Why is Michigan historically bad in bowl games? Revisiting Alex's Take

The Philly Special last year against TCU would like a word with you.

I’m hoping for an offensive game plan similar to the Citrus bowl. I feel we have to be creative and be little off script from film. 
 

I actually have been alive long enough to remember every bowl loss since Bo's heart attack on 12/31/69. So allow me to lump some of them into general categories. 

Start with the day after the heart attack. How in the Hell could any team be focused? Also, beating osu in '69 was probably the biggest win in the series history til this year. The Rose was definitely a secondary prize.

Following that is a series of games where Michigan greatly overestimated the relative talent levels of their team vs the Pac 10 (12) opponent. They prepared by going to Disneyland & Knotts Berry Farm, having eating contests, and staged beach photo shoots. Among that group we were also jobbed by Charles White's Phantom TD.

Finally Bo broke through, beating UDub when M had a team featuring AC, several other players with long NFL careers ahead of them + our 1st passing QB John Wangler. The rest of his career he won as many as he lost, including getting jobbed again in his last game as Michigan coach 1/1/90.

Then starts a run where Michigan went 9-4 in bowls, including a NC and culminating with TB & Henson going 3-0.

From that time on (we'll call it late Carr) through RichRod, Hoke & Harbaugh, Michigan has been a mixture of unprepared, uninterested or overwhelmed - with the massive exceptions of Carr's last & Harbaugh's first.

Thus, for the entire social media era Michigan has mostly sucked in bowls for one of the reasons listed above. And let's be honest, if it didn't happen in the social media era, did it really even happen to most of these "content generators"?!

Sorry for my post highlighting your performance relative to Mac Jones' in the Alabama game-  but the biggest difference in that game seemed to be QB play.

But surely among the things that go into being "good" is play calling, preparation, strategy, player availability, and maybe even home-field advantage.

I guess you can say those things don't matter. Fine. This entire blog must be irrelevant for you, then, focusing as it does on what exactly goes into a win. You prefer a "one team was better than the other, full stop" level of analysis, I take it. :-)

Remember OU Boise St.? Without the trick plays or non tendency plays, Boise doesn't win that game. Without our trick plays against Ohio State, we may very well lose that game. I'd be willing to bet most winners of bowl games do more than what they did during the regular season.

RX, that's just a lazy take. If we had come out aggressive vs tcu rather than believe we would overwhelm them with physical superiority, maybe we don't get way down and have to pass from behind. Maybe if they don't spend December prepping for Uga rathe than tcu they get some stops on D.

And that's just the most recent example! 

This much is true: beating Bama en route to a national title would be about as epic a path as you can get 

I think it's related to our style of play.  The run-first grind your opponent into the dust approach works well when the weather turns bad and teams are banged up after weeks of intense gladiator bouts.  But in the bowl game, you're playing in controlled environment with a fresh team who's had weeks to prep.  Which is why I think the pass happy 7 on 7 teams do well in the CFP, because every game is basically a track meet and the teams with faster players usually win.  It's hard to be fast when it's cold, windy and you've played 8-12 games without a break.

Look at how we beat Heisman winner Tim Tebow & Urban Meyer's Florida back in 2007.  Because it was Lloyd's last game, we opened up the offense and surprise surprise, we won.

Having Blake for the goal line rushes would've won that game on its own

That's a good summary of the Schembechler provincialism that was (and possibly still is) in effect for so many years.

In response to a question about (basically) national relevancy: "OUR GOAL IS TO WIN THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONSHIP!"

Outside of the CFP, frankly no one outside the talking heads gives two shits about bowl game performance. Would I like them to win, sure. But do I think its a knock on Harbaugh to lose the Citrus Bowl - no and that goes double when you have players opting out for the draft.  CFP is a whole different ball game and if we see the same type of result this year - thats something different

That was certainly the attitude regarding bowls when I was a student (1983 - 1987).  I think Bo regarded the Bowl trips as a reward -- he let the guys have fun and was perhaps less intense in preparation.

Also, I seem to remember that Bo referred to out of conference games as "preseason."

I don't think they're very excited - half the team is in the portal...

Its a little different for OSU because even if you have a guy sitting out, the guy replacing him is a talented top 200 guy whose going to be starting next year. 

I've also heard we didn't change tactics (certainly true under Coach Carr) and that sometimes we worked our guys too hard and the team was wrecked by the time the played in the Bowl game.

Lloyd won five of his first eight bowls though (in fact, he went 5-1 from 1997-2002), and four of his seven losses were close games (vs. Texas A&M, Bama, Texas, Nebraska) that turned on just a play or two. 

He was outcoached by Pete Carroll in two Rose Bowls, and there was the one Citrus Bowl where we were overmatched against a strong Tennessee team, but that was really it as far as bad performances go.  

As for Harbaugh, I do think some of it's just been bad luck.  He's been in three close bowl games (vs. FSU, South Carolina and TCU) which could have gone our way, but we lost them all.  If a couple of those had gone our way, there probably wouldn't be any narrative about his bowl performances.  

The 2007 Citrus Bowl made we wonder how many NC’s Carr could have won if he always played with that offensive philosophy.

Agreed, I think once we reach the CFP, we have to become more of a "finesse" team if you will.  Our bruising run game works well during the regular season, but the playoff becomes more of a track meet.  When we open up the offense, we fare much better (like when JJ replaced Cade against Georgia 2 years ago, and suddenly we could throw downfield and hey look, a touchdown!)

If we try to beat Bama with our normal offense, we're gonna have a bad time.  Let JJ rip, actually use Donovan Edwards' best traits as a pass catching back, let Colston & Barner run routes all over and take at least 4 or 5 shots downfield to Roman Wilson, who should be open damn near every time.

When we were on campus Bo built the indoor practice facility. (Are there two now?  I've lost track.) I remember we were calling it the Win A Bowl Dome. Theory was Bo needed it to be able to practice on turf, in weather conditions more like southern bowl venues.

Bo was definitely a “dance with who brung ya’” guy to borrow from Keith Jackson.  We trotted out the same stuff that we did all season.

Against TCU last year, it seemed like we made some assumptions about how the running game was going to work and boy were they bad assumptions.  Maybe over thinking things?  TCU had a plan that we didn’t anticipate. We got behind and that was the end of the running game.

We need to go against our tendencies and let JJ loose.

This. So much this.

Yeah but unlike Bo Woody won some bowl games and a national championship because Bo is an overrated twat

Very young ZC, and HH. Underutilized Nico, still young Ronnie. 

I think when Michigan fields an experienced team, they do well. Young or demotivated teams do not do well.