joe milton

Well that was the worst spring position battle ever. Days before spring ball was set to begin, Joe Milton, Michigan’s starter last season until Cade McNamara’s virtuoso performance against Rutgers, will be putting his name in the portal soon, as first broken by Rivals’ Chris Balas($).

if it hasn't happened yet, it will soon — quarterback Joe Milton will be entering the transfer portal. The decision has been made, so barring a change of heart (which is not expected), it will be Cade McNamara and freshman JJ McCarthy battling for the starting job this spring.

…and echoed by numerous sources hence [UPDATE: Including the man himself].

I want to thank Coach Harbaugh for giving me that opportunity to come play for a program with lots of tradition. I have bonds with my brothers that will last forever, I have decided to enter the transfer portal As a Grad transfer with three years of eligibility. pic.twitter.com/PeANE2vWmD

— Joe milton #5 (@Qbjayy7) February 18, 2021

Milton, always a major X-factor, looked poised to finally deliver as a redshirt sophomore going into last year, and through the Minnesota game. But the rawness that made him a long-term project showed up as injuries to his offensive tackles, less explicable offensive breakdowns, and scoring holes put him in a lot of long positions. A lack of option reads in the offense also suggested Milton wasn’t making the right ones in practice. As mixed success turned into gigantic errors, backup McNamara got a few chances and capitalized, albeit mostly against Rutgers. Both were trying to play injured against Penn State, and neither was expected to be available if Michigan had been able to play a game after that.

Michigan will enter spring ball with two guys in contention, both with freshman eligibility, though McNamara has been on campus two years while 5-star challenger J.J. McCarthy was in high school last year. That high school was IMG Academy, so McCarthy should be ahead of most high schoolers, but no more familiar with the playbook or the speed and complexity of the college level. Since late 2020 pickup Dan Villari is the only other scholarship QB on the roster, Michigan will probably try to find some help in the transfer portal to bolster the depth chart.

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FORMATION NOTES: Another game with a lot of absurd close-ups from both the director and the PSU defense.

That's every PSU defender within seven yards of the LOS, which is old school MSU aggression minus a yard. This happened late; prior to that PSU was going one high a lot. Michigan was their usual spread stuff aside from a couple of under center plays. One was an easy touchdown from inside the five. The second was the QB sneak, which was not as easy.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: At QB, McNamara, then Milton, then McNamara, then Milton. OL was Barnhart/Filiaga/Carpenter/Zinter/Stueber to start, and then Zinter went out. Filiaga flipped to right guard and Trevor Keegan came in.

No Charbonnet. Haskins again got a feature back level of snaps, with Corum and Evans chipping in. Mason got more run than he had recently. All and Eubanks got about equal snaps. Honigford got some bonus OL action.

WR pretty much the usual, except no Giles Jackson.

[After THE JUMP: hope you like hitches]

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.]