START YOUR BUCKEYEGROVE.COM PREMIUM MEMBERSHIP TODAY!

Is Michigan suddenly a better football team than what we saw earlier or is it more of a result of who they have played and just the churn of how the season goes? Everyone wants to circle the second half of the Penn State game and say that is the line of demarcation between old Michigan and new Michigan and now suddenly new Michigan is some sort of trendy pick.

Like New Coke.

Remember New Coke?

Yeah, that was a disaster.

We are not saying that Michigan is a disaster, you are not a 9-2 team at this point of the year if you are a disaster. But we are not quite ready to say that things have completely turned around when you look at this team as a whole.

Look, the start of the season for Michigan was not great but the Wolverines found a way to win, outside of Wisconsin... and Penn State. A three-point win over Army-West Point, a 10-3 win over Iowa, a near collapse against Illinois before putting up the final 14 points of the game.

Even with this resurgence with Michigan's offense, we are still talking about the nation's No. 50 pass offense and No. 76 rush offense is not exactly setting the world on fire.

The 2019 rush numbers are way off from what we have seen in past years at this point of the season at the mark of just 155.1 yards per game. That is 39 yards less than any number from the past three seasons and that 2017 team also only averaged 26.3 points per game by the time of going into the 12th game of the season.

RELATED: Tale of the Tape: 2018 | 2017 | 2016

Sure, the passing offense is 37 yards better than any result from the previous three years as well and 81 yards better than that 2017 season.

But can a team win this game without being able to run the ball?

We don't like to come to conclusions in the summary and let everyone off the hook and let them just skip the rest of the piece, but we are going to break that now and just point out this simple fact.

The team that runs the ball better wins the game. Period. No question.

In the last 10 matchups between these two teams, Ohio State has gone 9-1 and guess who led the game in rushing yards in that one loss?

You got it, Michigan.

We will talk more about Michigan rushing offense in its normal slot in this piece, but that was just too important to bury in the piece and we wanted to point that out.

Now we can go back to our regularly schedule programming and on to the weekly Tale of the Tape.

The numbers really are staggering when you look at the Ohio State pass defense. Only three teams have completed more than 20 passes on the Buckeyes, all three of those teams threw an interception along the way. The Buckeyes have held four teams to fewer than 100 yards throwing on a day. No team has thrown for more than one passing touchdown. And in Ohio State's 'reported' big games of the season (Nebraska, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Penn State) opponents have averaged going 14-25 for 125 yards for less than a touchdown a game and 1.25 interceptions. For the sake of full disclosure, Ohio State has not faced any of the top-four quarterbacks in passing yardage (Justin Fields being one of them, Sean Clifford being No. 5, Shea Patterson being No. 2) and have not faced a top-two quarterback in passing efficiency (Fields is No. 1 and Tanner Morgan of Minnesota is No. 2, Shea Patterson is No. 6). But it is hard to dispute what the Ohio State secondary has done against all opponents that have come their way, and before we get into the 'who has Ohio State played', it is not as if Michigan has faced that many more top-25 passing offenses as Ohio State has played two (Indiana - 14th, FAU -22nd) while Michigan has played just one (Indiana - 14th).

Michigan's passing numbers have gone up as of late but the rushing numbers have gone down in unison. There is no denying however that the Wolverines are feeling more confident in throwing the ball with games of 384 yards and 366 yards in the last two and a combined nine passing touchdowns. This is going to be one of those spots where there are some conflicting rankings however because if you look at pass defense just based on yardage, the last two opponents (Michigan State and Indiana) are both top-50 pass defenses. But when you open it up to the larger stat of pass efficiency defense, and suddenly both of those teams drop out of the top-50. Where does Ohio State rank in each of those categories? The Buckeyes are No. 1 in pass defense (yardage) and No. 2 in pass efficiency defense, not in the Big Ten but rather the nation. Shea Patterson has seen his numbers go up to being a 59.5-percent thrower with 21 touchdowns against just five interceptions (not quite the clip Fields is on, but give him credit, he is not making a ton of mistakes to date) and 229.4 yards per game. His efficiency is still about 40-plus points behind Fields overall this season but when you look at just league games, the margin drops to 35 points? Okay, nevermind. When it comes to Michigan's receivers, it is a pick your poison situation with five guys having 20 catches or more. Nico Collins has been the hot hand as of late with seven touchdowns but Ronnie Bell leads the team in receptions. Donovan Peoples-Jones is right there too in terms of scores with five but has about half the yardage of Bell and Collins after missing two games this season. The one thing you can say about this group is that you just can't focus on one guy because there are freaks across the board, the question will be if Patterson will be protected long enough for these guys to get open or if the Wolverines will have to focus more on underneath patterns and look for more yards after the catch.