Note: I’m new here. I’ll be writing a couple posts each week this summer about football, hockey, and whatever other random stuff I think of. I’m also a senior sports editor and football writer at The Michigan Daily, where I’ve previously covered hockey and women’s basketball. 

Beyond that, I’m a rising senior (*internal screaming*) at Michigan with a major in Economics and a minor in Writing. You can follow me on Twitter @BrendanRoose for incoherent rambling about football, the Red Wings, future Formula One world champion Yuki Tsunoda, and why transit-oriented development is the solution to all of society’s ills.

Is it telling that Brian asked me to write during what he has dubbed the “SUMMER OF TRASH”? Possibly. Do I have any idea what any of my content will look like? Definitely not. Will Yuki Tsunoda someday be remembered as the greatest driver to ever set foot on planet Earth? 100% yes. 

Excited to get started. On to the real stuff… 

The Harbaugh Experiment

One of the most annoying Twitter takes about Michigan’s struggles over the last couple years has been that it’s time to end the “Harbaugh Experiment.” Mind you, it’s not the “end” part that I take issue with — even if I don’t necessarily agree that Harbaugh should’ve been fired, it’s not an unreasonable take to have. It’s the “experiment” that gets me.

Jim Harbaugh was never an experiment in Ann Arbor. His methods were unconventional, but they were tried and true at Stanford and in San Francisco. In December of 2014, he was everything Michigan fans thought the program needed — a proven winner, a bona fide “Michigan Man,” and a supposed quarterback whisperer that turned the likes of Andrew Luck and Colin Kaepernick into two of the NFL’s most fearsome quarterbacks. Harbaugh was about as far from an experiment as Michigan could get. He was a sure thing. 

Six years later, as Luck and Kaepernick have both left the NFL, so too have all of Harbaugh’s high-profile quarterbacks either transferred or underperformed. The on-field performances that readers of this blog know all too well have transformed December 2014’s certainty of success into an expectation of abject misery. Put simply, none of the circumstances that surrounded Jim Harbaugh’s arrival in Ann Arbor remain the same today. 

Harbaugh, for his part, has recognized issues in his program over time and has worked to fix them. Some of his changes have been marginal — such as the regular reshuffling of position coaches and the slowdown of his social media presence — while others have been more major, such as the hiring of Josh Gattis and embrace of his modern offensive philosophies. 

This offseason, though, has seen Harbaugh’s most significant gamble to date. Coming off his worst season ever as a coach — and a late contract renewal that cut his salary in half — Harbaugh realized that he needed new voices in the locker room, and with that realization, completely altered the way his program approaches recruiting. 

Consider the circumstances surrounding the search for Don Brown’s successor at defensive coordinator. The nearly universal expectation was that Harbaugh would pursue an established name like Derek Mason or Will Muschamp. 

But he didn’t. Instead of going for a safe hire that, in all likelihood, would have at least brought the defense back into the top half of the conference, Harbaugh decided to pursue two young position coaches with no play-calling experience — at least one of them, Mo Linguist, specifically for his recruiting acumen. When Linguist left for Buffalo, Harbaugh almost immediately nabbed Steve Clinkscale, another young coach with deep recruiting ties to the Midwest, to coach the secondary. That series of hires on defense reflects what could be the defining trend of this offseason: Harbaugh wants to recruit, so he’s hiring young. 

Enter year one of the new Harbaugh Experiment. 

It’s no coincidence that many of Harbaugh’s new hires have connections in areas where Michigan has struggled to recruit lately. Clinkscale and Ron Bellamy both have Michigan roots that should help establish a stronger in-state presence. Their efforts should be bolstered by Mike Hart because, well, he’s Mike Hart. George Helow brings connections in Florida, and even if Mike Macdonald doesn’t have much experience recruiting, odds are that his top priority won’t be 200 lb. three-star prospects from New England, so that’s a departure from the previous regime. 

Linguist’s departure hurt, but hiring Clinkscale was pretty much the best-case scenario for Michigan. The post-Linguist staff has already passed its first test in keeping Will Johnson committed; whether it can maintain that success could determine whether the Harbaugh Experiment pays off. 

[after THE JUMP: help on the way?]

Can better recruiting solve Michigan’s problems?

Ideally, Harbaugh would have done more to address the talent gap in 2018. But he didn’t, and now he has to confront both that and a development problem. 

Zooming out and looking at the Harbaugh era as a whole, the defining characteristic has probably been his teams’ performances against Ohio State. In that regard, yes, the talent gap has been a major obstacle to Harbaugh’s success, and a recruiting overhaul could in theory lift Michigan over that hurdle. 

The problem is, other teams are also getting in the way. From 2017 to 2020, Michigan ranked seventh, eighth, eleventh, and seventeenth in 247’s Team Talent Composite Rankings. Even if those numbers are trending downward (and probably not conducive to national championships), they should be high enough to consistently field a top two or three team in the Big Ten. They haven’t. In that same timeframe, Michigan State and Wisconsin — teams that Harbaugh is 3-3 and 2-3 against, respectively — have never cracked 247’s top 20. (If you’re a masochist and want to know Ohio State’s rankings, they were second, first, second, and third in that period. Try not to think about it.)

If talent alone was the problem, Michigan would not be struggling to handle less talented programs like Michigan State and Wisconsin. In 2020, Michigan had 41 four-stars on the roster; Michigan State had nine. Better recruiting won’t put Mel Tucker’s program in the rearview mirror. To do that will require better development and less predictable (and exploitable) schemes. 

Still, that doesn’t mean Michigan’s new recruiting-focused coaches can’t dig the program out of the hole. Their age means they’re unproven, but it also means they can bring more energy to practice and connect with their players better. Based on the few media availabilities during spring practice, it seems the players have responded well to that (though I’d always take players’ evaluations of their coaches with a grain of salt). I’d also expect Matt Weiss is coming in with an understanding that his sole responsibility is to ensure J.J. McCarthy becomes the world-class quarterback he’s been billed as — something Harbaugh and Ben McDaniels couldn’t do with the program’s previous saviors at quarterback. If he can succeed, Michigan’s situation will improve dramatically. 
 

What does this say about Harbaugh’s future at Michigan?

I’m of the increasingly unpopular opinion that extending Harbaugh was the right decision. The COVID coaching carousel was dull enough that, unless Matt Campbell was at the door asking for a job, there wasn’t really an alternative out there that’s worth tearing down the program for, especially with the financial and PR issues that would come with a coaching change during a pandemic. 

Still, after the unmitigated disaster that was 2020, keeping the same coach inherently requires some new understanding on both sides. First, Harbaugh has to recognize he’s on a much shorter leash. Obviously, this observation isn’t anything new or world breaking — it’s reflected in the very extension that’s keeping Harbaugh in Ann Arbor. Nobody, least of all Harbaugh, thinks the current regime will last if things don’t improve soon. 

On the other end, re-signing a coach that just went 2-4 requires an awareness that any possible resurgence from Harbaugh and co. will take time. So while the leash is still short — any season short of 8-4 or maybe 7-5 would almost certainly end with a coaching change — nobody within the athletic department can reasonably expect the team to win a Big Ten Championship in 2021. Right now, the focus should be on fixing broken systems, making meaningful progress, and laying the foundation for Michigan to re-enter the national conversation in 2022 or 2023. 

Whether or not he says it out loud, Harbaugh understands this. A newfound emphasis on recruiting is a recognition that rebuilding his program will take a few years, and a sign that he’s willing to commit to that timeframe. So, while the athletic department’s patience with Harbaugh certainly won’t be limitless, the gamble he’s taken by hiring a young staff indicates that he thinks he has at least a little leeway. 

Will the Harbaugh Experiment pay off? I have no idea. Even if Harbaugh’s fate is truly settled — and I don’t think it is — at least he hasn’t chosen to go the Dantonio route and doubled down on a coaching and recruiting philosophy that just doesn’t work anymore. Some people might see 2021 as a make-or-break season for Harbaugh. I don’t. As long as there’s some real, visible progress, and as long as the focus on recruiting looks to be yielding results, I think you have to give the Harbaugh Experiment — the real one — a fighting chance.