Belleville coach likes anti-Harbaugh tweets
The latest micro aggression in the ongoing feud between Michigan and Belleville.
Their head coach Jermain Crowell liked anti-Harbaugh tweets.
Harbaugh once criticized the coaching done at Belleville in front of The Team during a meeting and it got back to Belleville.
Crowell used to be Cass Tech’s OC. Rumors that it was Jourdan Lewis (who has his own issues with Harbaugh) who leaked it. Also rumors that he’s shared his sour Michigan experience with recruits which is influencing them. Pretty weak shit from an all-american if true.
So we just assume it is true... there is no evidence that Lewis has some underlying problem with Harbaugh and the staff - see the article below. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have criticisms and frustrations like anyone else- but just because someone uses the word “rumor” on the internet doesn’t make it true.
Former Michigan and current Dallas Cowboys cornerback Jourdan Lewis hosted his second annual WR vs. DB youth football camp this afternoon in Detroit, attracting outstanding talent from several of the surrounding high schools.
Two current Wolverines and fellow Detroiters — senior cornerback Lavert Hill and junior cornerback Jaylen Kelly-Powell — swung by to help assist Lewis, while another Detroit native and former player — cornerback Raymon Taylor (2011-14) — was also in attendance.
The camp not only drew high schoolers, but also up-and-coming prospects in middle school who have yet to put their talent on display at a high level.
“It’s amazing, especially when you see the talent coming out and how much the kids love to compete,” Lewis exclaimed afterward. “It’s great seeing how many kids without an offer showed up and just wanted to have fun — it shows pure joy for both the game and for their community.
“I’m just happy the turnout was as good as it was. When you see the kids compete at the highest level, it feels incredible. They all make each other better, and it’s an amazing feeling knowing you played a part in uniting so many different schools in the city of Detroit.”
Lewis has spent each of his first two seasons in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys, playing sparingly on special teams and as a cornerback both years.
“Things are good there,” he revealed. “I’m actually working at nickel right now and am just trying to get some more reps.”
Although he graduated from Michigan following the 2016 season, the Detroit native made it clear he still follows the program as closely as possible.
“Always,” he exclaimed. “I have one of my babies still up there in Lavert Hill, so I’m immersed in them and watch them every Saturday. My expectations are sky high for Lavert next season — I’d love to see him win the Jim Thorpe award, earn All-American honors and take home a National Championship.
“Our expectations are always high like that at Michigan, and I’m excited to see what they do in 2019. We also have [Belleville (Mich.) High four-star cornerback and U-M commit]
Andre Seldon heading up there soon — he actually competed out here today, so it was great to see both him and Lavert out here this afternoon.”
Lewis’ senior season at Michigan (2016) was actually defensive coordinator Don Brown’s first year on the job, and the club wound up tying with Alabama for the best defense in the entire country.
Brown is still going strong with the Wolverines, but will be faced with arguably his toughest rebuilding job yet (though a similar sentiment was echoed heading into 2017) in Ann Arbor on that side of the ball.
Lewis insisted that fans shouldn’t be worried as long as the 63-year old is running the show though.
“Playing under Coach Brown was amazing,” the cornerback recalled. “He believes in his players so much and puts them out there in man coverage every single down, which truly shows how much trust he has in them.
“I love everything he’s doing up there, especially when considering he's has had one of the top defenses for several years in a row now.”
Lewis' expectations — just like seemingly everyone else's — are incredibly high for Michigan heading into next season, and he gave a brief rundown of not only how he thinks the campaign will go, but also of why the club is in such good shape to accomplish all of its goals.
“I expect them to win it all,” he insisted. “They’re up there once again and have all the tools they need, and the guys have been through it all. Coach [Jim] Harbaugh has everything in place again — a great offense, an outstanding defense and a good quarterback [in senior Shea Patterson] who understands how to win games.
“We came so close last year but just need to clean a few things up.”
Ohio State was the only obstacle standing between Michigan and a berth in the Big Ten championship game in 2018, but the Wolverines failed their biggest hurdle of the season when they fell, 62-39, in Columbus.
The tide of the Michigan State rivalry, meanwhile, has seemingly began to swing back in U-M’s favor (the Maize and Blue have won two of the last three), and Lewis had a message for both opposing fan bases this afternoon.
“We’re definitely going to take down Ohio State,” he confirmed. “It’s that or bust. Little Brother can speak all they want — we’ll get the job done no matter what.”
Whoa whoa easy with the facts.
Lol I love how this whole thread is people freaking out, and then someone takes 2 minutes to find an actual Jourdan Lewis quote that indicates he supports uofm football. Unless someone posts evidence, like literally any evidence at all, I’m not going to think less or Lewis or Harbaugh from a completely baseless rumor. Clearly this Belleville coach doesn’t like uofm. But who knows why ? He sounds like he enjoys feeling powerful influencing where kids for play college ball. Pretty pathetic existence.
You nailed this - all the self-loathers / trolls won’t even reply the evidence of what Lewis actually said.
Part of the problem is a lot of people have no life of their own so they take sports as their real life instead of something that is supposed to be fun and enjoyable, win or lose.
I have had so much fun taking my kids to Michigan football games the last couple of seasons and seeing them smile / laugh / dance for 3 straight hours - I will remember that the rest of my life.
Dude got his best NFL shot here, pretty disrespectful to the school if true.
The list of elite players who have played for Harbaugh and came away happy with the experience is disturbingly short.
No, it's pretty much just Richard Sherman. And maybe DPJ who paid for supposedly shit talking Harbaugh by falling to the end of the draft. Harbaugh may not be liked by everyone but he's made careers for a lot of guys, and a lot of his former players love him for that.
And Brandon Jacobs, Alex Boone, CJ Easter and Blaise Johnson but who's counting.
lol Alex Boone, the OSU alum who said that Harbaugh was too rough on them in practice. Yeah let's take his word for it.
So you're just gonna ignore the rest or what?
Brandon Jacobs was pissed because he wasn't getting any playing time even though he was at the tail end of his career and was largely ineffective (and playing behind a hall of famer in Frank Gore).
Easter and Johnson both had bigger issues with Durkin than with Harbaugh.
Look, Harbaugh has had hundreds upon hundreds of guys play for him. Yeah, a select few don't like him. There isn't a single coach at any level in any sport that is liked by every single player they've had. People here are creating faux outrage over a non-issue because their real problem with Harbaugh is he hasn't beaten OSU.
I’ll back this re: Brandon Jacobs. Wasn’t it widely regarded that he had issues with Harbaugh, and even spoke out about it and scheming and turned out to be incredibly wrong? Didn’t he even rectify this at one point?
Regardless, I recall everyone reporting on this saying that Jacobs had a stick in his ass about things, and was looking to bitch.
But yeah, only a few hundred players have played for our coach, and 6 or 7 hate him. He must be a massive pile of shit. Hope there’s a blog out there related and dedicated to the sports programs at his current job where we can bring our pitchforks and torches and virtually set shit on fire. We, as users of the internet and (for some of us anyway) fans of U of M, deserve to be undefeated all the time, get the top 107 recruits in America each year (I realize that even OSU only targets the top 106, but let’s temper expectations) as well as bitching about everything all along the way.
30% of this blog will be sour and salty after we win a national championship. 70% would be well suited to just not interact
Or, and hear me out here, he's not good at dealing with players who have great ability who usually need to be treated like they're special (because they are) and this flaw was covered up for a long time by the fact Stanford doesn't get elite players and the NFL drafts so they don't have a choice.
It could be that.
I think this is part of the problem.
This ability was a big part of why Phil Jackson was such a great coach.
Easter said "they are both terrible human beings".
It doesn't seem odd that nobody comes out and says these things about Urban like they do Harbaugh?
Sherman is an interesting character and was a great player but he shoots his mouth off a lot. I think think this makes his opinions credible.
It’s hard to imagine a better fit for Lewis than Browns scheme and Zordichs coaching. His skill was showcased. Could he have a legit gripe? Sure and maybe we should take it seriously. I think he’s mostly upset for what happened after he left when he was only hearing one side from his friends. JKP never got his career off the ground, Hill got criticized publicly for being injured. Harbaugh and Zordich are both probably too old school about injuries and I do think they need to change, but also those Detroit players need to take some responsibility for their own careers. Sometimes when you don’t have the success you hoped for it really is your fault, and you can’t blame everyone else.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that people who get exercised about people liking tweets, even in the middle of a crisis that has everyone indoors, are utterly lacking in. . . lives.
He hints at shit but doesnt say anything! thats weak!
Just win. Period. Harbaugh starts winning the games he has been losing and this kind of crap goes away. Meyer, Saban, any other coach that is a prick and wins doesn’t have to worry about what a high school program thinks about them and their recruiting.
Exactly...anyone who really cares if HC a major programme is liked by HS coaches is nuts. There are hund7reds of HS recruited by UM and the major programmes. There will be some you get on w and others you don't
But if you win high profile games and get players into the NFL none of it really matters.
end this thread, and any other thread like this with your post.
Just win the big games, road games, and this all vanishes.
All of this feels incredibly childish.
I have another word I can think of to describe Mr. Crowell but it sure wouldn’t be considered childish but he could have them!!!
And by "all of this", that includes grown-ass adults worrying about a "like" on a social media platform.
What are the issues between Harbaugh and Lewis?
That if Harbaugh wouldn't have came, the trend of Michigan getting guys to the NFL the 8 years prior would've continued.
Maybe he should be searching tweets on practice organization instead.
Yikes! Guess Michigan won't be getting any of their Top defensive backs anytime soon...
This will probably fly over some folk's heads, but it's a good comment.
Lot of innuendo and rumors in the original post Bottom line is you can't be friends with everyone no matter how hard you try just the way it is.
Yeah, but if you're the gatekeeper for dozens of kids' futures you CAN not destroy a relationship with the greatest school in the country for the combination of academics and NFL production just because your fragile ego was bruised. You don't have to be friends, you just have to do what's right for kids.
This tiff doesn't hurt Jim. It hurts the kids on Crowell's team who don't have the same ability to go to Michigan now. There's only one school in the country that ranks in the top 5 in NFL draft picks in the last 4 years AND the top 30 of US News university rankings, and Belleville kids now have a massive road block to get there.
Saying this tiff doesn’t hurt Harbaugh might be one the craziest things I have ever read on this blog. Are you going to take the position none of these things hurt Harbaugh/Michigan?
- Public knowledge of a local school with a poor relationship to Harbaugh gives an opening to the James Franklin’s of the world to get a foot in the door to their talent
- Athletes that have a good relationship with their high school coach for years are going to listen to what he says
- The opportunity for additional negative recruiting talking-points from other staffs just increased
If you want to explain to me how those three things don’t hurt Harbaugh I’m all eyes and ears. If Harbaugh had multiple titles and wins over OSU you might have a point, but acting like this program is some high end NFL factory is comical, Michigan arrogance at its finest.
Why would it possibly hurt Harbaugh when he can just replace the local kids with less talented MA alternatives, or CA and SE kids who will transfer out?
There's almost a cult of personality around Harbaugh. People can't even think rationally when it comes to his failings.
It only hurts Michigan if Harbaugh doesn’t win or several more soured relationships pop up. There is some premise that Harbaugh is at fault here and that he stated how badly run their practice was. And it went to the coach by a former player with a beef against the program who follows the program and runs a camp in Detroit having Michigan players current and commits come to work the camp?
This all sounds like contrived bs. Who knows the truth. But it speaks very much to a hs coach getting feelings hurt over something that may or may not be at all true. For some reason there was always these rumors about Michigan coaches making some schools head coach mad and they won’t let their players go to Michigan. What? We heard it about Carr his last few years that he angled a coach and was no longer allowed in certain schools. We heard it about RR, though that might be believable.
Michigan being in the top 5 (4th, specifically) of draft picks in the last 4 years is just a fact. I can't make you accept it, but it is reality. Maybe everything outside of the top 2 is comical to you, I don't know.
Michigan doesn't need Belleville kids. Michigan won't be worse off for taking a kid from CA or IL or PA over a kid from Belleville, and the Belleville problem does not extend to other programs in-state like West Bloomfield that produce talent.
Something tells me Karsen Barnhart and Nolan Rumler will have better careers than Devontae Dobbs. Harbaugh wasn't trying to be hurtful when he said Belleville kids aren't coached well in high school, it was only hurtful to Crowell because it's true.
One player drafted from Michigan in the last decade that has made a Pro Bowl and 92.7% of this blog hates him. Not one offensive skill player drafted that’s been drafted 2006 to present that’s been anything more than slightly above average in the NFL. Fresno fucking state has put a pro bowl QB, WR and RB in the NFL since the last time (2005) we had offensive skill position player drafted that made a Pro Bowl. I can’t make you accept that, but it’s reality.
None of that changes anything I said lol. We've had the 4th most draft picks over the last 4 drafts - if that doesn't make us an NFL factory, then pretty much only Alabama is.
I'm sure those things you said are really hurting the bank accounts of the 34 kids we've had drafted since 2017.
Shit, if you get a million dollars but you don't make a Pro Bowl and most of mgoblog doesn't like you, might as well get zero dollars, right?
Honest questions: Do you really think this program is good enough as of May 20th, 2020 to flip the bird to one of the most talented programs in the state?
Secondly, let’s operate on the assumption Crowell had some personal beef with Michigan and Harbaugh, at some point through some medium, put it out there that Belleville players were poorly coached. Isn’t that idiotic? What benefit was that going to serve other than winning the ego battle? If Harbaugh feels that way (and maybe he has every right to) wouldn’t have just been better to just walk-away from the situation and not communicate with Belleville anymore? A situation that could have been kept quiet is now a public feud.
1. Yes, because Belleville isn't that talented. They're producing poorly coached kids with attitude problems. Who are the great Belleville players at the Power 5 level of the last 10 years? Michigan has only ever had 3 Belleville kids in program history, the last prior to Andre Seldon being Ian Gold obviously. You have to go back to the Jenkins brothers to find a Belleville kid that stuck in the NFL.
2. No - you clearly don't know the context of what was said. Jim said to Crowell-coached guys on the team "I understand why you're making the mistakes that you are based on your high school program" (paraphrasing). This is something that is said by literally every college coach in America. It's a "break you down to build you back up, welcome to the big leagues" motivation tactic. It's only offensive to people who know nothing about the inside of football locker rooms or who have fragile egos.
The thing is, even after Crowell was hurt by this (and he already didn't like Michigan, don't kid yourself that this was what killed the relationship), Harbaugh DID try to mend fences and continue to recruit the school. Crowell just used this - again, a common coaching point - to act on his preexisting disdain for Michigan.
I disagree with you on 1. Crowell has been there for only 5 years so I’m not sure how fair it is to bring up historical data points about how good the talent their was or has been. TBD on what that means for the future though. It’s clear though he’s elevated their talent in a relatively short time.
Number 2, I 100% agree that every college coach in the country tells players they developed bad habits from their high school days and they have to be coached-up. I wasn’t there, so I’m not going to pretend like I know what happened. But I am of the opinion you can criticize a players bad habits without throwing a dig out there about their high school coaching staff, especially one that has talented players and you have a poor relationship with.
Truthfully, what sounds better from a coach? “Tommy, your technique on jamming the WR on the outside was all wrong on that play/rep. I get that you were probably more talented than 99.6% of the WR’s you went against in high school and didn’t have to worry about jamming a guy, but that shit isn’t going to fly in the Big Ten. Now, come over here and let me show you the right way to do it.”
Or: “Tommy, that outside jam was pathetic. Your technique was terrible and I can tell you’ve been coached all wrong about it since you were in the 9th grade. Keep the high school crap up and you’ll never see the field.”
I wasn’t there and I’m not sure what happened either, but I fail to see the point of throwing out digs about high school coaches, no matter how right or wrong it is. I expect more out of a multi-million dollar coach, that’s all
He's elevated their recruiting rankings, but they are just naturally-talented kids who are poorly coached. It's going to take the perfect situation for a Crowell-coached Belleville kid to work out. The likes of Dobbs and Payne won't.
You might expect different from a top college coach, but you'd be disappointed by every coach in America then. It's just how college coaches operate. Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Dabo, Kirby Smart, etc. etc. It's not on Jim that one local clown is still mad because he didn't get the job at Michigan and now he can't handle himself like an adult.
"Harbaugh walked away from the situation. Doesn't talk to Belleville anymore."
If their coach is closing off avenues to better his players' futures, they are poorly coached.
Is Belleville a boarding school? He doesn't need to appease this coach's ego to get him to like him. In this day and age, Harbaugh can talk to the players directly.
He has players; Michigan needs players. Michigan puts worthy players in the league; his players want to go to the league.
Simple as that. Doesn't have to be more than that.
~I'm just guessing here, but I'm sure these gripes started when Harbaugh didn't recruit a player he wanted him to recruit, so now the coach bad-mouths him to players that Harbaugh actually wants. Additionally, any gripe Lewis might have is rooted in the same reason. ~
There's really no other reason these beefs would be continuous.
Apparently having most of your players drafted in mid to late rounds makes us an "NFL factory" now lol my God. An NFL factory is what we were from 1990-2007. This is not it.
If you're in the top 5 nationally in draft picks you are an elite NFL production school. That's not debatable, right? That fact receiving pushback makes me feel like I'm going insane.
The point about most being mid-or-late round picks is idiotic, football-ignorant drivel - there are thousands of draft-eligible players every year. 250ish get drafted. The 150th player taken in the draft is a really fucking good football player, and was just made a rich person. Also, most of the draft of is the mid-to-late rounds. Ask any high school football player if he wouldn't want to be a 4th round pick tomorrow, see how many "nos" you get.
I don’t want to keep arguing with you, but there’s a huge difference between being drafted and actually becoming a standout player. Who’s in the NFL that the common fan will recognize as a Michigan Alum? We have a QB that played 99% of his college games at Michigan in the previous century, a Pro-Bowl offensive linemen everyone in the NFL and this blog hates and who else? Maybe Devin Bush? Sorry, Jabrill is just a product of the Michigan Hype Machine (I’m not saying he’s a bad football player by any means).
Michigan basketball had plenty of guys drafted under Beilein but I wouldn’t call them an NBA factory. Why? There’s no star power. It’s the same problem with the football program.
Imagine a recruit that goes to OSU and they sell him on all of first round picks they've had in the last decade. Then that same player comes up here and heres "yeah we've put a lot of guys in the NFL in rounds 4-6 over the last few years". That recruit is going to laugh their ass off.
lol this is Michigan self-loathing at its finest. We put a lot of guys in the pros in both sports but we're not good at putting guys in the pros at either? Hilarious
WTF are you talking about??
From the years you mentioned (1990-2007), Michigan had 85 players drafted or 4.7 players per year and never more than 7.
Since 2017 (which I would argues is the first year Harbaugh's player development could have arguably been mostly responsible for getting a player drafted) UM has had 28 players drafted or 7 players per year. In 2 of those 4 classes, UM had 11 and 10 players drafted -- the most in any class since the 1970s. Tell us gain, why we should pine for the draft performance of the late 90s / early 2000s
Cool. Now get me the numbers on first rounders and pro bowlers from those years.