Michigan (-14) at Northwestern
After what the Michigan Wolverines looked like in their season-opener on the road against Notre Dame (what amounted to a 24-17 loss that wasn’t actually that close), many people already wrote off Jim Harbaugh and his team. Given their recent history of disappointment, that probably seemed like the safest bet. However, the Wolverines have really been rolling in their three games since that opening loss.
What’s been the most surprising for the Wolverines over the past three games, wins over Western Michigan, SMU and Nebraska, has been the amount of life that they’ve shown on offense. Michigan has not scored fewer than 45 points in any of their past three games and they’ve done it in multiple ways. New quarterback Shea Patterson is finding his groove now and the duo of Karan Higdon and Chris Evans are monsters in the rushing game.
Those three-straight wins (two coming by 45-plus points) lead them into a Week 5 Big Ten matchup as they’ll face the Northwestern Wildcats on the road. Having said that and even with this game being on the road, there is no way you can look at how Michigan has been playing and how Northwestern has looked to this point and think that the Wolverines should be just 14-point favorites.
Northwestern enters this game with a 1-2 record and their only win coming over a 1-3 Purdue team to open the year. Coming off of a loss to the Akron Zips last week, that’s pretty much all you need to know about the Wildcats. And with that, Michigan should roll in this game to another dominant win.