College football 2018 preview: Predicting the first loss for every Top 25 team

Certain talking heads, college football writers and so-called “experts” believe that Jim Harbaugh is on the hot seat heading into his fourth season at Michigan. No matter how scorching hot some of the takes out there are, they’re not doing anything to warm up Harbaugh’s seat.

Setting his first three seasons aside, Jim Harbaugh will finally have a quarterback in 2018. The addition of Ole Miss transfer Shea Patterson and his immediate eligibility shifts the balance of power in the Big Ten and potentially the College Football Playoff. Patterson isn’t going to be good. He’s going to be the best quarterback in the conference, if not the country.

Trace McSorley (Moxie McSorley) at Penn State is good and he’s going to win some games for the Nittany Lions as they fight for a playoff spot this year too, but Patterson is on another level. He has a cannon of an arm,  steps into throws under pressure and keeps his eyes downfield as he scrambles and to turn broken plays into huge gains.

With an embarrassment of talent on defense and an offense loaded with four-star athletes who have been hamstrung by middling quarterback play, 2018 is going to be the year for Harbaugh and the Wolverines.

With Notre Dame, Northwestern, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Penn State and Ohio State on their schedule, there’s almost no way they go undefeated. If I had to guess (and that’s basically the whole point of this), I think they lose to Michigan State on the road and then possibly pick up another L from either Ohio State or Penn State. If the Big Ten East comes down to a tiebreaker that goes their way, they’ll meet Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship and a win would make a very compelling case for the selection committee given their path to a 10-2 or 11-1 regular season.