Army Snowflakes - The Coaching

Think about this. O’korn passed for over 3,000 yards his freshman year at Houston. He comes to Michigan and Harbaugh turns him into a piece of shit. Patterson throws for over 3000 yards his freshman year at ole miss. He comes to Michigan and he looks lost out there. Yes Ruddock looked good his last 6 or 7 games. So much for being a quarterback whisperer. Also going back to last year when was the last time a Harbaugh coached team impressed the whole game?

Off of our wildly small two game sample I’m seeing toss-ups or losses @Wisconsin, @PSU, @Maryland, MSU, ND, and OSU.

Doubt we lose them all but uh, yeah.

Everyone trying to out whine and out doomsday the other on here. No one knows anything at this point. And they choose not to remember all the same predictions of doom were posted after Notre Dame last year.

Let's see what happens. I would be nice to have another warm up before Wisconsin because there is a lot to work on.

The ball security has to improve obviously. That factor turned a comfortable win into a scare today. Because the defense was very good.

Charbonnet was on punt coverage. Why we’d expose one of our most important players to additional injury risk is pretty sad. He’s had knee injuries in the past. Just seems to be a short sighted decision. 

Fans booing loudly JHs running it up the middle every play. 

Moody was clutch last year - now Nordin in & missing again.

Sloppy undisciplined team. 

Swap head coaches with the Raiders.   Jimmy will love Vegas although he sucks vs their spreads.   And he can wear Al Davis style sunglasses.  

If Urban Meyer felt that he was wronged by OSU and quietly forced to resign against his will, then there's a chance he pulls a Brett Favre move and comes to coach Michigan to get back at OSU. 

God, that would be amazing.

With 2:30 left in regulation and 4th and 2 at the 50 yard line, I thought we should have punted.

With 1 timeout remaining, there is no way Army could have moved the ball down the field quickly enough to get into FG range to attempt a game winner. Instead we went for a run up the middle, got stuffed, and left Army needing just 20 yards or so to get into range for a FG attempt.  

I understand playing for the win and trying to keep the ball and getting a FG of our own, but we hadn't converted anything lately and the coaches surely knew that Shea wasn't executing anything well.  Punt seemed better and we were lucky not to lose to that FG. 

Where exactly was / is speed in space ?  We have had about one quarter of aggressive passing football and then otherwise zip.  We are primarily handing it off to the RB in a 3 YPC cloud of dust.  Bo would be proud, but where the fuck is that "modern" offense that was promised and needed to compete for the B1G ?

Thank God for a bye week as this team needs the extra time to find its shit.   

Charbonnet in on punt coverage ...Wtf!

At home, against what should have been an overmatched army team they ran the ball 10 straight times to end regulation. In a tie game, at home, against army. They gained 24 yards on those 10 straight runs to end regulation. 

Harbaugh is still my guy, for better or worse. If he can’t fix this, I don’t know who can.

I don’t want this outcome, but to be honest, and I know I’ll get negged for this, if Harbaugh fails here, it’ll almost be kind of liberating. I think we’ll finally be able to relieve ourselves of the expectations we’ve placed upon the players, the staff and program as a whole that we should somehow be Alabama North. That we should be more than what we’ve been for the last 20 years. An 8-9 win program, occasional 10 win, who’s legacy is to consistently fall short and lose the biggest game of the year. I know we want to be more than that. And we should. But that is quite honestly what we’ve been since 1997. Can’t argue with facts.

I Hope Harbaugh turns it around, but if he doesn’t, I think Michigan will have officially passed the point of no return. For the next year or two, we may quite literally be at a crossroads for the entire history of the program. If Harbaugh turns it around, beats OSU, wins the Big Ten, the entire trajectory of the program changes. If he doesn’t, we continue the long march towards being a slightly better version of Minnesota.

Army Game - smelling salts for future performances...

Not to go off on a rant, but Michigan did pay Army West Point $1.5 millions compensation for the privilege of coming once to Ann Arbor with a return game at West Point. Would you really want a return away game next year or perhaps two years hence?

The offensive line is a work yet in progress. Runyan was in street clothes and Steuben awaits ACL surgery; so, Right Tackle guy (Mayfield), who is a redshirt freshman might be doing a fairly good job for his age. Oh, one more thing, Tru Wilson was also on the sidelines, Charbonnet was the best pass protector of the RB’s. What’s wrong with that picture?

Yes, Shea doth have a case of fumblitis. He doth not carry the ball on option this game. Could it have something to do with some aforementioned lower extremity injury last week, which he suffered while carrying the ball last week, not to mention the first play with the F...... (I will not write the six lettered word.) Alternatively, are you prepared for a lineup with Dylan McCaffrey as starting QB with Joe Milton as his backup, because Shea has suffered a significant injury?

The wide receivers run and catch the ball (most of the time) with a good distribution of variety in receptions. No jet sweep returns, no receivers running into each other. Hey, even Daxton Hill got involved with a fake punt reception. I will take S.I.S. any day, instead of S.O.S.

The special teams do their special things. Punters punt the ball without blocks or fumbles, so far. The kickers kick the ball over the goal posts, not under them, usually so far. The punt / kick receivers are learning to catch the ball and HOLDING onto it, or leaving well enough alone. So far, this is good karma for the special teams. 

And the defense has kept the rushing yardage within reasonable limits. Army does not pass much, and in the end that was their undoing. Nothing to harp about here. Just Don Brown getting the defense to do Don Brown things. Be happy.

I disregard the point spread prediction and lack of ranking.  This Army football team has come a long ways from six years ago. In late September, 2014, Army went to New Haven, Connecticut to the Yale Bowl for the centennial anniversary of that football stadium. They played the Yale Bulldogs, and lost the game in OT 49-43. Under Jeff Monken for his first year, Army would go 4-8. There were many similarities between that Army-Yale game and this year’s Army-Michigan game, go ahead look it up. Army has beat Navy three years in a row and went to a bowl game last year after achieving ten wins.

One more thing, until today, Michigan had an overall losing record against Army. Army had won the first five games in a row during the mid-twentieth century, when Bo had not even become a coach at U of M. Michigan has won the last five straight games since then. The overall record for Army - Michigan is 5 - 5, without any ties. Not bad. 

(For the record, Yale has a winning overall record against Army 22 - 16 with 8 ties and an even overall record against Michigan 2 - 2 without any ties. Yale has 907 overall wins; whereas Michigan has 955 overall wins; Army has 693 overall wins; Notre Dame has 920 overall wins, and Ohio State has 913 overall wins.) 

So, let us continue on the road to 1000 overall wins.

Year one of Harbaugh was his best coaching season.  Made a cast off QB from Iowa serviceable. Took a team that had zero confidence and had a 10 win season.  Trucked Florida in a bowl game.  He has recruited well in the last 3 years.  This should be the year that Michigan is what it will be under Harbaugh.  His press conference yesterday was pretty telling.  I think he knows this is going to be a really tough season if the offense don't start clicking starting with Wisconsin. If the offense that showed up yesterday shows up in Wisconsin I could see a 35-10 Wisconsin win. Of course, like every Michigan game I am hopeful.  But the first two games of this promising season are sending us alarming signals.  

I’m still trying to wrap my head around the lack of discipline with the turnovers, penalties and mistakes at inopportune times. It’s just too damn much at the worst times. I don’t think any of us expect perfection but it always seems at clutch times the team can’t hold it together.  

Despite all his bravado and chest thumping Harbaugh is an extremely conservative play to not lose coach. It works fine to not lose games against bad teams (got close today though due to fumbles) but it puts a hard never going to be elite ceiling on the team. Essentially turning us into Wisconsin, get 9 to 10 wins, get curb stomped by osu.

He coaches terrified and it shows.

Does anyone think Harbaugh would beat Cajun Brady Hoke at this point?  65 days until real basketball starts.

This was Harbaugh's worst performance (tied for 1st place with the debacle at Ohio State last year) and it's hard not to think that he might actually be getting worse. I've been willing to give him a pass and defend him in the past but it's getting more and more difficult. It's starting to look like there's something wrong. 

Those 4th down decisions  were mind-blowing and put the game at risk (I feel like Harbaugh got like mesmerized by Army or something and start coaching like them - slow drives, runs up the middle, reluctance to pass, going for it on 4th). But aside from that, this game was characterized by a pervasive sense of dysfunction that seem to have become a trademark of M games under Harbaugh. And it resembled the ND, Ohio State and bowl games from last year. It also represented a continuation of struggles we've seen before. Harbaugh is able to coach the guys up to a very high level - a near championship level - but their floor seems to be a level of incompetence akin to the Hoke years - he's a complete enigma. What's going on here?

I don't know if Harbaugh overcoaches these guys or has them too nervous or confused/hesitant or what, but there are way too many games like this and it's frustrating as hell to watch.

What bothers me is that they very rarely seem to play their best game. And I don't think Harbaugh's teams have ever played a great game and LOST. In fact, in many of the losses they look AWFUL but are often still in a position to win the game, largely thanks to the defense (basically every loss to State, ND last year, '16 Ohio State ).  For once, I would like to see Michigan play well - I'm tired of the struggles.

Oh the laughable chorus of couch coaches that are even singing the praises of Brady Hoke.