Why not roll with Gattis?*

In hindsight, the 2018 offense really wasn't all that bad. In our two regular season losses, the main culprit was the defense.

Also, remember how nice it was to have a feature back who you could give the ball to 20-25x against teams like NW and MSU and wear down the defense? With the occasional scat back and blocking 3rd down back? Also, remember QB keeps? 

We somehow managed to go no huddle and almost entirely out of the gun, yet go at a slower pace. Only at U-M.

How do you not know if Harbaugh has his sticky fingers all over the play calls?

I think the problem we all have is how do we know how much of what we are seeing is "Gattis" and how much is "Harbaugh"?  I don't have a freaking clue.  How handcuffed has Gattis been since being at Michigan by Harbaugh?

I will say this...If Gattis is the one really calling the plays then he needs to be replaced as quickly as Harbaugh.

I'm willing to be a lot more patient with the offense this year than I am with the defense. At the moment, we have a new QB behind five new offensive linemen throwing to entirely new pass-catchers with the exception of Bell. It's pretty normal for new OLs to take time to gel. It usually happens against non-conference cupcakes. This year we had to completely reshuffle the line again when both of our starting tackles went down, leading to two more new starters. I'm also willing to forgive the offense because by the end of last year, the offense was humming. The offense was performing really well against OSU's #1 defense until Shea's fumble and the second half dropapalooza. Then it became one dimensional because we fell behind.

Now the defense being an abomination is another story entirely. The front seven was supposed to be elite this year. Vincent Gray was supposed to be our top corner. Nothing more needs to be said about the defense after MSU roasted us with the "run in a straight line as fast as you can" offense.

Yeah, wow.  He's in way over his head as an OC, a position he was highly unqualified for when we hired him (literally no experience at any level).   He's doing miserable job with that so, yeah, let's promote him!

Gattis has shown a lot of promise with his fantastic offensive game plans during the second half of last year and the first game this year. Those game plans didn't really show a shred of Harbaugh interfering. I think Gattis mostly knows what he's doing. I think the reason why the offense looks so putrid the last few games is that Harbaugh is forcing him to go to more of a "Harbaugh-ball", conservative approach, for some god-forsaken reason. Perhaps, as someone else said, the practices were sloppy and Harbaugh told him to go more conservative and get rid of the mistakes. There's no way that 3rd and 8 run by Charbonnet would be something that Gattis would have called. 

I suspect that, if we let Gattis be a head coach or offensive coordinator somewhere else where he can truly spread his wings without interference from Harbaugh, that he'll succeed and we'll regret letting him go. 

I cant speak for all the other half but for me anyways I'm willing to give him a pass because I truly believe his bosses hands are all over the offense and profoundly influence what he's allowed to do and or not do.

There's been one constant regarding our offense since 2015 and shit-ton of variables.  So to me the problem is most likely the constant and not the latest variable.

I would have no issue rolling with Gattis if Jim leaves.

I'll never understand why half the fan base throws him under the bus when you damn well know Harbaugh definitely has his fingerprints all over the offense.  I'd say Locksley has been doing a pretty damn good job at Maryland and he wanted Gattis to come with him.  He isn't as bad as people seem to think and he's going to be the scapegoat for Harbaugh's ineptitude.

I've mentioned this before but a marriage of what Harbaugh wants to do in a Gattis-styled offense means you get an inept harbaugh offense and an inept Gattis offense.  It's the worst of both worlds.  Choosing 1 way is definitely better than another and if Harbaugh didn't want "Speed in space" the way Gattis envisioned then he shouldn't have hired Gattis.

Not sure if you have watched any of our recent games, guys are wide open..  multiple running backs are wide open almost every play out of the backfield, and lots of separating for wr.

We can't seem to always get the ball to them

THIS

The personnel splits are nearly identical to what he ran at Alabama. Michigan is like 10% more 12 personnel. 

Ben Mason doesn't play full back in this offense, he plays H-Back — which Alabama used often. And Mason hasn't gotten significant offensive snaps with the exception of Minnesota (which happens to be our only solid performance this year). 

The offense this year simply is not rooted in 1990's play action. No idea where that's coming from. 

Do you think a classic Harbaugh offense would have called a power QB run OUT OF SHOTGUN from the half-inch line on 4th and 1?

It's also been reported that Gattis was the one pushing strongest to move forward with Milton, while Harbaugh wanted to give both Dylan and Joe reps in the first game (which sounds like a very Harbaugh thing to do).

Bad offense does not automatically equal Harbaugh offense.

Gattis has the potential to be good (see: the second half of 2019, beginning with ND when Shea was breaking Michigan records and we started to blow out teams). 

The problem is Milton is nowhere near the caliber of quarterback right now that Tua, Hurts, Mcsorley or even Shea were. And this is the least experienced O-Line and receiver group of any of those offenses. 

Gattis needed to adjust to these factors more quickly, but this is 100% a Gattis offense. 

Either Gattis is running the offense he wants, for which the results haven't been great . . . or he isn't running it, which makes him a glorified WR coach.

Neither of these is an argument in his favor for HC.  He has zero HC experience to begin with, and we don't even know if he's a good OC.

This thread is classic message-board logic : "Fire that bum of a HC, but make sure to keep his staff together for recruiting!"

Genuine question, not intended to be argumentative: Gattis has never been an OC anywhere before, so how do you know what "his offense" looks like? Maybe the other offenses he was a part of weren't "his offense" either. Or that he knows how to coach/train athletes to achieve his offense, even if he knows what he wants it to look like? I work in career counseling, and there are people who interview fantastically well and can't deliver once they're hired (or, conversely, can do great work year over year, but not hold up well in the pressure of an interview). So far I'm inclined to lump Gattis into the "talks a good game" group- I don't see the evidence that he's capable of developing an offensive philosophy and rolling that out across the full range of positions. I've never coached football, but to me that seems like a vastly different skill set from teaching WRs technique. Maybe he's just in over his head.

And hey, we brought back our two RB's who made ND look silly (a ND program that hasn't lost a game since that ass-whooping). We also no longer have our QB who we all said "held the offense back."

I don't know how this team competed with Alabama for most of the game last year...

A broken clock is right twice a day. That doesn't mean you make it your head coach.