dylan mccaffrey

11/28/2020 – Michigan 17, Penn State 27 – 2-4 Big Ten

Only one picture goes in the history book. We've got the French And Indian War to cover, people! Teapot Dome! William Henry Harrison, briefly! So you've got one image to sum up whatever your thing is. Maybe a couple paragraphs. This is no time for subtlety. Beat 'em over the head with it. Elide various details. Sum up a complicated series of decisions and events with one emblematic Item For Posterity.

The leader in the clubhouse for Jim Harbaugh's tenure at Michigan is from Daily reporter Theo Mackie, who set up shop behind the bench in an empty Michigan Stadium for the latest football-type exercise:

The loudest cheers from Harbaugh’s sideline in the second half came on Penn State penalties. When freshman receiver A.J. Henning leapt over a Nittany Lions’ defender to make a highlight-reel catch, Harbaugh had to turn towards a group of players sitting on the bench and tell them to stand up and cheer.

This catch was stunning enough that I momentarily roused myself from my torpor in its aftermath. I am a person who has given up on this coaching regime and is mostly worried that whatever signs of life this team displays will get in the way of hiring Matt Campbell. Persons on the football team are in the midst of a project most of them have spent large chunks of their lives pursuing, watching a game that's still within reach. If Harbaugh has to pull the Jeb(!) Bush "please clap" on them, it's over. Sooner or later, it's over.

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The brief explanation that makes the textbook is this: not enough people liked Jim Harbaugh.

I once sat near a former walk-on defensive back at a game during the waning days of the Carr regime, when people were unhappy and getting more vociferous about it. He swore up and down that he and anyone else who played for Lloyd Carr would run through a wall for him. I have no doubt this is true. Carr engendered loyalty that still borders on fanatical some 15 years after his retirement. We had a former Carr OL on MGoRadio last year and tried to talk about Michigan's improved offensive line; he spent the bulk of the segment dumping on five future NFL draft picks after going undrafted himself. Because they weren't like the guys in the old days. ¯\_(?)_/¯

Say what you want about Carr's failure to adapt to modern college football, hidebound dedication to Mike DeBord, and failure to spawn any sort of coaching tree: people loved him. Still do. Not everyone, but most people. Enough people.

I'm sure a number of people love Jim Harbaugh, but the parade of transfers and lateral-or-worse coaching departures, the various high schools at which Michigan can't recruit unless the player in question was raised in a winged helmet madrasa, the coaching fraternity that can't wait to shiv the guy: these are indications that Harbaugh's famously prickly nature hasn't mellowed out like his sideline demeanor has. He is infamous in a profession that is frequently the last refuge of the criminally insane.

When a guy like Harbaugh stumbles, the knives come out and the whole edifice collapses. Harbaugh's proven that if he gets things pointed in the right direction and gets buy in he can take things in the right direction implausibly fast and reach implausible heights. But three NFC championship games in three years was not enough capital to survive one mediocre season with the 49ers. The 49ers axed him so they could promote Jim Tomsula, a career defensive line coach who looked like a cross between Wario and Adam Sandler's character in Uncut Gems. This was the thing 49ers fans were momentarily excited about in the aftermath:

I bought an ironic Jim Tomsula "Bludgeon" shirt like a smug asshole, and now here we are. At some point Harbaugh rubs you the wrong way and if you've got a smidgen of historical success without him, even Jim Tomsula looks like a good idea.

Stanford, though… Stanford was different. The sad-sack Pac-12 program hadn't experienced success since John Elway and was coming off three of the worst back-to-back-to-back hires—Tyrone Willingham, Buddy Teevens, and Walt Harrris—in recent college football history. They were losers. Historic, unprecedented, incredible losers. They craved any level of success and would put up with any level of eccentricity to get it. A titanic upset of USC with a third-string quarterback and pottery major established him as Dear Leader. And nothing would shake that.

That's what Jim Harbaugh needs: losers. The biggest damn losers on the planet. Not people who look on a 9-3 season as a disappointment. People who regard wins as worse draft position.

Harbaugh and the Lions need each other. Michigan cannot stand in the way of the most perfect match heaven and hell have ever yet conceived.

[After THE JUMP: Pizza party! Please click.]

Nico Collins is out: 

SI's Albert Breer reports that Michigan receiver Nico Collins has signed with NFL super-agent Drew Rosenhaus.

It appears Collins has played his last game in Ann Arbor. https://t.co/pRcKNkh76w

— Aaron McMann (@AaronMcMann) September 16, 2020

This is extremely bad news, but at least you don't have to see me tweet THROW IT TO NICO 500 times this November. 

Dylan McCaffrey is out:

Confirmed with a source that Michigan quarterback Dylan McCaffrey is opting out and seeking a transfer. He'll have two years of eligibility remaining.

— Tom VanHaaren (@TomVH) September 16, 2020

Whether this is regular bad news or extremely bad news will become clear over the course of the season. Losing McCaffrey means the QB depth chart is Joe Milton, now the presumed starter, Cade McNamara, and a true freshman Michigan picked up in a late scramble after JD Johnson was forced to medically retire.

Milton is acquiring a lot of offseason hype; this could be an indicator he has improved vastly over the past couple years and McCaffrey didn't want to stick around. That's the optimistic take. The less optimistic take is that McCaffrey left for whatever reason and now Milton is being handed the job more or less by default.

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(I wrote two this week. Second, longer one will post tomorrow)

Whether Michigan was correct to go for two to make it an 18-point game with over 20 minutes to play against an opponent with a top-15 offense is an argument best left for people who care if a team runs up the score.

HOW Michigan got its two-point conversion however is much more of mystery, thanks to ESPN's director failing to capture the play until a second after the snap, or show a review. I thought it highly unfair that Ryan Day gets the all-22 of this while Michigan fans never get to find out what happened. So I watched it a lot. And I'm pretty sure here's what happened:

Michigan used the old swinging gate tactic, caught at least one IU player (the WLB) napping, and ran a QB sprint option with the snapper as pitch-man and a travel pass option (plus two pick routes).

[After THE JUMP: How it worked, and how is it legal?]