Better UM coach: Harbaugh or Carr
September 15th, 2019 at 1:49 AM ^
Let’s go to the trophy case...
September 15th, 2019 at 9:15 AM ^
To be fair, it helps when you are competing against John Cooper and not Urban Meyer for said trophies.
September 15th, 2019 at 9:17 AM ^
And don't forget also to look at what they inherited.
September 15th, 2019 at 9:50 AM ^
Carr got us a NC. That puts him in a category all by himself when comparing. But, the last 3 years of Carr's tenure, I have never seen a coach do less with more talent. Period. Those teams were stacked.
September 15th, 2019 at 10:34 AM ^
This^^^ I find myself going back to those years and placing them in any of the 2010’s big ten. Outside of maybe one or two years, I come to the conclusion we’d win every year.
September 15th, 2019 at 1:32 PM ^
Let’s finish this year out...on paper we have one of the most dangerous wide receiving cores in the country...and yet I haven’t seen them do anything memorable in 2 games.
September 15th, 2019 at 9:11 PM ^
Cali you are right. This will be the test as to whether JH is an elite coach or not. If he chooses to not utilize the most talent on the offensive side on the ball then the game has passed him by.
September 15th, 2019 at 10:39 AM ^
I think the OP just wanted to feel special for a bit. He asks in the title who is better, then asks in the post a completely different question about who you would rather have leading the program now.
September 15th, 2019 at 1:47 PM ^
And when you have Charles Woodson covering half the field. He made Mike Hermann look like a genius.
September 15th, 2019 at 2:12 PM ^
Jim Hermann?
September 15th, 2019 at 3:10 PM ^
Pee Wee Hermann.
September 15th, 2019 at 4:47 PM ^
What makes you think Harbaugh could have beaten John Cooper? His 1-9 record against top 10 teams.
i was not a Carr fan, with all the NFL talent he had, I think his teams should have accomplished more. But at least he did something as a Michigan coach. Harbaugh has done nothing.
September 16th, 2019 at 12:37 PM ^
This is the wrong metric to make this assessment because the college football eras don't compare equally. We need to look at coaching skill sets
Recruiting: Harbaugh > Carr - Carr did pretty well with recruiting until Tressel came along and stopped the flow of talent from Ohio to Michigan. Harbaugh has been recruiting Top 10 classes throughout his time at Michigan and he pulls talent in nationally in an arguably much more lawless environment than when Lloyd was recruiting.
Staff Management: Harbaugh > Carr - Lloyd often showed loyalty to a fault. Mike DeBord should never have still been Michigan offensive coordinator as late as 2006. Jim Herrmann was kept on far too long at DC as well. Fred Jackson....well, at least he provided amusing anecdotes. Harbaugh recruits the best talent he can find and when coaches don't perform, changes get made.
Player Development / Management: Harbaugh > Carr - Harbaugh has definitely demonstrated an ability to take players and make them better and also is much more proactive in replacing personnel when they don't work out. Carr platooned perhaps the greatest QB of all time with Drew Henson.
Game Management / Tactics: Harbaugh > Carr - Michigan frequently played down to it's competition under Carr and the jokes about Michigan not passing the ball until the 4th quarter when they're down a couple of scores are legion. Carr also adhered to antiquated coaching stratagems such as winning TOP or playing for field position and punting inside the 35 yard line on 4th and short. Harbaugh's teams pretty much beat everyone they're supposed to and do it in a convincing fashion, with a few exceptions (see Army) and he's not afraid to take reasonable risks. Some on here have been critical of Harbaugh for being too stubborn an run-oriented, but his offenses have been consistently sound and well-executing (the previous two weeks notwithstanding).
Program Leadership: Harbaugh > Carr - Lloyd successfully continued the culture created by Bo Schembechler and while he evolved the program to more his demeanor, he never moved out of Bo's shadow, nor really sought to. Plus, when Bo was gone and he had stepped down, he wasn't the caretaker of the program that he could have been. Harbaugh is a larger than life personality. Should he enjoy a long career here at Michigan, is there any doubt that he'll leave a huge imprint on the program? Beyond that, there is no doubt that he is in charge and always keeps the program best interests to heart.
Now feel free to take issue with anything I've mentioned here, but at least then we'll be debating the correct things and not just pointing to wins and losses and jumping to a snap conclusion. If it's just winning that matters, then we should go out and hire Urban Meyer or some other morally bankrupt coach who will win at any cost. Absent of that, I challenge anyone to find a better person to be leading Michigan right now than Jim Harbaugh.
September 15th, 2019 at 1:51 AM ^
Carr beat Wisconsin, Penn State, Drew Brees Purdue, Notre Dame, OSU and Alabama in the same year.
September 15th, 2019 at 3:28 AM ^
I don't think Harbaugh has a W that eclipses any of those and that's only 1 season. 90s - Early 00s Lloyd Carr was something else.
September 15th, 2019 at 8:35 AM ^
Moeller’s Recruiting was something else....once Lloyd was responsible for his own recruiting, things went on a downward projection culminating with the App State debacle.
But he did get us the MNC....
September 15th, 2019 at 9:03 AM ^
Disagree. Lloyd recruited very well for a few years (late '90s, some in early '00s).
To the larger question, I think recency bias is important. If Appalachian State features prominently in your memory it's going to affect your opinion. (Hey -- the whole country remembers the start of the 2007 season. Some Old Blues probably think RichRod was the coach.)
IMO. Lloyd's peak is better than Harbaugh's peak, so Lloyd gets the nod. But, I don't think they're that far apart. Look at how Lloyd did against a fully (or close) operational Death Star (OSU). 1-6. Harbaugh still has a chance to match that seven-game record, though I wouldn't be comfortable betting on it.
September 15th, 2019 at 9:55 AM ^
Agree LLyod's peak is higher than anything JH has accomplished. What my fear is is how similarly stubborn each one seems to be. I don't know if I believe JH has the ability to let go and trust another coach (Gattis) to take Michigan offensively where we need to go.
September 15th, 2019 at 11:41 AM ^
Give Harbaugh 12 years and let’s see where his peak is. Lloyd was on the hot seat in 97-8-4 Lloyd you’ll recall
September 15th, 2019 at 12:42 PM ^
Um, Cheating Tressel played for 3 natties and won one. Meyer didn't do as much. Cheating Tressel's death star was fully operational.
September 15th, 2019 at 9:24 AM ^
Once Lloyd was responsible for his own recruiting, things went on a downward projection
Not true. In fact, Lloyd brought in the top recruiting class in the country right after the national title. The team that lost to App State had Henne, Hart, Manningham, Long - talent was hardly the issue.
September 15th, 2019 at 12:09 PM ^
I get non-Michigan people focusing on App State, but I'd hope our fan base would also remember the last game of that season where we as an unranked 10.5 point dog put up 550 yards on 9th ranked Urban Meyer coached Florida. The only reason that game wasn't a total blow out was two fumbles inside the five. There's a reason Lloyd Carr is in the college football hall of fame.
September 15th, 2019 at 12:26 PM ^
The play calling in that game was brilliant. Why did we only get that for one game that season? Sigh.
September 15th, 2019 at 1:19 PM ^
Fair enough. Lloyd was a solid coach. Winning 75% of your games over 13 years is not easy to do. I do think he hung on a bit too long though, but even then he did deliver some gems like 2006 ND and the aforementioned 2007 Florida.
I think the frustration with Lloyd was that it felt like we were on the verge of greatness all the time but never could quite take that step (1997 excepted). If he could have been a little more flexible schematically, and a little more winning to take risks in his game management, he could have truly been one of the greats.
September 15th, 2019 at 10:00 AM ^
Harbaugh doesn't have a better win than beating a 7-5 Purdue team?
September 15th, 2019 at 1:25 PM ^
Lloyd lost to the good Brees team
September 16th, 2019 at 9:34 AM ^
After being up on them 28-10. What a painful memory
September 15th, 2019 at 11:24 AM ^
You don’t think Harbaugh has a win that eclipses any of those? Are you high?
99-00 records:
Wisconsin- 10-2
Penn State- 10-3
Purdue- 7-5
ND- 5-7
OSU- 6-6
Bama- 10-3
Harbaugh doesn’t have a single win that eclipses beating three .500 teams? Seriously? Harbaugh beat the PAC12 runner up, B1G Champ, and B1G runner up in three consecutive games.
September 15th, 2019 at 5:16 PM ^
Harbaugh at Michigan, no...but he does have one win that eclipses anything that Carr ever did.
September 15th, 2019 at 8:37 AM ^
Yeah but that sure was a different Alabama team.
September 15th, 2019 at 9:19 AM ^
Alabama was certainly off-and-on in the late 1990s/early 2000s --- but that Alabama team was very very good. It was a high quality win for U-M.
Shaun Alexander, a good defense, and they whooped Steve Spurrier's Florida team at a time where nobody was beating UF by 4 touchdowns while holding them to 7 points.
They did lose at home to Louisiana Tech. Strange loss, but that happened multiple times among the top 10 teams of 1999 (Wisconsin at 3-8 Cincinnati, U-M vs Illinois).
September 15th, 2019 at 7:59 PM ^
Different Bama, ND and OSU team. ND went 5-7 that year and OSU went 6-6.
September 15th, 2019 at 2:00 AM ^
Moeller
September 15th, 2019 at 8:23 AM ^
This is the correct answer.
Hard to fairly compare Carr and Harbaugh because the programs were in different states when each arrived. Carr took over as the program was in a peak period and successfully sustained it for years... until it tappered off in the early/mid 2000s. Harbaugh came into the program still recovering from shambles and got it back to relevance, but not yet dominance. Honestly, when evaluating what each coach was achieving once "their guys" were in place running "their systems"... about the same, maybe? We might need another 1-2 years of the current regime to say for sure.
Curious to consider how each coach would have done if the roles were reversed.
September 15th, 2019 at 9:19 AM ^
Carr took over a team that had successive four loss seasons with a loss to OSU the previous year. By any measure that is not peak period. His new team would then tack on two more successive four loss seasons before year three when Carr lead his team to the MNC. In year five, so all of the players are his alone, Carr's team went 10-2 with victories over ND, UW, PSU, OSU, and 'Bama. Time will tell, but I don't think Harbaugh's current team will remotely match that year five record.
September 15th, 2019 at 2:02 AM ^
Carr-not even remotely close
September 15th, 2019 at 2:04 AM ^
Carr won a national championship, something even Bo could never do. I honestly don't understand all the hate Lloyd gets around here. Sure he lost to Tressel and OSU towards the end of his career, but many of those games were close and he was going up against a proven cheater. You could also blame Bill Martin for Carr staying on too long since he was gonna retire in 2006, but he stayed on because Martin wasn't ready for a coaching search.
The only thing Harbaugh has accomplished at Michigan so far is keeping the program clean and winning against teams he should beat.
September 15th, 2019 at 2:09 AM ^
Lloyd Carr lost many games against teams his teams should've beat.
September 15th, 2019 at 2:48 AM ^
I bet you can't even name one team that is named after a famous American mountain range
September 15th, 2019 at 2:58 AM ^
Rocky Mountain State?
September 15th, 2019 at 6:45 AM ^
Grand Tetons sKate?
September 15th, 2019 at 8:06 AM ^
Illinois '99
Which probably was coaching since the team was talented enough to beat really good teams, as mentioned above.
September 15th, 2019 at 3:05 AM ^
Little secret: So did Bo. And every other damn coach to strap on the headset. And especially that one guy who wouldn't.
September 16th, 2019 at 9:59 AM ^
Sure he lost to Tressel and OSU towards the end of his career, but many of those games were close and he was going up against a proven cheater.
Towards the end of his career? Carr faced Tressel 7 times out of 13 total match-ups. That's more than HALF his career. And he gets a pass on that record because Tressel was a cheater? Have you ever read anything about Urban Meyer?
And the of course there's this little gem...
The only thing Harbaugh has accomplished at Michigan so far is keeping the program clean and winning against teams he should beat.
Which is:
1. A good thing
2. More than Lloyd Carr ever did
If we're going to have this debate, then you need to make stronger arguments than this.
September 15th, 2019 at 2:14 AM ^
I think Harbaugh simply because Harbaugh tries to adapt to new college football trends. Carry is a great coach but I don't see Carr doing what Harbaugh did offseason.
By the way someone Wiser than me said if you compare you diminish someone
September 15th, 2019 at 7:14 AM ^
That's why it was the ultimate, brilliant troll job by Finebaum...
Get the idiot segment of Michigan fans to compare Harbaugh to Hoke, or ANY other Michigan coach.
No matter which one you chose during the discussion, you're diminishing the Michigan name to do so.
The coaches represent the school. If the coaches did terrible, the school was doing terrible. They aren't separate.
Michigan, not just Harbaugh, hasn't beaten OSU. It was a problem even before he got here. The two coaches before him were regularly losing to other muuuch weaker teams also. That's the problem.
Kirby hasn't won a NC, nor has he beat Bama and if they played every year like The Game, they would have lost every one also.
Instead they got to lose to Texas last year and say what they would've done, with the somehow accepted excuse amongst cfb talking head media that they didn't care.
As a result, their recruiting prowess continues. That, along with an extremely loyal fanbase and every one else putting them on a pedestal because of it, Kirby and Georgia's name stays untainted and they will remain in contention.
September 15th, 2019 at 2:36 AM ^
Carr. Better results in games that matter.