No. 18 Michigan Wolverines football is set for a top-20 showdown with No. 11 USC. The Wolverines’ defense will have to step up going against a potent offense. We take a look at some of the blitz numbers for the Maize and Blue, discuss USC’s new-look defense and talk about an interesting comment an analyst made this week about U-M vs. TCU in 2022.

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1. Michigan defense has upped the aggressiveness

The big question in all areas heading into Michigan’s 2024 season was: “What’s changed?”

That’s especially true for the defensive side of the ball, which lost its entire coaching staff, including coordinator Jesse Minter, to the NFL. First-year coordinator Wink Martindale spent 20 years in the NFL. He’s known for his aggressiveness, which made some fans nervous, since the Wolverines have been good at sitting back in coverage in recent years.

It’s a small sample size, but we do have some early indications. Yes, Michigan’s been more aggressive in the early going, and no, the Wolverines aren’t having the kind of success they did last season, but both facts could be due to personnel. Remember, there are seven new starters on the unit this year.

Per Sports Info Solutions, Michigan has blitzed on 38.7 percent of passing downs, compared to 20.2 percent last season. That’s a pretty big gap. However, the Wolverines aren’t getting the kind of pressure without blitzing that they did a year ago. They’re making the quarterback uncomfortable on just 31.2 percent of their non-blitz passing snaps, compared to 39.1 percent last season.

Michigan hasn’t been effective at getting pressure even when blitzing, too, which is another issue. The Wolverines have generated pressure on 35.4 percent of passing plays when blitzing, compared to 56.6 percent in 2023.

“The thing of it is, people love to watch a defense that pressures — as long as they hit,” Martindale said this summer. “They don’t like it when they don’t hit and they gain 12 yards. So there’s that fine line.”

It’s fair to say it’s early, and that Martindale is figuring out what exactly will work to get after opposing quarterbacks with the group of players he inherited. If Michigan can get more pressure with four or fewer rushers, that’d be a great start.

2. Welcome to The Big House, and the Big Ten, USC

Most college football fans were sad to see the Pac-12 go. While the conference is getting a gang back together, it’s not the gang. And so USC is set to play in its first conference game as a Big Ten member — at Michigan this Saturday.

Starting this weekend, we’ll see what adjustments former Pac-12 teams now in the Big Ten have made, or have to make going forward, coming into the league. And perhaps longtime Big Ten schools will have to adjust now that there are four West-Coast programs in the mix.

USC focused on getting bigger and better on defense this offseason, and by all accounts coordinator D’Anton Lynn is one of the best in the business. UCLA ranked 87th nationally in total defense before he arrived, and it finished 10th in the stat in 2023. Head coach Lincoln Riley plucked him away from his cross-town rival, and Lynn has dramatically improved the USC defense … at least it appears in the early going.

USC has tackled much better so far, but it’s hard to say what exactly that group is until the sample size grows and it progresses into its Big Ten schedule.

That starts this weekend against a program known for its physicality.

You say you are bigger and more physical? You say you’re better at tackling?

Alright, chase down junior quarterback Alex Orji, running backs Kalel Mullings (graduate) and Donovan Edwards (senior) all day. Go up against a Michigan offensive line that has been disappointing so far but has potential.

The Trojans just may be up for the challenge, but it will be a big test, even if Michigan’s offense has looked pedestrian at best to date.

An interesting element with this game is that Orji was named the starter Monday. USC had a bye over the weekend but had to change what it was preparing for halfway through the two-week stretch leading into Saturday’s game at Michigan.

Now, Lynn doesn’t know exactly what to expect. Well, nobody does.

“Yeah, you have no idea what they’re gonna do, what they’re gonna game plan,” Lynn said after being asked if it’s a challenge to game plan for an offense that has yet to put much of what it will do with Orji behind center on tape. “At the end of the day, play our roles and play our style.”

We’ll find out how that style stacks up.

3. Joel Klatt reveals there are ‘rumblings’ about TCU receiving ‘help’ in game against Michigan

“The less you know about football, the more you think sign stealing impacts a game.”

That was FOX analyst Joel Klatt, who’s widely regarded as one of the best in the business, last season. He knows ball.

“People are saying with all [Michigan’s] struggles [early this season, losing to a team in Texas that is now ranked No. 1] that, ‘it was all the sign stealing!’ And they totally throw out the last half of last season where they beat all of those ranked teams without [former analyst Connor] Stalions, without the operation — and they beat them worse,” Klatt said on ‘The Herd’ this week.

“Were they stealing signs on fourth down against ‘Bama in the Rose Bowl? Get outta here!”

If anyone who knows football is aware that sign stealing is widespread, then anyone with a brain, a set of eyeballs and a television set knows Michigan won last season’s national championship fair and square. That hasn’t been up for debate.

And Wolverines’ fans wouldn’t trade the 51-45 loss to TCU in the 2022 College Football Playoff semifinal, either, for the ride that occurred in 2023. That team came back motivated and gave Michigan fans the time of their lives in becoming simply known as national champions.

But Klatt did reveal something interesting about that game: “To act like sign stealing is somehow the biggest issue in the outcome of all of these games is just naive and not true.

“There are at least rumblings that TCU had help in the playoff game.”

There’s a subculture of college football sign stealers across the country, and they share information with one another. Is that any different than Stalions’ college buddy attending a game and sharing what he saw? It’s actually more impactful, according to Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel in a column he wrote in January titled ‘Either everyone’s guilty, or no one is.’

Wetzel discussed how Ohio State, Rutgers and Purdue were reportedly operating “the equivalent of a criminal conspiracy” — but it was OK to the coaching community because it was “white collar” — in colluding to share Michigan’s play-calling signals with one another to give the opponents a competitive advantage.

“Forget even what or when the punishments should be,” Wetzel wrote.

“Whatever it is, just make it even, because the actions of Connor Stalions and the actions that Ohio State, Rutgers and Purdue allegedly engaged in are the exact same thing.

“Yes, the exact same thing.

” … In Purdue’s case, the ‘advanced scouts’ were the professional coaching staffs of two other Big Ten teams that had just played the Wolverines, and thus could battle-test the signs they stole as accurate.

“Which would you rather have? Raw cell phone footage that still needs to be broken down, or highly experienced coaches just handing over their work?

“Everyone would choose the Purdue option.”

It’s also just part of the reason this entire story was blown out of proportion.

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