Is this not a Josh Gattis offense? Ace and Seth don’t seem to think so.

What is a Josh Gattis offense? He spent one year as a co-offensive coordinator at ‘Bama. If he was the shit, I’m sure Saban wouldn’t have let him leave.

Jim loves calling the Wildcat inside the 5 yard line.  
 

The fact there there is any question over who is calling the plays is embarrassing.  It speaks to the lack of clarity and overall communication from the staff.  Gattis is calling the plays or we are being deceived. This isn’t the first time this question has been raised....a more adept coach would repeat that Gattis is calling the plays or say it’s a “collaboration”.  #shitshow

I have no way of knowing for sure, but historically when things are going poorly, Harbaugh panics and starts calling the plays

I think Harbaugh is stuck on trying to implement things that were done at Stanford and SanFran, but he's not the one who was responsible for building those offenses so he hasn't been successful in replicating them.

He tried to bring in Stanford guys to help him do it (Pep, Drevno) but they weren't the brains of that outfit either.

He looks like a guy who knows what he wants to do, but has no idea how the design was built at his previous spots -- judging by the things he's trying (over and over with no success), along with the befuddlement on his face on the sideline when those plays repeatedly fail. He was hoping Pep and Drevno could help fit the missing pieces together, but he was gathering up the line cooks and not the head chef (Roman).

The year we did have success under Harbaugh offensively, it wasn't the "Harbaugh Manball" that was successful, it was the Fisch passing stuff along with a QB who was groomed at Iowa. Fisch was also the QB coach that year. 

It's simple.  Gattis wants to run his offense that is modern and nontraditional but Jim is pulling him into the expanse of body shot man ball that he feels comfortable with. 

My .02 worth is that Gattis is the OC and is calling the plays that are available, however, the playbook at his disposal and the game planning that goes into matchups has Harbaugh's fingers all over it. You can't come in talking about speed in space and recruit several short, shifty multi faceted players and then throw Ben Mason and 2 tight ends out there all the time. I truly feel this offense is some weird hybrid offense between what Harbaugh wants and what Gattis wants. You add in a limited qb and a completely new oline and you've got exactly what we've seen so far.

The only things i saw different in the Minnesota game was there was more crossed up motions with several players going multiple directions on any given play. We seem to have regressed to primarily straight line plays and the occasional lateral or end around play where it goes nowhere because they stacked the box. Why are there no plays with all the speed on the field at once? Corum, Henning, Jackson, Wilson, Sainristil and Evans are all players with speed, versatility and are shifty. The offense I see is a spread form of I formations.

I will say that Milton is not the answer at qb though. Maybe McNamara this year and McCarthy next. Milton would make a good tight end perhaps. Indo think both of the available qb's seem to throw better on the move so maybe we need to incorporate more plays where they roll out or step-up into the pocket. Passes over the middle of the field in the 10-12 yard range have been the most successful and would perhaps be even more successful now that everyone is crashing the line on every play. 

There are some interesting takes here. After many times thinking it was Harbaugh being old and meddling, I’m starting to lean towards a collective issue. For all the preaching of speed in space, I certainly don’t see the opportunity for even “slow in space”. Nor do I see explosiveness from receivers, tenacity from running backs or decisiveness from quarterbacks. That falls on the whole coaching staff at the same time. Although players aren’t exempt from criticism, I think it’s weak that players quit during a game and the leaders on the team don’t take over leadership.

 I’m going back to drinking now. 

I wanted to believe Gattis got the keys but I don’t anymore. The problems are all too familiar from past years. Man ball runs into a stacked line, predictable run, run, play action, complete inability to run anything with tempo, etc. These are all hallmarks of Harbaug’s offense even when it was going well. 
 

There is no way Gattis has 100% control. If so, he’s going to struggle to find another job. I’m actually curious as to what happens if Harbaugh does stick around. Will Gattis leave? I know I would if I was being undermined for this absolute shit show and everyone thought it was my playcalling/game plan. He has to leave and say it wasn’t him or his reputation is screwed. 

Gattis was an experiment.  Not sure about the choice but need to ride for a while to see if he is for real.  

It is obvious from watching the games, whenever JH is on screen, he does not have a playsheets in his hands and so it is unlikely he is calling the plays in-game. 

That being said, the influence being exerted on the offensive identity (i.e. the cadence of the offense, overabundance of inside-power-running, far too few read/option plays, a reliance on longer developing route schemes) has JH pawprints all over it.

I mean this with all sincerity but this place is goddamn unbearable with the conspiracy theories and half-cocked rationalizations about the "real" problems of this team.  For years it's been "Harbaugh is meddling too much" smashing into "Harbaugh clearly takes over for struggling OCs and puts in stuff that works."  It's beyond tiring.  

I honestly don't know what happened last year, and my guess is that was partially due to it being a new OC, but this year the offense came into the season with 4 new starters on the offensive line, a QB who hadn't taken a meaningful snap of college football and was a massive project, a slew of young WRs with little experience, and a pandemic that undoubtedly screwed up preparation.  The first week they looked really dynamic and then the wheels fell off.  It's pretty obvious at this point that the offense the team probably wants to run isn't one they can actually run with any consistency so we're all left with the wounded one they trot out.  

Ben Mason has snaps. It's a Harbaugh offense 

Nobody outside the program knows who is calling the plays or makign the playbook or deciding whats practiced or creating the gameplan. However, throughout the past two years, there have been numerous times where the speed in space disappears, all the reads disappear, and mindless ineffective basic manball stuff occurs.  Nobody knows why. Ace and Seth speculate that that is Harbaugh somehow dictating whats happening and not Gattis. It's just speculation trying to figure out a nonsensical situation.

Look, Ace doesnt know anything. He could never post again and most wouldnt notice. This is Gattis' offense

You can’t run an offense without a quarterback we have not had one since 2004

This is a bastard child.  We need to dump this spread shit and go back to manball play-action NFL football. 

Since last year was Gattis first year as an offensive coordinator calling plays, maybe this is what his offense looks like. 

I guess I'm over trying to figure out who's calling this Charlie Foxtrot of an offense. It's pretty obvious that Michigan under this regime has trouble recruiting key areas, huge issues with player development and retention (see the post about the DMac situation), major problems with scheme on both sides, and pretty bad in-game coaching. Therefore, this regime is hot garbage.

Chatter is that Harbaugh stays, so we can only hope that there are wholesale changes, especially on D. OK, fine, but fixing this defense is a multi-year project....ugh. I would love it if Harbaugh goes before JJ gets to campus, so that Harbaugh doesn't ruin him, but it seems there isn't much chance of that.

In better news, hockey is up by 2 at Wisconsin.....

Jack Harbaugh is calling the plays.

I don't know what's going on with the staff now but there is A LOT of revisionist history going on here by people saying how bad of a hire Gattis was.

When he was hired at Michigan there was shitloads of talk here questioning if we'd be able to keep him from jumping to a HC job in a year or two. But, hey, when has the Michigan fanbase ever counted their chickens before they hatched!

I have no idea if Gattis is a good OC but I have trouble believing a spread guy never wants to run tempo, wants to substitute multiple players on every play, wants to have an offense with no reads, wants to never run screens, wants to play with multiple TEs and FBs, and never wants to, you know, run a spread offense.

Feels like Gattis gives Harbaugh the menu, he tries something new, then sends it back and ends up ordering steak and milk anyway. 

When the offense sucks, I find it interesting that the immediate response is "Harbaugh needs to get his hands off of the Gattis offense".  Meanwhile it goes completely under the radar that maybe Gattis just isn't good.  Rewind about a year and five months.  Go look around on this message board.  It was "speed in space", there were literally people asking "who is going to stop us".  Confidence at an all time high.  I attempted to bring up that maybe the cart is being put before the horse considering Locksley was by and large the OC at Alabama, and Gattis was just his assistant basically.  I tried to ask the question that if Gattis is such a talented guy with an incredible offensive mind, why isn't he being considered for the now empty OC position at Alabama?  I was met with eggs and tomatoes being thrown at me (aka downvoted).  Humility is an important thing to learn, quit falling for the shiny new toy that is going to sit in a dark corner of the basement in a week.