Let's Revisit Athlon Sports Preseason Predictions

I honestly thought Harbaugh would mail it in after the pay cut. Dude did what he asked the team to do and led by example and dug deep. I feel like this team would run through a wall for the guy more now than ever. 

Agreed.  I was predicting 10-3 after our bowl, basing it on our recruiting success and coach's history, but even that was gloriously conservative.

In fairness it was pretty hard to know how much to count/discount the COVID year, since that has never happened before.  MSU was a completely new team with Walker and their record was inflated by some close/lucky wins, and their early-season opponents overrated (Northwestern, Miami pre-Van Dyke).  Indiana was decent-ish (about as good as MSU, really) until the QBs all died.

I still think about how good Michigan could be if Ronnie Bell and Xavier Worthy were part of the WR corps.  But who knows -- adversity seems to suit this team's identity.

Their sight was short to the site?

You are correct sir!  There was the infamous 1997 Sporting News cover photo: "M is for Mediocre".  I think they were ranked #14 going into the season, so nobody thought they were terrible but just couldn't get back into the elite category. 

Most people had Michigan pegged as an 8-4 type team playing a tough schedule.  I will say that the 1997 opener where they demolished a top 10 Colorado team was an eye opener and you had a feeling that something special was brewing.

Revisionist history to protect your ego and not feeling like a bad fan. There were plenty of people on this board who wrote off Covid year as meaningless and expected Harbaugh to rebound to the same level of performance he had prior to Covid. Predicting 5-7 to 7-5 is recency bias, and recency bias valuing garbage data over real data. 

Agreed.  One of my reasons for suspecting a bad year this year was the lack of ability to get the ball to DPJ, Nico, or Tarik.  Nico was a jump ball beast.  I loved the look in his eyes after seizing a 50-50 ball like there was no way anyone but him was ever going to take that ball.  I would like a full explanation (with stats and charts) as to why they didn't just throw it up to Nico more often.

The grossly inflated Indiana

Although they weren't quite as terrible as their record, it's amazing to think back to a year ago.  I swear I remember Brian muttering during one of the late-season podcasts, "just hire Tom Allen."  Maybe it was half-joking, I sure hope so.  He was one of the 3-4 hot names last year along with Campbell, Fickell, Hafley.  Just imagine though.  Really glad our overreactions didn't tangibly change anything, as they seem to at places like Texas, where I imagine hirings/firings are made via message board comments

I don’t think 7-5 was an attack on Harbaugh. The overwhelming majority of people everywhere looked at last year, all the coaching turnover, a decently difficult schedule and made their predictions. Even if you ignore last year, a wholesale change of defensive scheme, unknown QB production and the schedule were probably enough for most people.
 

Road games @ Wisconsin/MSU/Nebraska/PSU and home games against Washington/OSU…All of those games (and some others) were pegged as either toss-ups or certain losses by a ton of people going into the season, and honestly rightfully so pre-season…

Sometimes predictions are right, sometimes they’re wrong, thankfully this year the majority of them were wrong!

No shit. Make sure everyone with hope is miserable for years and then gatekeep the 2nd day of celebrations.