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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — If you were to look at the recent records of both Michigan and in-state rival MSU, you wouldn’t necessarily put much stock into the Spartans coming into Saturday’s contest.
However, as Jim Harbaugh notes, that would be foolish.
The Wolverines head coach knows the type of game the battle for the Paul Bunyan Trophy is annually, and while the record is lopsided towards the maize and blue, there have certainly been years where a seemingly overmatched Spartans team has come in and gotten the best of their in-state rivals.
But when you especially look at how much MSU head coach Mark Dantonio truly loathes all things Michigan, you can expect a little extra in this game. Some extra hitting, extra game-planning, extra motivation from the current 4-5 team in East Lansing.
“On high alert for everything,” Harbaugh said. “Specifically, yeah, we understand that Coach Dantonio is a master motivator. There could be trick plays. Special teams, the punt fakes, field goal fakes. Everything needs to be alerted and prepared and readied for.”
Calling the annual matchup ‘very competitive and intense,’ Harbaugh notes that the team doesn’t usually spend as much time doing extra legwork to make sure they’re not caught with possible trickery.
But such is the nature of this particular matchup, given the bag of hammers Dantonio tends to pull from when these two teams meet up.
“I would say it’s more than most games, because they’ve done more with those types of plays, with fakes,” Harbaugh said. “Out of necessity, spending more time on it than normal.”
The national discussion surrounding MSU is less about its downfall — it was 7-6 a year ago — but has more to do with its offense.
Ranked 96th in total offense (yards-per-game) and 106th in rushing offense, the Spartans are in their second-straight year of fielding what looks like a moribund attack on that side of the ball. But that’s not how Harbaugh looks at it.
There are times when MSU can seemingly pull it all together, and it would make sense that it would do everything in its power to do just that against its biggest rival.
We’ve seen games where the Spartans haven’t been bad, or inept, in that regard. Despite the overall numbers, MSU had the best offensive game that Ohio State has seen to this point, and put up big yardage numbers in the win over Western Michigan earlier in the year, and again in the loss this past Saturday against Illinois.
So when Harbaugh looks at that side of the ball, and the team as a whole, he sees something more dangerous than the general public might.
“Well, they put up over 500 yards of offense this past week,” Harbaugh said. “Defense is one of the best in the country. Special teams, year-in and year-out, is consistently good, solid, explosive. Prone to trickery, as well. Everything in our preparation is gonna have to be at its highest level. We’re excited – we were excited to get started, we already got started. We’re already in the midst of our preparations.”
Regardless, the spectre of the rivalry will certainly take ahold, at least once both teams hit the field — and it might not wait until the game actually begins.
Last year, as well-noted, there was the pregame incident with the Spartans’ traditional field walk, which the Big Ten deemed to come too late before the game, per the conference’s review. Subsequently, Devin Bush Jr. took cleats to the Spartans logo at midfield, proving that the Spartans had Michigan’s attention this time around.
Harbaugh doesn’t expect any pregame shenanigans this time around, but again, harkened back to what took place in East Lansing a little more than a year ago.
“That’s been addressed pretty thoroughly,” Harbaugh said. “There’s a rule that two hours before the game, players cannot be on the field before two hours. So if there are any pregame traditions, then those take place before the two hour mark, when both teams, in two hours, are allowed to be on the field and share the field. One team cannot supersede that. It’s been addressed.”
So, come Saturday, regardless of the directions each team seems to be moving in, expect the unexpected.
Jim Harbaugh and the maize and blue certainly are. While you are what your record says you are, when it comes to this particular matchup, Harbaugh goes straight to an old, but perhaps true, idiom.
“As I said, high alert,” Harbaugh said. “This is an important game for both teams. Throw out the records – that’s an old cliché you can use – when you play this type of game.”
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