Michigan Blog Preview: Eastern Michigan at Michigan

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The GBMW readership reads with interest the game predictions generated by the contributors. Your site is cordially invited to participate in the fun. Each week, assuming continued interest, GBMW would like to have a guest prediction and analysis from a different Michigan blogsite for the upcoming Saturday game.

This should be beneficial to all Michigan blog pages and we here hope that a secondary benefit from this venture is increased exposure to all U of M blogpages.

So if you are interested and administer/contribute to a Michigan blog, please E-Mail GBMW and let us know your willingness to participate. Several remaining games are still in need of a guest blog predictor/contributor.

Special guest this week -- Sean from Michigan Sports Center:

He runs the blog site: Michigan Sports Center

Eastern Michigan at Michigan

Go Blue Michigan Wolverine -- Michigan Blog Preview

Here's my preview:

Michigan's test last week was to upset Notre Dame, and this week its test will be to forget about what happened this past Saturday. I know that can be tough, as it was an amazing win that still has people talking. I will admit that I have dedicated very little time at all to thinking about the Eastern Michigan game prior to writing this. Part of it is because there is still so much discussion about the Notre Dame game, and part of it is because the opponent is EMU. This is the first real "meh" type of game on the schedule, especially now that Michigan seems to be back to its winning ways. That doesn't mean it is any less important, though.

If the last two seasons have taught Michigan fans anything it is that anything can happen no matter the opponent. In that sense, the Toledo game last year was sort of a blessing in disguise, as the coaches and players will never take a game with a MAC team lightly again. Granted, everything that went wrong did against Toledo, and this year's team is much improved. Still, Michigan can't take any opponent lightly and needs to focus on the Eagles.

These types of games should serve as a chance to give backups playing time. By that I mean that the starters put the game out of reach by the start of the fourth quarter, and at that point the backups get a chance to play and gain some experience. Michigan sort of got a chance to do that against Western Michigan, but against EMU all of the backups will hopefully get on the field. Depth is thin at many positions, so giving some of these inexperienced players time in an actual game will be very beneficial in case there are any injuries in the future.

As far as the game itself goes, there's not much to say about Eastern Michigan. Ron English is in his first year as EMU's head coach, and I think he will someday turn them into a team that can contend for a MAC title. Even last week the Eagles showed signs of improvement by only losing to Northwestern on a field goal with 6 seconds left. They are definitely getting better, but that doesn't exactly mean a whole lot considering there was so much room for improvement to start with. Regardless, Eastern Michigan will put up a fight just like it did the last time it played in the Big House back in 2007. Michigan struggled to put the game away and only ended up winning by a score of 33-22. In general it seems like Michigan has had trouble with what are supposed to be "cupcake" type of opponents over the last five or so seasons. Very few games have ended up being true blowouts, and the last one Michigan had was really against EMU back in 2005 when the final score was 55-0. (There have been a couple wins over ND since then where the margin of victory was quite large, but I'm referring more to games against MAC schools.)

Going into the game on Saturday, my hope is that this year's matchup with Eastern Michigan will be similar to the one in 2005. While I don't doubt that Ron English and his team will be ready to play, this is a chance for Michigan to have its starters out of the game by the fourth quarter and give its backups a chance to play. It is also a chance for Michigan to play in what should be a fairly worry-free game that ends in a lopsided score. I think we will get a look at quite a few backups.

Come back later today to see GBMW Preview and also the predicitons for the game.

-Sean

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Written by Sean

He runs the blog site: Michigan Sports Center