Last season’s defensive woes are popping up again for the Michigan Wolverines, and that could spell bad news for the weekend. The Wolverines are currently 35th in YPG allowed, but just 72nd with 255 passing
YPG allowed to Power Four opponents after big days from Oklahoma, Nebraska, and USC. Now Demond Williams and the Washington Huskies come to Ann Arbor looking to exploit these same flaws.
Williams transferred from Arizona to Washington with Jedd Fisch and took over the starting job at the very end of 2024. His strong finish gave him momentum heading into this year, and so far the former four-star has justified that trust. SP+ has the Huskies ranked 21th (one spot ahead of Michigan) with the No. 17 offense, and their quarterback is the big reason why.
The real deal
The raw numbers for Williams speak for themselves: against Power Four opposition he is 2nd nationally with 10.5 YPA, 2nd with a 76.1% completion rate, 3rd in passer rating, and 12th in passing yards per game. On the year he has 10 touchdowns and 1 interception, while also running for 4 scores. These numbers are right in line with Jayden Maiava and Dylan Raiola, and may be better than John Mateer’s…gulp.
The quality of competition should be mentioned, as his production against Ohio State and Maryland (the two best defenses he faced) was reduced, but who knows exactly what to make of the Michigan defense right now anyway. Williams is coming off a game where he threw for 402 (!!) yards while contributing to 4 total touchdowns and is probably a good bet to keep that rolling on Saturday.
Williams is simply a playmaker. He shows no hesitation tucking the ball and running, executing zone reads to frustrating perfection, while also being able to make all of the throws and attacking tight windows. Against the Buckeyes he definitely struggled holding onto the ball a bit — getting sacked 6 times — but still completed 81.8% of his passes and posted a reasonable 7.9 YPA all things considered.
Not again
Faith in the Michigan defense has eroded again, with USC’s complete demolition causing serious concern. Maiava and the Trojans hit screen after screen to punish the Wolverines’ aggressiveness, and even the run game had far too much success despite not busting out anything too crazy. Instead, it was self-inflicted issues caused by Wink Martindale, whose resume in Ann Arbor is looking much more bad than good.
I will stop short of calling this the game-deciding matchup, because while Washington’s defense is improved, the Wolverines should be able to score themselves, especially with the contest taking place at home. However, this has to be the unit-vs-unit matchups that will likely have the biggest bearing on the final margin (and comfortability of the afternoon).
Right now, Martindale has shown little reason to believe Michigan is prepared to contain another dangerous running quarterback. Pressure failed to limit Raiola and Maiava, so the smart thing to do would be to stop flinging Jaishawn Barham and Brandon Hillman recklessly at the backfield and force Williams to complete some difficult passes against a disciplined back seven. I would not expect that to happen, but the alternative is a sad story we have seen too many times already.
