The Bearcats
With college football moving into week 2 the Bearcats are taking on what will almost certainly be their toughest game. They will be heading up to Ann Arbor to face Michigan head on. Both teams having won their season openers are 1-0, but you could not have possibly had more unequal opponents, with UC barely squeaking by Austin Peay, a team that has lost their last 27 and now 28 games after their loss to UC. With the score being 26-14, despite originally being a 35+ point favorite, they ended up actually being outplayed statistically by Austin Peay. The Bearcats were not looking too impressive.
The Cincinnati offense, led by junior quarterback Hayden Moore, drove for a combined 6 yards in their first 3 attempts before scoring early in the 2nd quarter. The touchdown was on a 16 yard pass from Moore to the sophomore receiver, Thomas Geddis. The Bearcats offense did not have much else to appreciate. Senior running back Mike Boone looked impressive on paper. Boone rushed for 100 yards including a touchdown with an averaged of 5.3 yards per carry. The reality is, over half of that was from two break out plays, which are not likely to happen against Michigan. The Bearcat defense was not much to impress either.
Despite forcing an early fumble and a clutch interception deep in the red zone right before halftime, they allowed the Governors to drive for a total of 313 yards vs the Bearcats total of 248. Recording only 1 sack all night, they allowed Austin Peay to put up a number of impressive drives, allowing the Austin Peay running back to rush for 92 yards with an average of 6.1 per carry. To round off the unimpressive play from UC overall, kicker Andrew Gantz missed a short 26 yard field goal and an extra point attempt.
The Cincinnati offense will have to shape up when going against the brick wall of a defense that Michigan is. Hayden Moore rarely threw for anything over 20 yards, and will have to be more versatile if they plan on standing a chance against Michigan, a team that head coach Luke Fickell has faced many times as defensive coordinator at Ohio state.
The Wolverines
The number 8 Michigan Wolverines are coming off a 33-17 victory over the number 17 Florida Gators. Michigan’s defense with an impressive outing limited the Gators to only 192 yards total, forcing 3 fumbles, including one for a defensive touchdown. The Wolverines defense was able to invade the Gators backfield picking up 6 sacks. They absolutely harassed the Florida offense who was never able to score a touchdown. With only the Gators defense being able to get into the end zone, the only points the Florida offense was able to put up was a single field goal. The Michigan offense, despite driving for 433 yards total, did not look very impressive.
Early in the game senior quarterback Wilton Speight threw for short touchdown on the goal line, which was called back due to a negligent penalty of having an ineligible receiver down the field. This forced them into a field goal. After a short and unimpressive drive from Florida, Speight had the ball back and threw for a long 46 yard touchdown pass to the true freshman Tarik Black. With the Michigan defense again shutting down the Gators, The Michigan offense was back in command only to throw back to back pick-6s. The Gators held on and went into the half holding the lead at 13-17. Michigan started the 2nd half with the ball and got an early score, which would be the last time their offense crossed into the end zone all game. Their defense is what held them together, forcing a fumble on the kick off which led to a field goal and a forcing yet another fumble on the next Gator drive when their true freshman quarterback Feleipe Franks tried scrambling for a first down.
With both offenses not looking very impressive the rest of the game, the score remained stagnant, after a few Michigan field goals, at 26-17 from halfway in the 3rd quarter until just before the end. With just over a minute left, the Wolverine defense stormed the Gators offense in their own end zone and forced a fumble which they then recovered for a touchdown.
Overall, the Michigan offense was not very impressive outside of 5th year senior Ty Isaac rushing for 114 yards with a 10.4 average per carry. With that said, it will be a challenge for the Cincinnati defense to pull off the back to back pick 6s that Florida was able to do, and without that Michigan’s offense could be deadly. The more dominant side of Michigan is their very aggressive defense. The Bearcats will have to figure something out to avoid being stomped as the much larger Gators offense was.
The Matchup
The Bearcats are the overwhelming underdogs in this matchup and will need to step up their game a significant amount if they want to stand a chance, especially going into Michigan stadium. UC was allotted 3,500 tickets to the game, and sold them all, but that will be very little in the massive stadium that seats over 100,000. The words coming from UC staff and coaches is that they plan on surprising a lot of people.
Running back Mike Boone saying, “I’ve got no doubt in my mind that we can go out and shock the world” and Luke Fickell playing down the massive spread with “I don’t want to get into the negatives. Whether it’s a 2-point dog or a 30-point dog, I mean, we could have been a 40-point favorite at some points in time. I’ve been all those different places, never worried about it one way or another and really don’t want our guys to have to worry about that, either.”
With a more than 30 point spread, it does not seem like many are taking their words serious, except for Michigan coach Jim Hardbaugh who praised Fickell and the Bearcats saying, “They’ve built a fast defense. They’ve recruited players, defensive ends that they moved to defensive tackle, linebackers, big linebackers that are playing defensive end. Safeties that are linebackers. That’s built that way for speed. You can see how they’ve done.”
In the end, I am of course rooting for my Bearcats and hoping we make history as we have done before, but I realistically am predicting a Michigan victory.
Charles’ Prediction: Bearcats 21 – Wolverines 50
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