago to put a point guard on Nik Stauskas, there are ways the Hoosiers football staff can game plan around Michigan’s strengths to force the Wolverines into making difficult compromises in their own game plan.

I’m also not giving Indiana enough credit here. They’ve got offensive playmakers Michigan certainly has to account for, and their spread attack is more sophisticated than anything the Wolverines D has seen all season. Additionally, their defensive weaknesses don’t seem quite on a Rutgers level of incompetence (although they did lose to Rutgers, because football is complicated).

Michigan will probably struggle out of the gate, and an empty possession on offense paired with a quick strike from Indiana would be doom for a team that relies on maintaining early momentum. The Wolverines will need a lot of luck to avoid falling into this kind of hole; I just don’t know if they’ll find that in Bloomington.

Michigan 27, Indiana 30

COUNTERPUNT

By Nick RoUMel

Heiko has tried mightily. Giddy from reading Goosebumps, he has nearly convinced himself that today’s contest will actually resemble a football game. I suspect there were fits of giggles as he wrote his column, solemnly analyzing the matchup as if there were something to worry about.

There is not. Not ever. Michigan is 54-9 lifetime against Indiana. They have not lost in 28 years, when they fell to an 8-4 Hoosier squad that also crushed #9 Ohio State and featured the durable and dangerous Anthony Thompson at tailback. Since then it has been all Michigan. I mean, even RichRod and B-Ho beat Indiana, although the 2009 game saw the Hoosiers score the most points they ever had against a Michigan team, 33. That record stood until 2010, when the stalwart RichRod defense gave up 35, a record that would be unbroken until the very next time Indiana played Michigan, in 2013, when B-Ho’s disciplined D held them to 47 points and a mere 572 yards of offense.

It is actually quite telling that other than the 1987 game - the only one Indiana has won in the last 48 years - their most memorable battle was the 1979 homecoming contest in Ann Arbor, when they were coached by Lee Corso who had the audacity to believe he could play toe to toe with the Wolverines. That he did, until the final play of the game, when Johnny Wangler hit Anthony Carter on a 45 yard touchdown pass that had Bob Ufer going ape-s*** crazy in the broadcast booth. The clip is de rigueur every time Michigan plays Indiana:

(Did you know that the horn Ufer beeped so happily was actually from General Patton’s World War II jeep? A fact I did not know until writing this column.)

Does anyone really think that these 2015, Harbaugh-led Wolverines are going to let Indiana even come close to sniffing victory, like a skanky perfume sample in the middle of a magazine is supposed to make you fantasize about a date with somebody like Vera Farmiga?

I think not. Outside of a few random Nate Sudfeld passes, Indiana will be lucky to sniff its own armpit. Their evening is going to be about as fulfilling as Tom Waits taking himself out on a date, as he describes so forlornly in “Better Off Without A Wife:”

Yes Wolverine fans, hit the easy button. This one’s in the bag.

MICHIGAN 56, INDIANA 10