Game Analysis

MICHIGAN (-40)  44   Hawaii  9

Hawaii acquitted themselves well in their 31-51 loss to Cal in Australia last week, as that final margin was influenced by turnovers. Hawaii averaged 6.7 yards per play while Cal averaged 7.1 yppl. That doesn’t speak well of Hawaii’s defense, or it could be that the Bears’ new quarterback Davis Webb is not much of a drop off from Jared Goff in a system that breeds success for quarterbacks. Hawaii’s offense is bad, which I knew going into last week’s game but Michigan’s offense still may not score enough to cover such a big number.

Jim Harbaugh brought in another former starting quarterback from another school in John O’Korn, who was the starter at Houston before Greg Ward took his job away from him. Last season Michigan had a good pass attack with former Iowa starter Jack Rudock at quarterback, as Rudock was 1.4 yards per pass play better than average (7.2 yppp against teams that would allow 5.8 yppp to an average quarterback). That was an improvement of 1.1 yppp from his level of play at Iowa and perhaps we can expect O’Korn to improve just as much.

The problem is that O’Korn’s career stats are not nearly as good as Rudock’s resume before coming to Ann Arbor. O’Korn was average in 2013 as the starter (6.2 yppp against teams that would allow 6.2 yppp to an average quarterback) but he lost his job to Ward because of ineffectiveness in 2014, when he averaged only 4.1 yppp on 157 pass plays despite facing teams that would allow 6.9 yppp to an average QB. I’m not sure what was going on that year to result in such a drastic decline in performance but if O’Korn wins the job I’ll assume that’s because Harbaugh thinks he’s capable of doing a good job. I just don’t think it will be as good as the job Rudock did last season. There is nothing special about the rushing attack (4.7 yards per rushing play last season against teams that would allow 5.0 yprp) but I do expect improvement in that area this season. Still, Michigan doesn’t appear good enough to score enough points to cover the huge spread and the only reason I’m not more excited about taking Hawaii plus the points in my concern over their lack of rest after playing in Sydney last week. I’ll still favor Hawaii plus the points.