Everything you need to know about No. 10 Michigan’s home showdown vs. No. 3 Texas, all in one place.

The stakes

(Michigan is a 7.5-point underdog, via FanDuel Sportsbook.)

Michigan spent 2 solid years consumed by an all-or-nothing pursuit of its first national championship in a generation, and its dream came true. The drought is over, the thirst is quenched, and the void is filled. Now? Leave the angst to somebody else for a change. In Ann Arbor, it’s hangover time.

If you’re just catching up with the Wolverines for the first time since the confetti fell in January, a lot has changed. I mean, a lot has changed: Besides the NFL-bound Jim Harbaugh, the mass exodus from the 2023 team included nearly his entire staff and 18 of 22 starters in the CFP title game. (Plus the kicker, for good measure.) Harbaugh’s successor, 38-year-old Sherrone Moore, is a first-time head coach charged with replacing a first-round quarterback, All-American running back, both starting wideouts, the entire starting offensive line, and 9 of the top 12 tacklers on defense.

All those new faces, and a full trophy case? Take your time, man. Potential NCAA sanctions looming in the background? Don’t even sweat it. The Wolverines will be back when they’re back.

It’s good to be the champs, as most Texas fans still remember, vaguely, from the Longhorns’ last title 19 years ago. (If they didn’t, they could always have their memories jogged by the broadcast of the January 2006 Rose Bowl airing on a loop on the late Longhorn Network, RIP.) They’re also familiar with the feeling that it’s been much too long since the championship itch was scratched. Quinn Ewers was 2 years old when Vince Young sauntered into immortality, and most of this year’s freshman class wasn’t even born.

The ‘Horns got reacclimated to that altitude in 2023, beating Alabama, winning the Big 12, and punching their Playoff ticket for the first time before bowing out in the semis in a game they we we favored to win. The urgency that Michigan felt to go all the way the past 2 years is alive and well in Austin.

Unlike Michigan, whose championship window came with an implicit expiration date, Texas is looking forward to having plenty of bites at the apple. Steve Sarkisian has improved the talent level via traditional recruiting and the portal: In his first season, he inherited a roster that ranked 11th in 247Sports’ Team Talent Composite; 3 years later, the current roster ranks No. 4. It’s not exactly now or never, assuming crown-jewel understudy Arch Manning remains on deck to extend the window into 2025, at least. But now would be nice, before the vibe shifts into defining Sarkisian’s tenure by the one big looming box he hasn’t checked rather than the ones he has.

The stat: 4.73

That was Texas’ net points per possession in its Week 1 win over Colorado State, best in the nation vs. an FBS opponent. After a slow start on their first possession, the Longhorns proceeded to score 52 points over their next 10 (7 touchdowns, 1 field goal) while pitching a shutout against the CSU offense, the first time the Rams had been held to a goose egg since 2013.

Actually, leaving it at “shutout” might be selling the defense’s effort short. Colorado State didn’t come close to scoring, crossing midfield just once in the competitive portion of the game. (That drive ended with a punt from the Texas 49-yard line.) Despite the presence of Tory Horton — the active FBS leader in career receiving yards and touchdowns — the Rams averaged a dismal 3.1 yards per pass with a long gain of 12.

Colorado State had more punts (7) than passing first downs (6), and more yardage on punts (279) than in total offense (192). Texas’ defense accounted for more yards on one play, a 30-yard interception return by Jahdae Barron, than it allowed on any CSU possession prior to garbage time.

There’s no such thing at this level as a truly perfect game, but even against one of the scrubbier members of the Mountain West, that’s about as close as it gets.

The big question: Who the heck is Davis Warren?

In the portal era, starting quarterbacks at a name-brand program fall into 1 of 3 columns: 1) Entrenched vet; 2) Blue-chip prospect on the rise; or 3) Big-ticket transfer. This is just how it works, in 2024. In fact, the higher a team resides on the food chain, the more of those boxes it tends to go out of its way to check.

At the moment, Alabama, Georgia and Texas all have 1) and 2), for insurance. Ohio State and Oregon, lacking a 1), went out and landed 2) and 3) over the offseason. And so on down the line. Adjusting for ambition, nearly every starting QB in a Power 4 conference plausibly fits in that rubric. If you don’t, your destiny is the portal or the clipboard, pretty much without exception.

I have to use qualifiers like “nearly” and “pretty much” in that last sentence because of Warren, the exception. When Michigan elevated Warren to QB1 for its opener against Fresno State, he became the only opening-day starter for a ranked team who is none of the above. He is inexperienced, unheralded, and prior to last week, the only place he was entrenched was in obscurity. Now, he’s the starting quarterback for the defending national champs.

A former walk-on in his 4th year in Ann Arbor, Warren has traveled a long way to the top of the Wolverines’ depth chart, literally and figuratively. His final 2 years of high school in Los Angeles were all but erased by a leukemia diagnosis in 2019, which cost him his junior season, and the pandemic in 2020, which shut down prep football in California entirely.

To recruiters, that left Warren as just a skinny kid with no tape. Although he managed to stick at Michigan as a walk-on, over his first 3 seasons he was little more to the outside world than a name on the roster, attempting 14 passes in a handful of garbage-time appearances in 2022-23. The competition to replace JJ McCarthy this offseason included a veteran with starting experience in the Big Ten (Indiana transfer Jack Tuttle); a couple of huge, athletic redshirt sophomores who’d come off the bench ahead of Warren in ’23 (Alex Orji and Jayden Denegal); and a touted true freshman (Jadyn Davis). If you read a breakdown of the position over the offseason, it was almost certainly written with the assumption that Orji was the frontrunner.

When Michigan kicked off its title defense against Fresno State, though, it was Warren who trotted out with the starters and Warren who took nearly every snap, only yielding to Orji for a handful of “change of pace” downs in the Wildcat. On paper, his debut was nothing to write home about: 4.7 yards per attempt, just 1 completion of 10+ air yards, no contribution as a runner, red-flag numbers in terms of efficiency (104.9), EPA (-0.2), and Total QBR (33.0). Of Michigan’s 2 touchdown drives, the first covered just 31 yards following an early takeaway, and the second unfolded almost entirely on the ground.

Still, at the end of the day Warren gave the Wolverines what they needed to survive in a defensively-driven game, avoiding the killer mistake — his lone interception was effectively a punt — and finishing the aforementioned run-heavy scoring drive with his first career touchdown pass from 18 yards out. He didn’t do anything with the slightest potential of going viral, which as far his coaches are concerned, I promise is just fine.

Is it sustainable in a game where the defense allows more than 1 touchdown? They’ll cross that bridge when they come to it.

The key matchup: Michigan Edge Josaiah Stewart vs. Texas OT Kelvin Banks Jr.

Michigan pressured quarterbacks by committee in 2023, splitting snaps and sacks among 4 full-time edge rushers. The nominal starters, Braiden McGregor and Jaylen Harrell, both moved on. That left Stewart, a former transfer from Coastal Carolina, and junior Derrick Moore, a former top-100 recruit, to make their mark in an expanded role. Neither projects as the second coming of Aidan Hutchinson, but together they should form one of the more imposing duos in the country. Against Fresno State, Stewart and Moore combined for 7 QB pressures and 2 sacks — both officially credited to Stewart, but with a substantial assist on the first one from his fellow bookend:

Getting to Ewers is not so straightforward. His blindside is protected by Banks, already a virtual lock to end Texas’ 22-years-and-counting drought since it last had an offensive lineman drafted in the first round.

A Day 1 starter as a freshman, Banks has held down the left tackle job in all 28 games he’s played, earning second-team All-Big 12 in 2022 and first-team in ’23. He barely came off the field during last year’s Playoff run while allowing a single sack, in the opener; he extended the shutout streak to a full calendar year against Colorado State. At 6-4, he comes in slightly below the towering, power forward-esque ideal for a modern blindside protector; in every other respect, the most important boxes are already checked, mean streak included.

The verdict: Texas 24, Michigan 13

Michigan, as always, would love to make this a line-of-scrimmage game: Stuff the run, turn up the heat on Ewers, ideally force him into a mistake a la the game-clinching pick-6 by All-American CB Will Johnson that turned an uncomfortably close game against Fresno State into a routine dispatch. (The final 30-10 margin came just 1 point shy of covering a 20.5-point spread.) The uglier, the better. Even if they succeed in dragging the game into the gutter, though, how are the Wolverines going to score? The offense was anemic against a middle-of-the-pack D from the Mountain West, getting next to nothing from the wideouts or NCAA Football cover boy Donovan Edwards. The lack of explosiveness at the skill positions is as pressing a concern as a walk-on quarterback and a rebuilt offensive line.

Texas has no such concerns. The Longhorns boast the nation’s best QB room, a bounty of options at wideout, and an o-line that returns 4 starters from last year. Whatever the defense’s issues might turn out to be, they weren’t on display against Colorado State, and it’s difficult to see how Michigan is going to generate much stress without getting extremely creative. The ‘Horns have considerably more juice, but if it comes down to it they can handle themselves in a slugfest, too.