Michigan was not fooling around in Week 3, wasting no time to build a big lead of Northern Illinois in the Big House.

The Wolverines raced out of the gate with 35 points before halftime, carrying a 35-3 lead into the break. Things also started all Michigan in the third quarter with Jim Harbaugh’s squad scoring 28 points in that quarter to more than put the game away.

The heavy lifting was done upfront by Michigan against the Huskies, sticking with the strong run game to begin the year. The Wolverines carried the ball 48 times for an eye-popping 373 yards on the ground. That worked out to 7.8 yards per carry with 8 TDs.

After the game, NIU head coach Thomas Hammock had a lot of good things to say about Harbaugh’s Wolverines. He thinks Michigan might finally have a team to take down Ohio State:

“I think they built their team to beat Ohio State,” Hammock said per Andrew Kahn with MLive.com.

…

“I spent seven years in the Big Ten and have a pretty good gauge of the level of competition and talent in that conference,” Hammock said. “And when I looked at the tape this is a very good football team. They beat us soundly in all three phases. That was just a better football team. That is a better football team than us, and that’s the bottom line.”

It is good to see Michigan rolling to a 3-0 start to the season, and it will be interesting to see what things look like moving forward. Michigan will get Rutgers in Week 4 before a road trip to Wisconsin.