Kirk Campbell on OSU: 'We've studied them 365 days a year'

Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore told his O.C. Kirk Campbell and the rest of his coaches during the bye week to do their best work and develop their best game plans for the remainder of the season. The result so far: a 50-6 blowout of Northwestern in which the Wolverines played their best game.

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But the task gets much bigger Saturday at Ohio State. The Buckeyes are one of the nation’s top teams, a favorite to win the national championship. Michigan is a shell of last year’s squad, though there is some talent remaining. And while the OSU offense is always lethal, Moore noted the OSU defense is one of the nation’s best this year, too.

Developing a game plan to move the ball will be one of the keys to an improbable upset victory, and that falls on offensive coordinator Campbell.

“Going into the game plan, we’ve studied them 365 days a year,” Campbell said on the Inside Michigan football radio show Tuesday. “We’ve watched them. The GAs, the analysts always break them down, so we have a good feel of what they’re going to do and how they want to do it.

“We meticulously put plays in the game plan throughout the season to try to play off them for when we play them. So it’s going to be part of what we do, part of what they don’t think we can do, and what we’re going to be able to execute really well that we’ve had in our back pocket for a while.”

The Wolverines changed some things up in the run game against Northwestern to move the ball, and it worked well. But they’ll need more than that to beat the Buckeyes in Columbus. The passing game will need to improve significantly, and there won’t be as many opportunities as there were, say, two years ago.

The Buckeyes were extremely aggressive in 2022, leading to one-on-one matchups the Wolverines exploited. Last year, they were more “bend but don’t break” — Michigan had an answer for that, too. Campbell understands the Buckeyes will come with an even different look this year, and he insists he’ll have his guys prepared.

“In 2022, they were really, really aggressive. Last year, they were really back [in coverage],” Campbell said. “This year, they’re back to the middle. They’re not as aggressive, not as calm. So, they’re trying to get a little bit more aggressive dynamic, but not as much as they were in ’22, where they could let up the huge play.

“But they’re really good up front, especially on the edges. Jack Sawyer and JT Tuimoloau are guys we know very well — really talented, big, long, athletic guys. They’re stout in the middle, some guys that we’ve played for a while. Their corners are aggressive. As we know, Davison Igbinosun has the most PIs in the country, and Denzel Burke we know very well. [Safety] Caleb Downs coming from Alabama is a really, really talented player, and the linebacker crew, guys we played last year — some guys moved around. We know them well. They’re big and athletic. But we’re up for the task, and we’re going to try to knock them off the ball.”

That remains to be seen. But any key to winning this one depends on moving the ball on the ground. The winner of the rushing battle almost always wins the game. While there are exceptions, this year that seems especially important given U-M’s passing woes.

“It will be super important to be able to run the football, be efficient on third down,” Campbell said. “I think we were 11-of-16 on third down and 1-of-1 on fourth down [against Northwestern], so that tells you you’re really efficient in those situation. Scoring in the red zone, finishing drives the way we want to finish drives, downhill run game … that gives us a lot of confidence.

‘We’ve done a good job of protecting the football lately. We’ve got to continue to do that. But the guys were fired up. They were excited, but they were ready to flip that switch. We got the trophy. We sang ‘The Victors,’ we slapped high fives, and then we were ready for the Buckeyes.”