It is widely agreed upon that the regular-season finale at Ohio State will be the Michigan Wolverines' toughest football contest of 2020, but which game will check in second on that list?
Is it the Oct. 3 home showdown against Penn State, who most outlets have ranked inside the top-six in the nation heading into the 2020 season?
TheWolverine's Clayton Sayfie and Austin Fox provide their responses below:
Clayton Sayfie — Sell
It’s gotten to the point where Ohio State is the toughest game of the season for any team that has the Buckeyes scheduled. Michigan is no different. The second-toughest game of the season, however, is up for debate.
I’ll go with Minnesota here, as I did when ranking the level of difficulty for The Wolverine Football Preview magazine. The main reason being: Minnesota is a very good team fresh off an 11-win season.
Second-team All-Big Ten quarterback Tanner Morgan is set to build off a season in which he exceeded expectations, wideout Rashod Bateman, the Big Ten’s reigning receiver of the year, is an electric playmaker, redshirt junior running back Mohamed Ibrahim is expected to be one of the better ball-carriers in the league and all five starters on the offensive line are back.
The defense is also expected to be solid, especially in coverage, with three starters in the secondary returning. Minnesota gets to play this one at home. We saw how tough it was for a top-10 Penn State squad to play at a raucous TCF Bank Stadium last season, and we’ve also seen Michigan teams struggle on the road against quality opponents in recent history, with a 1-7 record against ranked opponents on the road (Minnesota is top-25 in most preseason rankings) over the last five seasons.
The caveat this year is that fans are just about guaranteed to be limited due to COVID-19. This plays into Michigan’s favor, but even still, this one will be the second-most difficult contest of the year for the Wolverines, followed slightly behind by the Oct. 3 matchup against the aforementioned Nittany Lions.
They’re a preseason top-five team with loads of talent, but they have not come away victorious in Ann Arbor in their last three tries, including losing by a combined score of 101-27 in the last two.
There’s reason to believe the Maize and Blue will have the edge once again in front of their (limited) home fans. The next toughest game is Washington on Sept. 5 (if it gets played), since its the season opener on the west coast, followed by Wisconsin on Sept. 26.
Austin Fox — Sell
When considering how well Michigan has played at home under Jim Harbaugh and how poorly it has played against stellar competition on the road, it's very difficult not to pick a road game for this category.
Granted, the back-to-back home showdowns against Wisconsin and Penn State on Sept. 26 and Oct. 3, respectively, were strongly considered as answers here, but it's worth pointing out that Harbaugh has only dropped five games in Ann Arbor during his five years at the helm, all of which have occurred against either Ohio State or Michigan State.
With that in mind, the level of difficulty it will be for U-M to win at both Washington and Minnesota (the next two most challenging road games after OSU) are on equal footing. The Gophers appear to be significantly better than the Huskies, but the fact that the Seattle trip will (potentially) occur as the season-opener has to strongly be taken into account, with the Wolverines having played underwhelming football in their last two season-openers.
We'll give a slight edge to Minnesota as the answer to this topic, thanks to the potent offensive trio the Gophers possess in redshirt junior quarterback Tanner Morgan, junior wideout Rashod Bateman and redshirt junior running back Mohamed Ibrahim, an offensive line that returns all five starters and a defense that brings back enough key players from a unit that finished 10th nationally last season.
Expectations will be sky-high in Minneapolis after the Gophers enjoyed a breakthrough 11-2 campaign in 2019, with another 10 or 11-win season and hopes of a Big Ten West division title all being realistic goals.
TCF Bank Stadium hasn't exactly been viewed as an intimidating venue for opponents in recent years, but the Minnesota faithful proved just how crazy of a place it can be last season when they watched their Gophers take down then-No. 4 and 8-0 Penn State on Nov. 9.
Harbaugh's teams have only defeated one Associated Press ranked opponent on the road during his five years on the job (at No. 24 Michigan State in 2018), and it's a safe bet Minnesota will enter the Oct. 17 matchup ranked and — if everything goes according to plan — possessing a 5-1 record.
With all that in mind, Michigan's Oct. 17 showdown at Minnesota should still be viewed as a tossup. The Maize and Blue will likely enter the first 11 games of the season as either favorites or minimal underdogs at worse, with the trip to Minneapolis being no exception.
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