Is Harbaugh trying to fool Ohio into thinking Michigan can/will only throw Rock?

I am planning to enter the “what’s YOUR problem” phase of the Day-Harbaugh relationship.  

Both teams break tendencies in the game all the time. However...

Despite all the scheming, the team that rushes for more yards has won something like the last 20 games in the series.

Rock is good, just best if we throw a bunch of different sized and shaped rocks at their heads. 

My son came to me and said " dad, can I go play next door"?  I said " you're not going anywhere until your homework is done" He followed with " uno block card, I did my home work with my free time at school ".  Later that evening I got on him about his shoes being left in front of the patio door,  He said " uno reverse card, I saw your shoes at the bottom of the stairs "..

Anyways, if Harbaugh wants to stop playing rock, paper, scissors and wants to play real life uno, I know an 8 year old thats pretty savvy with it. 

I wish that was the case. Harbaugh does this, and has since day 1. I truly believe he enjoys playing football with a leather helmet. We’ll see this Saturday what we’re made of but make no mistake it’ll be another game that takes weeks off of my ticker. 

8 years worth of these thoughts and still people can’t see it doesn’t happen. This is the offense. Accept it and move on

I think it's more involved than Rock, Paper, Scissors. The offense grows during the season and the more capable they become, more is asked of them. That especially applies to a new quarterback. I think our offense is still growing. Offensive game plans are drawn up each week to exploit defensive weaknesses and develop the things we do well. I have no doubt Michigan saves certain looks for ohio but the gameplan each week is game specific. 

I’m still not sold on Stroud under pressure or that OSU has fixed their defensive issues. Sparty sucks ass, but whenever they got pressure on CJ he folds and becomes terribly inaccurate. OSU’s body of work this year is impressive but they haven’t been playing Bama week in and out, nor have we. Beat Penn state, get a bye and throttle Sparty! One game at a time and get better each week. 

Expect we’ll see things open up more this week.  PSU, at home, JJ with some experience under his belt.  

I'd think throwing a rock at your opponent would violate a rule.  Can't we just play by the rules and throw the ball?

All I know is Coach Harbaugh knows how to hit real triples and homers.  Beat PSU.

Ockham’s Razor, dude:  the simpler explanation is the most likely.

The thing is: we play Ohio (last) EVERY YEAR.  If playing rock were a grand scheme to gotcha Ohio, we would never play anything else ever in any year.  We’ve all seen better play calling than the IU game, so…no.

It's Monday, spill a whole cup of coffee in my truck, making me late for work, and now I see this shit.  A living neg bang today.

Yea, you're way overthinking this crazy conspiracy theory.

Asking 18-22 year old kids to completely flip their script in the last game of the season is how you lose.  Coaches "saving" parts of their playbook for the last game of the season would result in losses before that game.  

The coaches go out on Sunday, and prepare for the game the following weekend.  They aren't using part of their practice week to run a super top secret playbook, then forgetting it come game time.  And if they did, do you think they would execute a new script of plays well in the last game of the season that they have never used all year?

Harbaugh is preparing for PSU.  Day is preparing for Iowa during the bye week.  If Harbaugh spends this week working on the super top secret playbook for OSU, he is going to lose to PSU.  If Day spends the next 2 weeks working on his super top secret playbook for UM, he will lose to Iowa or struggle mightily at the very least.  

A post about football that's actually devoid of any football-related content! What's paper? What's scissors? Nobody knows! I think we might have found peak vapid message-board navel-gazing here, boys! Can I play too? 

Michigan has been mostly scrambled eggs this year, but you can't dip your toast in that when the schedule tightens up. I'm worried the coaching staff is just hoping that our souffle is going to set by the end of November, but we really need to be mixing in some sunny side up sooner than later. Hell, is it too much to ask for something poached with this receiving corps??

If only Michigan could find a Corch who knows something about throwing passes.

Speaking for myself, I rather enjoyed watching tsio catch the flu right before our eyes. I suspect that as long as Harball is breaking defenses we'll see some variation of what we've been watching.

Christ. Not this nonsense again. 

"paper and scissors" in this case being...what?  running reverses and transcontinentals and double passes and throwing the ball all over the field when you have two stud running backs and an offensive line and tight ends that can pave people?

no.  he's not trying to "fool them in to thinking we can't do anything."  that would mean he thinks the ohio state staff are complete idiots.  harbaugh is many things - a coach that underestimates other coaches, that thinks he's always the smartest guy in the room - is not one of them.

“Just wait until Gattis opens THE WHOLE playbook; then watch sugar Shea go off…”

*wanking motion*

lol.  I look forward to a thread like this every year.

(1) It's obvious that the running game will always feature fairly prominently in the offense as long as Harbaugh is here because that's part of his philosophy, but that tendency is going to be reinforced by having a very good O-Line and a very good running back. There's no evidence this is in any way inferior to throwing the ball 50+ times a game. It's almost a given that Michigan will place an emphasis on establishing the running game in every game.

(2) Teams will almost never completely revamp their offense (or defense) for single games. It doesn't make any sense. A big part of what makes anyone good at their craft is repetition. A team running the same stuff for the 100th time is going to do it a lot better than the first 5 times they do it. This is especially true when you talk about a team of 18-22 year olds. Confusion and execution errors would easily outweigh any surprise effect.

(3) That doesn't mean you can't have individually designed game plans which are more sophisticated and focused for some opponents than others. It's a simple reality that there are prioritized opponents. You may have some looks saved for those games, a trick play or two, maybe even a scripted drive that runs counter established tendency etc. but those are more wrinkles than fundamental revamps. No-one thinks you're going to see a totally different team in Game 12 than you saw in Game 1-11. And honestly, we've never really seen this from opponents either. OSU usually picks us apart with the same stuff they used to pick apart everyone else, too.

I think this avoids a lot of nuance to how gameplanning and seasons are managed. 
 1. Are Harbaugh and Weiss/Moore saving some things for OSU? Absolutely.

2. Would Harbaugh rather lean on his O Line and rushing attack rather than a QB in his 5th start? Yes

3. Is the offense going to suddenly look completely different come the OSU game? No

4. Will the offense look different than it does now by seasons end? Probably. It did last year.

The underlying assumption to this question being asked is that you’re disappointed with how the offense has looked, and I think maybe you need to deepen your understanding of how Harbaugh manages this stuff. We’ve been effective and efficient on O with a great QB and a heisman candidate RB. I’d like to see our WRs have breakout games too, but it’s getting the job done now and will probably look different by seasons end.

OMFG.  Was this thread cut and pasted from last year?   Harbaugh is Harbaugh.  This is what he does   And he wins.  Does anyone remember Brady Hoke?   Has anyone seen the last 15 years of other Bluebloods like Nebraska, USC, Texas, Florida, and lately Oklahoma, LSU, Florida St.  This can change on a dime.  

I think people still have the Lloyd 2007 Citrus Bowl win vs Florida in mind.  That is one of the very few examples that I can think of where the offense completely broke all tendencies from what we saw during the season.  That's not what Harbaugh does, ever.

I think we will see wrinkles on both O and D from plays and sets we've run before but that's about it.  And I am not educated enough in football to see little wrinkles so it will look like the same stuff to me but guys like Brian and Seth would probably be "holy shit this time they motioned Corum RIGHT and not LEFT on the double slant trap play during a down G back side guard move!  And that right there is why Michigan got 8 yards instead of 3 to 4 against a two high cover 1 press action with stunts".