Has Harbaugh Invented a New College Offense?
Granted, I don’t watch nearly the college football I did in the 90’s, when I was a young man. Back then I had a much better understanding of the offenses of the day. I understood I-formation Big 10 football from watching Michigan, et al. Living in Colorado at the time, I got to watch true triple option at Air Force. Nebraska’s unique power option, some very good Colorado teams running wishbone and I-formation option games. Houston and the Run-and-Shoot, and there were many West-Coast passing games from BYU and California teams. The pioneering spread passing game that Mike Bellotti was quietly creating at Oregon, and which eventually cut us apart in 2007 and showed me that CFB had really passed Lloyd Carr by.
Then I got married, had kids, finished residency, got a vasectomy, etc.- i.e. started real adulting- and the best I could often do for the following 10 years was DVR a Michigan game and try and watch it before I inadvertently learned the score. I feel like I missed about 10 years of in-depth attention to football, and they were a good 10 years to roughly miss, with RichRod and Hokie at the helm for 7 of them, and the SEC taking over. Now my kids are middle/high-school ages, and follow Michigan football themselves, and it seems we’re watching more games from around the nation and watching UM games with great analysis and concern. What I’ve seen in the last few years, and appearing to finally culminate now with JJ McCarthy’s talents, is an offensive concept that exists nowhere else in college football and, to my knowledge, never has before. It may even be that it’s an offense that could only exist with Harbaugh at the helm, because the offense seems to be a doppelganger of his personality. You have to give Harbaugh a lot of credit for having core beliefs (run the ball, win physically over 60 minutes) while at the same time being willing to dramatically evolve in the way he delivers this on the field.
In the early years of Harbaugh at UM, he seemed to be essentially attempting to run a pro-set Stanford offense, only a bit whimperingly for the lack of dominant OL and lights-out RBs. All his QB’s also had serious limitations. Then Gattis came and we moved into something like a spread-to-run power (which seemed to be a detente between Gattis' "speed in space" and Harbaugh's desire to run power) in which the QB didn’t actually run or threaten much. The endeavor generally got by, passing when we needed to. But it didn’t look particularly in synch until late last year (and even then we didn’t do much until the Maryland/OSU finale in which OSU showed, more than anything, IMO, that they didn’t really like the contact part of the sport). However, in that game, in addition to the ferocity of the OL/TE, I would guess that there were some clever subtleties in the offensive delivery (formations, blocking scheme, etc.) that actually left OSU holding their jocks more often than not and led to the paving as much as the physicality did. We saw intimations of this ability from time to time before, like when we absolutely paved Notre Dame in the driving rain.
Bringing us now to 2022, Penn State, when I fully realized this silly, ignorant epiphany that I’ve chosen to create a thread about and you're foolishly reading. It was really all the 3 TE formations that finally made me understand that Harbaugh (and staff) have invented a brand new college offense, that is something of a hybrid of many eras of football- it’s read option, modern passing, downhill power running, and even a flying wedge of TE’s. Now, maybe someone will put me in my place and say “oh, the Ravens have run this for years”. Fine. I don’t watch professional football so wouldn’t have a clue. But in college, I don’t believe there exists another team using 3 TE’s to run a spread offense, shifting those TE’s all over both pre and post-snap, like it’s some kind of Fielding Yost offense. It imposes blocking schemes that no other team can really recreate and allows an overwhelming number of bodies to be thrown into the point of attack on power runs, and that point of attack to be very mobile. We also create constraints on this with a reasonably high-level passing game and other running schemes like zone blocking. When we’re not conducting this offense in the most vanilla way possible to beat the Indianas and Marylands of the world by 17, this seems to create incredible headaches for opposing defenses, which seem perplexed and helpless far beyond what their talent or previous games might indicate.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Michigan football remains among the most intellectual pursuits in sports. Who’s got it better than us?
October 18th, 2022 at 12:20 PM ^
Alternative title: "Has Harbaugh Been Possessed by Fielding Yost?"
Fair question, and the answer is "absolutely."
OP points out that the offense involves a flying wedge—made out of more TEs than another team can put on their practice squad who morph like nanobots—suddenly appearing at a place in the play that you're not prepared to deal with, and paving whatever is in front of it.
October 18th, 2022 at 1:28 PM ^
YES!
This is the first time I learned about someone's vasectomy in a football forum. Everything written flowed beautifully. While Diary material, it may not get as many eyeballs as it does here. I enjoyed it and found myself laughing at work.
Keep posting Buy Bushwood!
October 18th, 2022 at 1:52 PM ^
Wait, what? Did you just say that having your eyes on his vasectomy flow was beautiful?
October 18th, 2022 at 2:05 PM ^
"They botched my vasectomy. I'm more potent than ever!" -- Cosmo Kramer
October 18th, 2022 at 3:51 PM ^
When my wife and I had first started dating, she watched my vasectomy. We like to joke that seeing my insides gave her the upper hand in the relationship.
October 19th, 2022 at 9:53 PM ^
When the Dr and nurse consulted my wife and me about bringing in the sample to test the results of my vasectomy I asked them if saliva would effect the results.
My wife smacked me in the arm.
October 18th, 2022 at 11:54 AM ^
GOTDAMNNN!!!! I don't have time to read all that right now. I mean, I am at work, and all... Maybe later?
But yeah, nice post!
October 18th, 2022 at 1:56 PM ^
Tell me that you don't read UFR at work.
October 18th, 2022 at 2:42 PM ^
Can I lie?
No, I cannot. I have read multiple UFR's, Monday game columns, Neck Sharpies... Alas, I've read most of everything this site offers while at work. If I ever get fired, it'll be because of this site.
October 18th, 2022 at 11:55 AM ^
Then I got married, had kids, finished residency, got a vasectomy, etc.
Just thought you'd sneak that one in there, eh?
October 18th, 2022 at 12:12 PM ^
That is where I stopped reading
October 18th, 2022 at 1:58 PM ^
Hey, Tolstoy, a lot of magniloquent wind and largely irrelevant prose to raise some tepid football-related points. But, that's just my opinion.
Maybe remember Churchill's apology to a friend: "I'm sorry for the length of this letter, but I didn't have time to make it shorter."
October 18th, 2022 at 12:22 PM ^
Nothing makes me angrier than when guys brag about getting a vasectomy.
October 18th, 2022 at 12:27 PM ^
Nothing?
October 18th, 2022 at 12:57 PM ^
Nothing. Once he walked in on his wife cheating on him, and just as he was about to tell her he'd never been so angry in his life, the man she was with said, "hey guess what"
October 18th, 2022 at 4:13 PM ^
While I was getting my vasectomy, the Urologist was telling me about a man who had gotten one at his wife's insistence. Not long afterward she became pregnant. He returned repeatedly for fertility tests, which always came back negative, at which point he told the man it was time to have a talk with his wife. He said it happens more often than you think.
Cheery news as my flesh burned...
October 18th, 2022 at 12:28 PM ^
^ hasn't had a vasectomy
October 19th, 2022 at 9:54 PM ^
Maybe he just doesn’t brag about it.
October 18th, 2022 at 12:34 PM ^
As someone who got one, it isn't worth bragging or even mentioning unless there's a point to be made about it. Started skimming after that.
What do vasectomies have in common with M football? I really hope nothing, don't want to know.
October 18th, 2022 at 12:51 PM ^
Well they're forbidden by the catholic church, head coach is catholic. You see where I'm going with this...
October 18th, 2022 at 1:31 PM ^
Is that true? Not sure if you are kidding. I am (very) nominally Catholic and never heard that before.
Learn something new every day.
October 18th, 2022 at 2:30 PM ^
Wait seriously EvenYouBrutus? I hope this is true. I’ve got a hyper Catholic relative who judges my wife and I harshly for not getting married in a Catholic Church (mentions it every time he’s drunk around us). This guy leads youth group at his parish and is very involved with the goings on. He definitely got a vasectomy recently.
October 18th, 2022 at 2:54 PM ^
It’s true. I’m a Catholic and the Catholic Church has always believed this.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2370 (bold and italics for emphasis)
2370 Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality. These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil
October 21st, 2022 at 11:04 AM ^
P.S. Getting drunk is also considered a mortal sin. So there's that, too.
October 18th, 2022 at 12:53 PM ^
Take out that suppository and enjoy some levity. After all, I didn't link my sex-tapes.
October 18th, 2022 at 1:11 PM ^
Provides a weekend on the couch with a bag of frozen peas. And no household chores. More ice in my drink please honey?!?
October 18th, 2022 at 2:15 PM ^
Does the first sentence have any correlation to the second sentence?
October 18th, 2022 at 3:10 PM ^
"After all, I didn't link my sex-tapes."
I'm not a religious guy but thank God for that.
October 18th, 2022 at 12:56 PM ^
What do vasectomies have in common with M football?
A vasectomy is in the same region as having your nuts cut off. Which is what we did to OSU in 2021 and PSU in 2022. So there’s that!
October 18th, 2022 at 1:27 PM ^
I was just thinking the same ... we could call it the Vasectomy Offense
defenses shooting blanks on those missed tackles
October 18th, 2022 at 3:11 PM ^
The Vas Offense. As differentiated from the Vag offense run famously by Iowa.
October 18th, 2022 at 4:51 PM ^
OSU definitely didn't have the sack for our physicality in 2021.
October 18th, 2022 at 10:23 PM ^
That’s the Michigan Deferens
October 18th, 2022 at 12:50 PM ^
Hey want to know something awesome?
I got a vasectomy once
October 18th, 2022 at 1:07 PM ^
I wouldn't want to do it MORE than once. Consequences could be...unexpected.
October 18th, 2022 at 2:03 PM ^
weakling ... i've had three
October 18th, 2022 at 12:59 PM ^
The only thing that tops it, is that board post years ago where a guy bragged about how he "retired today" because his wife made so much money he didn't have to work anymore (he was less than 45 I believe).
October 18th, 2022 at 1:50 PM ^
Was it Tom Brady last year? Because that didn't exactly pan out.
October 18th, 2022 at 1:31 PM ^
Not sure I agree. If the opportunity ever arises to shag Bushwood's wife, we know to wear protection.
October 18th, 2022 at 12:42 PM ^
Bushwood, sir, is not for sale!
October 18th, 2022 at 3:43 PM ^
Also, there's no gambling...and I never slice.
October 18th, 2022 at 1:44 PM ^
Yeah, that's my cue to find the nearest exit door.
October 18th, 2022 at 3:21 PM ^
The vasectomy functions as an autobiographical punchline of sorts. Lends some vulnerability to the post’s author, which I think works well in this context. Sure it’s a risk to reveal, but I respect the honesty in this venue.
October 18th, 2022 at 11:57 AM ^
It looks a lot like a modern NFL offense. A lot in common with Chargers, Bills, Chiefs, Giants, etc.
October 18th, 2022 at 12:22 PM ^
All four of those teams offenses are wildly different from each other.
October 18th, 2022 at 12:46 PM ^
Thank you. As I was reading that I'm thinking the poster probably thinks all foods are the same. You know like a radish, a hot fudge sundae, jalapenos and sushi are taste alike.