Bye Week, So Let's Look at Michigan vs Northwestern

The Spartans won't be in action this week, so apart from some recruiting news perhaps the only other topic to discuss is the performance of upcoming opponents.  Today, we can watch and learn some things about two upcoming opponents that also happen to be playing each other: Michigan and Northwestern.  I will concentrate here on Michigan, since the Spartans face them next week.  As a Spartan fan, here are some things I would like to see from Michigan in this game:

- Denard Robinson's passing looked improved against Minnesota last week.  While I don't like wishing anyone ill, for the Spartans' sake, I would like to see him struggle a little bit more with his passing.  If he shows even more improvement with his passing, the Spartans will have a much harder time stopping him than I was counting on just a week ago.  On the other hand, if the Spartans can stop Robinson, even though his passing has improved, that makes me feel better about their chances of stopping Wisconsin and Russell Wilson.

- Northwestern's defense has looked pretty weak this year, so if Michigan's offense (as a whole) ends up struggling against them, then we can be confident that MSU will be able to shut them down, perhaps completely.  If Michigan scores less than 21 points on Northwestern, I can't imagine that they could score more than that on MSU's stout defense. 

- The Michigan defense has looked pretty good so far this season, though they did look pretty bad against their one good opponent: Notre Dame.  For the Spartans' sake, I would like to see Northwestern put up some points on the Michigan defense.  If Michigan's defense shuts down Northwestern's offense, even with Dan Persa playing the whole game at QB, then it shows that this defense is getting better and could be pretty legit.  If Northwestern can put up a lot of points, like they did against Illinois last week, then Michigan's defense is not as good as they seem and MSU should be able to score quite a bit.


My guess is that Michigan is going to dominate this game, and this will indicate that next week MSU will be facing the toughest Michigan team they have faced in 4 years.  But let's see what happens.