Welcome back to another edition of the Ballas and Skeen Show at Wolverine.com postgame Northwestern with our resident negative Nancy here who predicted a 20 to 17 Michigan win.

It was a win.

It was a win, but you still lose.

But it was rightfully so.

I'll be honest.

For some reason, I said, I thought this Michigan team was going to score 30 points again, and people were getting on me. How are they going to score 30 points? And then they put it all together and they put up a 50 burger, which nobody saw coming skiing. And that's great news. This is great news, though, because there was so much improvement. And part of it, of course, is Northwestern didn't play well. you know, they were coming off the Ohio State game where they actually did play okay and gave Ohio State a battle for a little while and held in there and did some things. They did nothing against this Michigan defense. And two things skiing. First of all, this Michigan defense, we've got to give them some props for the second halves of games so far. Oregon, you know what, if we go right down the line, we go Oregon, Michigan State for the most part, although they move the ball a little bit in the air in the second half. If you look in Indiana, what they did there, the last two games, Wink Martindale deserves some praise because that defense has come to play. They are nasty. It's going to get tougher, obviously, with Ohio State. But against Indiana, it's not a bad football team to hold them

the 12 yards and then Northwestern to what they did. Give them some credit for what they've done here

in the last year. Absolutely. And it starts with our two defensive tackles. And it goes out to

our defensive ends, which are pretty active, pretty good pass rushers.

That allows space and room for the lineback and court to run and make plays.

And then, of course, the secondary.

When you're putting pressure on quarterbacks, as we know from watching our own offense

to the course of this season, when the Michigan defensive line puts pressure on

quarterbacks, it makes your secondary look good and it all just

falls in. So the Michigan defense has been an example of what can happen when you play your ass off,

you play emotional football. It still looks like they're out there having fun together,

doing what they're doing on the defensive side of the ball. And that's what it looks like, right? Now,

Northwestern's offense, to be fair, ranked among the worst in the country, along with Michigan's

offense coming into that game, like in the bottom five in the most, you know, the most meaningful

categories in my opinion. And so it's not like they're playing some sort of offensive juggernaut,

but it doesn't matter. The emotion, I was watching, I said, okay, are they playing with a

high level of emotion? What's the effort look like? The hustle when guys are away from the

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