NBC Sports: Jim Harbaugh and Year 3 at Michigan
Towards the end: "Harbaugh entering Year 3 as Michigan’s head coach will do so starting the year with a younger roster in need of experience. Ohio State is a better team. Playing at Penn State in a revenge game could be difficult. Playing Florida in the opener should be a challenge. Michigan may not really have a shot at winning the Big Ten in 2017, and most will give Harbaugh a pass for that. That’s fair, but the pressure for winning big in 2018 will be high."
Of course we're fans. As was stated before, we've had o$u at home every other year for God knows how long. Hasn't made much difference. Harbaugh did much better in his second game against o$u on the road than he did in that horrible, awful, terrible game at home I don't even want to think about. The gap is closing and obviously I hope we win, BUT I WILL BELIEVE IT WHEN I SEE IT. Just because one has a realistc approach to things doesn't make them any less of a fan than the delusional fan who says the same thing every year "WE'RE GOING ALL THE WAY BABY WOOOOOO THIS IS OUR YEAR" with absolutely nothing of substance to back it up. Let us win a conference championship / beat o$u first and then we can talk about a national championship. As much as you don't want to hear it, the road to everything goes through o$u at this point.
I'm not expecting us to win the Big Ten this year. I am expecting us to beat Ohio State at home.
If we can't get at least one done this year, even though 2016 was a bigger wasted opportunity, the pressure will be high for 2018.
I think our D will handle WI and PSU. It will come down to the the game and I hope OSU is undefeated and number 1 in the country. We will probably be number 5 with one loss but when we upset OSU, Harbaugh 's team will win the eastern division and a rematch with WIl, in which we'll beat them even worse. Who knows what will happen in the playoffs.
The summer of love and in the Autumn, Bo turned our program around to being relevant again as a college football power house.
I think we're a high beta team, but the truth is that youth--even highly-rated youth--performing even serviceably right-out-of-the-box is rare. For example, our DL rotation is going to be hard to watch at times; 5 star or not, it can be a very hard spot to pick up
Will that change your opinion of Harbaugh?
I also think we are going to surprise some people this year, and be very good. HOWEVER, this roster has structural issues that will be hard to overcome against all 12 opponents (or 11 of them).
Think about it: we are returning...
- 2 starting OL (Cole, Bredeson), one of whom wasn't very good last year.
- 1 starting DL (0.5 for Hurst and 0.5 for Gary)
- 1 starting LB (McCray)
- 0 starting DBs
- 0 starting WRs (Perry still being unsure)
- 0 starting TEs
I mean, we have a LOT of talent coming in, and some (but not all) of those guys have seen significant PT. But this is still a very young and inexperienced team. The fact is that we had more roster turnover than basically anyone else in the conference, and because of the 2013 OL flameout, small 2014 class and so-so 2015 transition class, we don't have a bunch of experienced juniors --> seniors and RS sophomores --> RS juniors ready to level up.
And it is also a team that lacks depth at both OL and DL. We don't have enough guys who can just slot in, if a starter gets injured; and the starters are going to have to stay in much longer than they did last year, which risks fatigue and injury.
Finally, our young dudes are guaranteed to DERP in at least one road game, probably more than one. We may win a game in which that happens, or it might be against PSU or Wisconsin where there isn't a big margin for error.
Pointing this out is not "loser talk" (as if this conversation actually had any bearing on how the team performs). This is realism. We are a young team that's a year away from having all the pieces in place with the right combination of talent and experience to compete for the NC. Maybe it happens a year early, but what we know about the team right now suggests we are more likely to go 9-3 than 11-1.
I'm happy to be wrong, and stranger things have happened. But this is how it looks from right here, right now.
This is accurate.
We can be very good. But there is no margin of error.
A couple of key injuries or a lack of substantial progress in a couple of key areas can do us in.
It's OK to be hopeful, but assuming that everything that can go wrong will just go right instead is delusional.
It won't mean the sky is falling, we will still be on track. Just not wildly ahead of schedule based on good luck.
so what. It's college football. Each year is a reload. The team has will contend for the Big Ten Championship. This is the expectation going forward.
It's all about trajectory.
Last year's 10-3 season . . . 3 losses by a total of 5 points, all in the final minute . . . was vastly superior to 2015's 10-3 season. Yet they were both 10-3 seasons.
But the trajectory was upward. We demonstrated that we could go toe to toe with anyone. We did not get blown out by OSU like we did in 2015. In 2016, we could have easily been 12-0 in November. In 2015, we could have just as easily been 7-5.
That's trajectory.
We could go 10-3 again, and I could stil be happy if the trajectory shows that Harbaugh and Brown prove again that they can go toe to toe with anybody, and do it this time with young inexperienced players.
At that point we will know that Michigan is now fully weaponized for 2018, 2019, and beyond.
have reached the top of their "trajectory" or not. Is Harbaugh's base going to be somewhere in the range of 9-3/10-2, with a floor of 8-4, or is it going to be more like 11-1, with a floor of 10-2? Is Harbaugh going to be the kind of coach who recruits very well, but almost always seems to lose a game he shouldn't, and never wins enough of the big, tough games (a la Mark Richt, who got fired even though Georgia averaged 10 wins a year over his last 5 seasons)? The next two years will show.
This is the last season where going "toe-to-toe is going to cut it. If we have aspirations to be an elite program, a perennial top 5 team, we simply have to win, no excuses. There are no moral victories at that level, and we shouldn't be going "toe-to-toe" with teams like MSU, Iowa and Indiana.
The top of his trajectory will be being in the Big Ten East Championship hunt every November.
If you can do that, you will get your share of shots at the Big Ten Championship game and the Playoff.
He won't always win (even Meyer with inept Big Ten competition did not win it every year), but he will be good enough get a regular shot at it.
Once he gets enough shots, he will win because he has already shown that he can put together skilled well-coached teams that are smart and aggressive.
If you analyze his close losses so far against elite teams (small sample size), none of them have been because he coached not-to-lose or was stubborn or he was out-smarted.
They were because his available B+ players were not quite able to play up to A level against elite competition. That's not going to hold true for long.
In 2014.
In 2012, they were disqualified. In 2013, they lost the game to MSU. In 2015, they came in 2nd in the East (to MSU) and in 2016 they also came in 2nd in the East (to PSU).
And yet they were arguably one of the top 5 programs in the nation over that time span. Even Saban / Alabama did not win the SEC every year.
There is still some luck involved. But if you get enough shots (and Harbaugh will), you will get results.
Inexperience or not, I have full confidence that Don Brown will always hold down his end of the bargain on defense. So, as has been the #1 issue for the past few years, it is really just the offensive line that needs to take that championship level step forward. Michigan under Harbaugh will go as far as the O line takes it. This is why the Greg Frey hire was so important.
So true.
We were like three 3rd-and-short 1st downs away from being undefeated.
An O-Line that can go get those will be the last piece of the puzzle.
That wants to see Harbaugh "on the hot seat." I'm not sure where it's borne from, other than maybe a bit of fatigue over Twitter fights and things liek the Rome trip, but it's also plainly obvious that it's there. I think the short tenures of both of his predecessors feeds into this somewhat, especially from the outside, but in both cases, there were obvious circumstances that lead to the decision to let them go, purely from a football perspective. There is no legitimate reason for the same to be true of JH. And I think they know that.
These clowns still can't believe he left the NFL to coach at his alma mater. They believe with his track record of success and the pressure that comes with coaching here, that anything short of NC title contentention and annual ass thrashings of OSU will be an abject failure. They want to see him fail, Michigan fail, and will feel some vindication IF he doesn't work out here.
They also want to say "B-b-but Urban Meyer" Knowing damn well he was gift wrapped an elite level team that already had the QBs to run his system, and that he didn't have to rebuild for shit.
As usual, the headline is way out in front of what the article actually said. The article itself uses so much weasel-speak that you need an interpreter. (The most hilarious part was when the author referenced the President's latest tweet as drawing attention away from the author saying something foolish on twitter. That's some first rate squid ink right there.)
But boil it down, and the article uses four teams/coaches as comparisons to Michigan.
1) Saban's third season at Alabama: national championship.
2) Meyer's third season at OSU: national championship.
3) Swiney's third season at Clemson: ACC championship.
4) Franklin's third season at PSU: B1G championship.
Ergo, the standard for "performance matching the hype" is a conference championship by the third season. Using his typical misdirection, the author points out why expecting Michigan to win the B1G in this his third season may be an unfair standard to judge Harbaugh, because circumstances (true enough). However, that means he needs to win a national championship in his fourth season to keep the heat off (what the what?!). Where to begin?
The article fails to acknowledge that luck as well as skill played a huge part in all four of those seasons. The article that was literally the next one up on the NBC site was a retrospective on Alabama's game against LSU in Saban's third season. It pointed out that Alabama benefited from a very questionable call that did not give LSU an apparent interception of an Alabama pass. Without the win over LSU, Alabama probably doesn't play for the National Championship, or perhaps not even in the SEC championship game. (Sound like Michigan last season if the call in the OSU game went the other way?)
Ohio State won their National Championship because their second string QB, who previously hadn't played a down of college football, had a career season and was in the Heisman conversation; he's not been that good since. And when he went down, their third string QB played even better. He too has never duplicated that performance in his subsequent career.
Clemson, as the article acknowledged, overcame a favored Virginia Tech to win the ACC, and we all know Franklin's overall record for three seasons at Penn State, how he got woodsheded in Ann Arbor, and the magic pixie dust and a-holes in the outfield that it took for PSU to win the B1G (including Michigan's coin flip loss to OSU). So to be a great coach you have to be lucky as well as good in your third season?
Also, the leap to the conclusion that only a National Championship in year four will outweigh a failure to win a Conference in year three is laughable on its face. Finally, this guy does not understand the Michigan fan base. We revere Bo Schembechler, even though he never won one. This team has one National Championship during the natural lives of all of it's fans, even the most aged. We don't trash coaches who fail to win them, unlike some other programs. However, what we do expect is consistent excellence, which was sorely lacking in the years preceding Harbaugh's hire. Yeah, would another 10-3 record, with a loss to OSU and no appearance in the B1G championship game disappoint us? Sure, but Harbaugh would not even be close to the hot seat then, and I don't think he'd have to win it all the next season to stay off it.
Reading these articles feels like hearing the fondest wishes of anti-Michigan trolls as they try to talk us into firing our best head coaching hire since Bo Schembechler. In your dreams, a-holes!
as another coach who won a conference championship and went to the layoff in his third year (with a roster of mainly 3 star recruits). Bob Stoops, who was also an elite coach, won a NC in his second year, after taking over a 5-6 team.
As far as "luck", that excuse has just about run out for the Harbaugh faithful (not that Harbaugh is likely to use that excuse himself). When teams are strangely "lucky" game after game and year after year, the most astute and objective observer starts to realize that something more than "luck" is involved. And this business of cherry-picking one questionable call in one game is just silliness and sour grapes. Every game has any number of questionable calls or non-calls that will have affected the outcome, as well as a lot of plays that the losing team simply failed to make. Unless you go through and pinpoint every one of those, that kind of argument is meaningless.
Even though we lose three starters, there's a chance that the addition of Greg Frey to our coaching staff will improve OL play to a level we haven't seen in a loooong time.
If it's true that we'll be spreading our offense out just a little bit more with Pep Hamilton in tow, our Offensive line will be put in a better position to succeed.
I think it's ridiculous that some fans think that Speight has hit his ceiling as a starter. His ceiling is doing what he did against Maryland and Illinois last year to Ohio State and everyone else we play. I think Speight has the ceiling of a Heisman finalist with the coaching he has around him. A Harbaugh QB is almost guaranteed to be an NFL draft pick, and I think that will be the case with Speight as well
I will good and happy with this year!
Beat everyone who ends with the word "State"!
Fixed it.
- a revenge game against Appalachian State, one Michigan’s athletic director thought was a brilliant marketing strategy.
- the final game (at the time) of the Notre Dame-Michigan series, in which the Wolverines outgained the Irish 289-280 and still managed to lose 31-0.
- a home loss to Utah in a swirling monsoon that felt like judgment day for the Hoke era.
- the Shane Morris Fiasco.
- Gary Nova throwing for 400 yards. Losing to Rutgers.
- that ugly Penn State win that made us endure two weeks of “maybe Hoke can save his job!” talk radio chatter.
- that Michigan State game that definitively silenced such talk. The Spartans outgained Michigan 446-186. Doug Nussmeier pumped his fist when Michigan scored a touchdown to get within 25 points in the fourth quarter. Michigan apologized for being hyped before the game. I tweeted “Devin Gardner needs a hug” very sincerely and got blocked by Devin Gardner.
- MOON.
How quickly they forget.
We could also go back farther and add what Wisconsin did to us in 2010.
As long as the program remains on a steady upward trajectory, that's all we can really ask for. I don't expect a national title next year, nor do I expect a conference title, though I do think that goal is within reach if the young guys become instant contributors.
What I want to see is a group of extremely young, but talented players mesh together and look like a force to be reckoned with come November. I get that there will be growing pains, but I'm hoping that, at the bare minimum, these guys can go toe to toe with anyone on the schedule by November, and set up for a very highly anticipated 2018-19 season where the team looks like a top-10 national title contender.
Swinney didn't really get Clemson to where it is right now until 4-5 years into his tenure there. OSU won a title in year three with a team that was already stacked top to bottom in talent, along with having a bunch of Tressel-recruited upperclassmen to lead the way. Not trying to make excuses as Harbaugh still has to get it done. You don't pay a man $9 million a year and expect less than national title contention on a consistent basis. But with a team as young as next year's will be, they're going to have to grow up FAST if they want to be playoff contenders in November.