The first game of the Jim Harbaugh Era of Michigan football occurs tonight at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City with the Wolverines coming in as visitors against a Utah Utes squad many have picked as a dark horse Pac-12 South title contender. What can we expect from Game 1 of Harbaugh's tenure with the Maize & Blue? Here's three things to watch for.
1. Turning The Tide On An Unfavorable Matchup
For as good as Utah's defense is, Michigan's offense could be equally as bad. They ranked 107th (out of 125 teams) in scoring offense last year and will have a new starting quarterback in either Shane Morris or Iowa transfer Jake Rudock. If the Wolverines can find a way to move the ball with some consistency, they'll give themselves a great chance to win this game. If not, it'll be an extremely long night. Harbaugh knows this. Expect him to try and paper over the offensive dissonance by running the ball as much as humanly possible on 1st and 2nd downs.
2. Harbaugh Pushing Utah QB Travis Wilson's Buttons
Harbaugh and defensive DJ Durkin have been planning a host of different rush packages to rattle the inconsistent senior. One thing we know about any Harbaugh-led defense is that they won't pull up when they smell blood, especially when a couple of square hits could shake Wilson out of a rhythm for the entire night. Expect aggression early from Michigan's D. If they come up gold, they have a chance to bring home a HUGE road win.
3. A Very Prepared Wolverines Squad
Kyle Whittingham has coached Utah since 2005 and was previously the program's defensive coordinator. That's over a decade's worth of tape that Harbaugh and his coaching staff has undoubtedly scoured to pick apart patterns and exploit weaknesses in Whittingham's coaching tics. Harbaugh is a tough boss to work for and expects a lot out of both his players and coaches, but he's always extremely on-point about giving his charges a filtered version of the mass amount of information he's sorted through.
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