It’s very difficult to look at such critical matchups and clearly pick a facet of the game that will surely mean the most, but I think I’ve done just that for today. Michigan football has got to be able to win the third-down battles against Michigan State.
The Spartans are converting an impressive 50 percent of the time on third down (No. 8 in FBS) through six games. And because Michigan State hasn’t been everything we expected on offense, the sample size is large (80 attempts).
To make things even better for the Spartans, they’re actually converting at a much higher rate on the road (65.