The Morning After

Harbaugh is going to be an underdog in 4 of the next 6 games, including against Indiana.  This team has a better shot of going 3-5 than they do 5-3!  I just don’t see how you can rationally argue “this is as good as it gets” anymore. 
 

It’s not an exaggeration to say Michigan is at an existential crossroads. By all accounts, the Administration is not just fine but fully in support of Harbaugh.  Would this Same leeway be given at OSU? I think we all know the answer there...

If Michigan doesn’t work out an exit strategy here, they’re giving up on being a national football contender and us fans should treat the product accordingly.

Still feel like shit. Fire Harbaugh

Today, Jim Harbaugh has to be the all-time greatest enigmatic coach ever-at Michigan. Barring going undefeated the rest of the way, I believe the need of a search for his replacement has now been established. Yesterday was more than simply the straw breaking the camel's back.  

Michigan's best position coach has OSU ties...hmm...there is another top replacement prospect out there who does as well. Given the ascending prominence of offense, I do wonder about about Josh Gattis as well. But Fickell is surely demonstrating some coaching chops at Cincinnati. 

Time to move on.

Pretty much the same as yesterday. It's obvious this program is not going any higher than this. Nothing about what we do says we're going to be a top 5 team at any point in time under Harbaugh. Yesterday I was good with cleaning house entirely. I think today maybe I would keep Gattis just to have some consistency on offense as we're finally modernizing, but I'm not really impressed with him yet either. He's still TBD

Jim Harbaugh has never out coached anyone as Michigan coach.  
 

Michigan was not smart enough to game plan that the other team night game plan against its weaknesses.  Again, perhaps because Michigan never seems to game plan against an opponent’s weakness.  
 

Brown will give up 100 to OSU and 50 to IU  

Fire the defensive staff. All of them. I get you cannot make chicken salad with chicken shit on the corners but that’s on the staff for having chicken shit to work with. Brown has been passed by because he’s stubborn.

Fire, reassign or demote the recruiting coordinator guy, name escapes me. Dude.

Keep the O staff. It’s what college football has become.

In one of the threads yesterday, someone mentioned that they are convinced Harbaugh is on meds that are impacting his ability to get emotionally invested in the game like he did in 2015 and 2016. There could be something to that. I thought I noticed that he started putting on a few extra pounds around year 4, but chalked in up to "dad bod." But now, I wonder; weight gain is definitely a side effect of some ADHD and other psychoactive drugs. My son gained almost 30 pounds in six months after his doctor changed his meds.

Harbaugh hasn’t done much better, if any better than Hoke IMO. Hoke didn’t have the luxury of playing Rutgers and Maryland every year for 2 guaranteed wins. Hoke had better recruiting classes than Harbaugh, and if anyone doesn’t believe that,  it’s easily looked up online. And one could argue Hoke had better outings against our rivals including OSU, giving us the only win in recent memory. Sure Hoke went 1-3 vs OSU but 2 of those losses were single score defeats by a combined total of 6 points.

EDIT:

I suppose I should mention that Rich Rod left the cupboards nearly empty from a recruit standpoint when Hoke got here but Hoke left the cupboards overflowing with talent when Harbaugh got here. 

Not knocking Joe Milton, but how did he beat out McCaffery?  There is something more to this story.  McCaffery was the prototypical QB for this type of offense.  Milton has always been subpar in accuracy, that isn't something you can just work on and expect great improvement.  Also, every time McCaffery came on the field the entire offense seemed to be energized.  There was something different about the other players response.  I don't trust this coaching staff with being honest with meritocracy. 

There were 3 things that really stood out and exemplified how poorly this team is coached. First was driving 90 yards or so and then running wildcat from the 4 twice in a row. Its not Haskins fault he didn't recognize the linebacker being there and underthrew the ball. Hes not a damn qb. You want to get cute like that, at least bring in Barrett, he was a former qb and threw a special teams pass last year. Two, the run inside the 5 at the end of the game to eat up more time and somehow got bailed out by a TV timeout. Precious seconds ticking by and you once again try up the gut that hadnt worked all day. Three, the onside kick. That was perhaps the dumbest looking shit I've ever witnessed and then having 2 kickers go after the ball was even worse. That looked like something the kickers came up with when they got out there. It was a "we've thrown in the towel already" moment. 

I could go into a lot of things like why can the dline never get to the qb, the ignorance of one on one press coverage with our db's, the lack of wide receiver separation, Milton locking onto whoever the playcall is for, his inaccuracy on the deep ball, recruiting at corner and dline, stone hands on several receivers, the runningback carousel, how many interceptions we should have vs do, the archaic fullback crap, and so on but those 3 really highlighted how actually poorly we are coached.

Shea was 2-0 against MSU. 
6TDs 0INTs

Just sayin. 

Going to force myself to rewatch like I do with most games.  I need to better understand what happened on offense.  Hard to believe the team could barely reach 24 points,  This is going to be painful.

It is confounding to see a team overachieve from one week to the next. There's no baseline. Can overachieve next against a hot Indiana team?-Maybe. Penn State went 0 nd 2 then won out a few years back. Yea, we're not Penn State but they are still 18-22 year olds out there so anything is possible.

You can fear the worst but also hope for the best. I really don't know what to expect from this team going forward and leave it at that.

I slept like a baby last night which tells me I am at peace and ready to move on.  For a few years, I didn't think there was anybody better than Harbaugh to lead Michigan.  But when you look at the body of work, 0-5 against OSU, 3-3 against MSU, 1-1 against Notre Dame, 3-2 against Penn State, and 1-4 in bowl games, its abysmal for a program like Michigan. No coach would ever be allowed to continue.

6 years ago, I begged for every Michigan and 49ers loss to bring Jim home but he is a shell of himself. The game yesterday was the worst loss since The Horror in my opinion.  Instead of squashing a Spartan team that had rumbles from the fanbase they already wanted a new coach, we prepared a game plan which I wouldn't wipe my ass with.  

I have no idea who to go get but I don't care frankly because I am ready for something better than a .500 record against MSU and winning more than 1 of our last 2 games of the year over a 6 year period.

I didn't see the game.  I was delivering food to sick friends out of town.  Cancer, heart and covid have three friends down.  I had the game on the radio.   

Sparties plan was to attack our young, weak spots.  Corner, O-line, and QB.  The M staff and players all did a poor job. 

-Don Brown is stubborn and the world knows what he always falls back on.  He is as predictable as my first Wife. 

-Speed was in outer space yesterday.  Gattis didn't have anything more simple for the O to fall back on and get their legs under them.   

My butt hurts today.  My butt is gonna hurt for a while.  I hate Sparty.        

Everything is fucked. . .

most embarrassing loss since Toledo.  

I'm done

And where I'm really at this morning to sum it all up: When does basketball start?

I can't remember a time when I have moved on from football in game 2 but here I am. 

I’m pretty certain that offense we witnessed yesterday was at least 80% Harbaugh overriding Gattis. The offense looked noticeably different from the 2nd Half of last season. What happened to the tempo?? What happened to the RPO’s?? Where was the “speed in space”?? The looked exactly like the slow, plodding, clunky, awkward, boring offense I remember watching in 2017, except out of the shotgun. That was undoubtedly because of Harbaugh. Gattis has a future, and he’d be wise to leave and develop his coaching abilities elsewhere under someone who will actually fucking let him.

Michigan needs to clean house. This shit will never change until Harbaugh and the rest of the Bo Schembechler “Michigan Man” coaching tree/old guard are gone. It makes me so fucking sad because I wanted Harbaugh to be the guy—the guy who came home to his Alma mater and saved them and brought Michigan back into national relevancy. But it’s become abundantly clear that Harbaugh is just another Schembechler old guard hack who is so stubbornly mentally stuck in the 20th century—just like Lloyd Carr and Brady Hoke.