Texas vs. Michigan: Who will win the showdown in Ann Arbor? | Joel Klatt Show

Let's get to the previews. And we start with my game. Of course, I won't be making a pick in this game, but Texas travels to Michigan. Number three, Texas at number 10, Michigan, big noon kickoff is going to be there for a three hour show. Make sure you're tuned in at 9 AM eastern. And then Gus, Jenny and I will bring you big noon Saturday as Texas and Michigan clash there in the big house. Just the second meeting ever. Remember, they played that really awesome classic rose bowl game back in 2004. Vince young and Texas come back late in that game. They win. He scores in the exact same corner of the end zone that he would score in the next year against USC. It was a really a precursor and a jumping off point to that national championship year for Texas. Vince ran wild 192 in that game of four studies. How are we doing? How are we doing? Vince young, by the way, just real quick, because I know Texas fans will listen to this. I our team at Colorado played the Vince young team in '04 that went on to win the rose bowl, and I thought that they were good. The next year we had to play them twice in their national championship year, once in the regular season, once in the big 12 championship game. And I never got to play against Reggie bush on the same field. I shared a field with him with the new Orleans saints in our camps and as rookies. But Vince young is the best player I ever played against that I ever saw live like and I saw, you know, like, for instance, I saw Adrian Peterson as a freshman at ou and I thought he was incredible. But man, Vince young was. He was. He was the best football player I've ever seen. I digress. Let's get into this match up. It is a great match up because I think styles make matchups. And in this one we have this incredible match-up with a strong Texas offensive line against what I would consider to be one of the best defensive lines in the country. So now you've got this Texas offensive line and you've got guys like Kelvin banks and Hayden Connor and Jake majors and d.j. Campbell who can rotate, rotate at times with with Cole Hudson. And these guys are are phenomenal. By the way, they bring in a first year starter in Cameron Williams, who might have played better than all of them in the first week. Granted, it was against Colorado state, but they played really well up front. And here's the thing that you need to know. They returned four starters and those four starters also started two years ago. So basically they're like a three year starting offensive line. This is as experienced a group as you will find in particular at the top level. And you couple that with all the experience that you have at quarterback with Quinn ewers and all the games that he's started. And what do you have veteran talent and you know how I feel about veteran talent in the modern era of college football. This Texas team has it. This roster is exceptional. We didn't get a chance to talk at depth about Texas in the in the pre-season. I knew we would have this week and this specific episode to talk about it. But I got to tell you, Steve Sarkisian is building something incredibly special. While Georgia and Ohio state in the off season kind of sucked all the oxygen out of college football in terms of the rosters that they had, in particular Ohio state with who came back and the veteran talent. You look up now and you start studying Texas and this is as good as any roster in the country. Steve Sarkisian has done an incredible job in Austin, Texas, and he has built a a strong, foundationally, tough program that's really good at the line of scrimmage that was proven last year when they went to Tuscaloosa and won that game against Alabama. And he's built it in the vein of the team that he was the coordinator of at Alabama because they've got speed on the outside now. They're not ultimately experienced on the outside. They've got a lot of new faces out there on the on the outside. But guys that can fly. So I'm talking about Isaiah bond, the transfer from Alabama, Matthew golden, Silas bolden, all of those guys transfer. And what do they bring? Speed they've got young stars, five star kids. Ryan wingo, sophomore, jontay cook these guys can all run and they will stress Michigan's secondary, they will stress them. And this game plan, I can't wait to see it because, you know, sark is always planning something that is creative and aggressive for these big nonconference matchups. That's what we saw two years ago against Alabama. That's what we saw last year against Alabama. Even on the road, those shots that he was taking down the field. And inevitably that's what we'll see against Michigan on Saturday in the big house. I can't I cannot wait for it. I think ewers is is an exceptional player and he is in a lot of ways. Overlooked two reasons. Georgia and Carson beck take a lot of that air, you know, in the conversation out from an sec perspective. And let's face it, ewers backup is the most talked about backup in college football in arch Manning. And yet this guy has kind of matured and grown up to a point where I don't think it bothers him all that much. And he's exceptional. He's if he just continues to play the way that he's playing, he will absolutely be in new York for the heisman trophy ceremony and he might win it. That's how good of a player ewers is. The concern for Texas coming into the season was that they lost c.j. Baxter, their running back to injury in the pre-season. And yeah, that's that's not great because he he was a really good player and a solid part of what they do every single down like kind of their every down back. Now having said that jaydon blue who's a junior from Houston, this guy he's explosive got a lot of time last year and then they've got this Jarrett Gibson freshman who I got to tell you, I watch him on film and I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah. There is your every down back. As this thing goes on. There is your guy kind of a slashing style. He's five, 10, 205 pounds. He's very talented. Both of those guys, jaydon blue and Jarrett Gibson, both got double digit carries in that first game against Colorado state. But it's really the foundation that I'm most impressed with. Texas always has talent. What do they not have for about a decade? I would say toughness at the line of scrimmage. They have that. I think this is one of, if not the best offensive line in the country because of their experience, all the all the big games that they've played in, in particular on the road that win last year against Alabama is going to pay huge dividends for them, their match up against Michigan. And by the way, I'm going very much in depth on this game because I think it deserves it. Their match-up against Michigan is phenomenal because Michigan's interior defensive line that has to take on that offensive line is as good or better than any in the country, and particularly in the interior. I'm talking about Mason Graham and Kenneth grant. Now, rayshaun Benny is also rotating in there. But these two guys, man, last year they were the best defensive tackles as a tandem, I thought, in the country, all due respect to what Texas had with guys like de'vondre sweat up front, these two guys were disruptive. Part of what made them so great was the fact that they didn't have to play every down. One of the most unspoken about keys to last year's successful run for Michigan was their depth on defense. I used to talk to Jesse Minter, their former defensive coordinator, now with obviously Jim with the chargers. I used to talk to him all the time about their depth and he used to talk to me about like it wasn't really the schematics that were stopping people, but their freshness that was stopping people, their ability to play and rotate guys up front. In fact, to give you an example, like last year. Mason Graham, for example. He was probably last year their best defensive tackle, although Kenneth grant kind of came on late. And even in that rotation rotation, Mason Graham was playing max 30 snaps a game. Well, now you can be fresh. You know, you see 60 snaps as a defense. Your tackle is playing 50% of those. He gives you 30 great efforts, great efforts so he can be at his peak every single time he's on the field. I don't know if they have the same rotation. I certainly don't think that they have the depth that they did a year ago. And, you know, they had Chris Jenkins a year ago. They had all of these guys. They had they had more players to rotate. So what I'll be looking for is how good and how how strong they are, I think is the better word in the second half in particular. But that match up, folks, I'm telling you, I'm going to be hitting on it a bunch in the broadcast because we don't we don't often talk about offensive line, defensive line match-up, but this one is fantastic. Kenneth grant might turn into the guy that's that could be when he goes into the NFL. I'm just going to say now and I know he's a young player. He's just a junior, six three, about 340 pounds, I think. Kenneth grant at some point in his career as a football player is going to be the best defensive tackle in the national football league. I think he's got that type of talent. So like that's that's who we're going to be seeing on defense for Michigan. And then in that back end, they're going to have to deal with the speed. Now, remember rod Moore, who was a safety that was coming back for them, tore his ACL in the off season. So he's out keon sabb, he transferred to Alabama. So they're a little thin at safety. That's a concern in particular with what sark likes to do. Taking shots down the middle of the field. Will Johnson is going to have to play the best game of his life. I firmly believe that. I think that will Johnson needs another interception. We saw the pick six last week against Fresno state. Will Johnson has to be the best corner in college football on Saturday because of the pressure and the speed that Texas is going to inevitably throw at Michigan's defense. Now, Michigan's defense last week people were saying like, well, they were susceptible against the pass. I actually viewed it as more of a complementary style of defense from wink wink martindale, their defensive coordinator, where he understood that all he needed to do was not give up big plays to Fresno state, let the defensive line eat, and they were going to be just fine. And that's exactly what ended up happening. Great match-up right there. I can't wait to see that. Now on the on the flip side. Now you get texas's defense against Michigan's offense and Michigan's offense is the one, at least after the first week, that has some questions. Let's be fair. I do think that this is more of a one quarterback system than a two quarterback system. I know I talked about it yesterday with Brady and I touched on this. When you actually go back and watch the film, what you see is that they they used Alex orji sparingly. This was really Davis Warren's team. And orji came in in a small amount of packages in order to be effective in the quarterback run game. They did have him throw the touchdown pass on the first series again that's a run pass option. You're trying to put stress and conflict on the defense and he was able to make the right read and the throw later in the game they had him throw and he throws it five yards short of the wide receiver on an easy little hitch route on a on a soft roll kind of sprint out action. So it's it's more Davis Warren's team which leads me to believe even more so after I watched the game and then I watched the game on film. They resemble very much the early Harbaugh Michigan teams. I'm talking about the Jake rudock team, the Wilton speight team. I talked about this a lot on Monday, on the Monday show. This is a team that's going to have to develop on offense. This offensive line is going to need to play better. Their two guards did not play well against Fresno state. They played with way too high of leverage. I know I'm getting technical here, but they didn't do great in short yardage. The defensive line for Fresno state got under them. They didn't get double teams that went up to the linebacker, which stifled the run game. But as the game went along, they leaned on that Fresno state defense. And then what happened? They end up popping a drive late in that game and it was a more sustained Michigan style drive than what they had had previously. Donovan Edwards gets a lot of the run and talk about running back, but I actually think that the most important running back that Michigan has is Khalil Mullings because when Mullings is in the game, he's the plus runner. So here's the difference between Donovan Edwards and Khalil Mullings. Mullings is a guy that is always giving you plus yards based on what the play is blocked for. So if it's blocked for four, he gets you six. If it's blocked for two, he gets you four. If it's blocked for six, he'll get you eight. Now, here's the difference. Donovan Edwards. Hits a lot of singles, but he's got home run power, so if it's blocked for two, he kind of gets two, maybe 2 and 1/2. If it's blocked for four, he gets you four. But then all of a sudden if it's blocked for eight, he gets you 80. So that's the difference is he's got this home run ability. All of a sudden it pops out. And we saw that play out last year. I felt like in spades in particular late in the season, whether it was Penn state, whether it was the national championship game, whether it was Ohio state two years ago in the shoe, you saw those big runs from Donovan Edwards. But what you don't see from him is the quorum style production. Blake corum was the plus runner that Khalil Mullins is now. So Mullings to me is more the quorum of this offense, whereas Edwards gets to continue to play the Edwards role, which was catch it out of the backfield, try to hit a home run. The worrisome part about Michigan's offense is that they have got to find a wide receiver because right now after week one it was not very good on the outside. They did not have anybody to take the pressure off of their tight end who is easily their best pass catcher and that's colston Loveland number 18. That that secondary for Texas I think is improved. It was a weakness a year ago. The biggest question I have is can you replace those two big defensive tackles in the middle? That remains to be seen. And if you're Michigan, you've got to feel like we can lean on Texas in the run game. We've got to force them to bring safeties down into the box just like Fresno state was doing. And that all lies on their guards. Josh priebe, Giovanni el-hadi those guys have got to play well and play much better than they did in week one. Great match-up, folks. This line right now is Texas 7 and 1/2. I think it's going to be a close game. Michigan does not get blown out. Their defense does not get blown out. The question becomes, is Texas too physical and too good and too deep and too athletic and too fast to succumb to the boa constrictor? Because that's still what Michigan is. Michigan still wants to philosophically be a boa constrictor, hanging around, hanging around, hanging around. And then bam, they get you third quarter. All of a sudden it's a one score game they can blitz all of a sudden with with wink martindale and get you off the field and then go score. Can they be that guy? We'll see. Without j.j. McCarthy, I think it's going to be very difficult. That was a long breakdown for a game that I'm very excited about. Very hear my voice crack there. That's that's how excited I am.